فصل 33

33

Tella buried her head back against Dante’s warm chest. She was so tired. Tired of games and lies, and broken hearts, and tired of trying to rescue herself and her mother. She wanted to forget about it all. Maybe she closed her eyes and slept, or maybe it only took him a moment to carry her far away from the park. It seemed very little time had passed before she heard his low voice again.

“Are you all right to walk?”

Tella managed a nod and Dante smoothly set her down in front of a narrow set of crumbling steps overrun by moss and laced with forsaken spiderwebs. Ruins so abandoned not even the insects had stayed. But they seemed to be lit by the stars. Tella looked up and saw that they were on the edge of the sparkling white heart Legend had placed in the sky.

“What is this place?” Tella asked.

“Valenda’s older myths claim this belonged to a governor who ruled long before the Meridian Empire began, back when the Fates reigned on earth.” Dante guided her up the steps into the skeleton of an old estate. Tella’s nana Anna always said a person’s beauty was determined by their bones. If that were true, the bones of this manor made Tella think it must have been resplendent once.

The crumbling pillars and overgrown courtyards spoke of ancient wealth, while the cracked statues and ghosts of painted ceilings hinted at disappearing art. Only one relic seemed to have avoided the deadly caress of time. A fountain in the central courtyard, shaped in the form of a woman dressed similar to Tella, who held a pitcher that poured an endless stream of currant-red water into the pool surrounding her ankles.

“They say this place is cursed,” Dante continued. “During one of the governor’s many parties, his wife discovered that he planned to poison her so that he could wed his younger mistress. Rather than drinking the poison, the wife added three drops of her own blood and poured it out as an offering to one of the Fates—the Poisoner. She vowed to live the rest of her life in service as one of his handmaidens, as long as he granted her one request.” “What did she ask for?”

“The wife didn’t know who her husband’s mistress was, but she knew the woman was at the party. So she wished that her husband would only remember his wife.” “What happened then?”

“The Poisoner granted her wish. After drinking a poisonous glass of wine, her husband forgot every person he’d ever met, except for his wife.” Dante shot a wry glace at the statue pouring her bottomless pitcher.

“Is that supposed to be the wife?” Tella asked.

“If you believe the story.” Dante sat on the edge of the fountain, letting the red water trickle behind him in soft musical notes as he continued with the tale. “The wife wasn’t pleased. The Poisoner had erased everyone from her husband’s memory. A governor isn’t useful if he only knows one person. Once word of his condition escaped he was stripped of his position, and soon they were to be forced out of their house. So, even though her first bargain had not ended well, the wife spilled more blood and called on the Poisoner again, asking him to restore her husband’s memory. He warned her if they did this, her husband would try to kill her once more. So the woman promised to serve the Poisoner in the afterlife as well, and asked for another favor. She requested the power to make her husband forget just one person. The Poisoner agreed, but again he cautioned that there would be consequences. The woman didn’t care—as long as she kept her home and her title.” “I think I know where this is going,” Tella said.

“Do you want to try finishing the story?” Dante offered.

“No.” Tella sat down beside him on the edge of the fountain. “You have a voice for telling stories.” “Of course I do.”

“You are so full of yourself.” She leaned closer to elbow him in the ribs, but Dante took the opportunity to slide his heavy arm around her waist and tuck her into his side.

He was so warm, a human shield sheltering her from the rest of the world. She allowed herself to press closer to him as he said, “The Poisoner restored her husband’s memory. Then the Fate told the wife that if she took a pitcher of water and poured it out into the pool in the center of the courtyard, it would turn to wine that would have the power to make her husband forget the other woman he loved. The wife obeyed, but as she poured out the water and it turned to wine, she also began to transform, shifting into stone while her husband watched from the balcony above. He’d only had his memory back a few short hours, but it had been long enough for him to call on a Fate as well.” “So he had her turned to stone?” Tella asked.

“He wished her dead, but the Poisoner had promised she’d keep her home and her title, and the Fates always keep their bargains.” Both Tella and Dante shifted to watch the frozen woman once more. She didn’t look furious, as Tella would have suspected, or as if she were attempting to fight the spell. Instead, she almost appeared to relish it, tipping out her cursed wine the way another person might spill a dare or a challenge.

“It’s believed that anyone who drinks from this fountain can forget whatever they choose,” Dante said.

“And I thought you were telling me the story to help me forget.”

“Did it do that?” he asked.

“For a minute,” she admitted. But sadly that moment had already passed. Tella dipped her finger into the fountain, coating it in swirls of bitter burgundy. It would have been so easy to put her finger in her mouth, close her eyes, and erase what her mother had said and done.

But even if she believed Dante’s tragic myth, she wasn’t sure she really wanted to forget. Tella dropped her hand, smearing the cursed wine against the white of her sheath.

“You know what the saddest part is? I should have known all along. I was warned,” Tella said. “When I was a child, I read my fortune. It contained the Prince of Hearts. So for almost my entire life I’ve known I was destined for unrequited love. I’ve never let myself become close to anyone, except my sister, for fear they’d break my heart. It never even occurred to me that the one I really needed to protect myself from was my own mother.” Tella coughed on a sound that felt like a sob and sounded like a wounded laugh. “It seems the people who say you can’t change your fate are right.” “I don’t believe that,” Dante said.

“Then what do you believe?”

“Fate is only an idea, but I think by believing in it we turn it into something more. You just said you’ve avoided love because you’ve believed it wasn’t in your future, and so it hasn’t been.” “That wasn’t the only card I pulled. I also pulled the Maiden Death, and shortly after, my mother vanished.” “Just a coincidence. From what I’ve heard of your mother, it sounds as if she would have left whether you pulled the card or not.” “But—” Tella almost told him about the Aracle and all the predictions it had shown her. But had it really revealed the future, or had it been manipulating her along as she’d suspected last night? Had it used glimpses of possible futures not to help her, but to guide her toward Jacks so that he could free the Fates?

Tella had thought herself so bold and daring by attempting to change her mother and her sister’s fate. But maybe Scarlett’s fiancé was actually a decent person. And maybe the Aracle had lied about her mother, too. It had shown her in prison and dead, but if Tella didn’t win Caraval, if she left the cards locked in the stars’ vault, her mother wouldn’t die or end up bloody in a jail. She’d just remain where she was, trapped in a card.

Like she deserved.

As if reading her thoughts, Dante added, “I don’t believe what you saw today proves that your mother didn’t love you. What she did looked terrible, but judging her based on a moment like that is the same as reading one page from a book and assuming you know the whole story.” “You think she had a good reason for what she did?”

“Maybe, or maybe I just want to hope she’s better than my mother.” He said it the same careless way he’d told the story about his tattoos, as if it happened so long ago it didn’t really matter. But people didn’t tattoo tales they no longer cared about onto their body, and Tella sensed Dante felt the same about his mother. His mother might no longer have been in his life, but he still felt wounded by her.

Tella’s hand found Dante’s fingers in the dark. Somewhere in the space between the Temple of the Stars and this cursed place something had shifted between them. Before their relationship was much like Caraval. It had felt like a game. But the moment he set her down on the steps of these ruins, it felt as if they’d entered the real. When she asked her next question it wasn’t because she was trying to figure out if he was Legend; if anything, she desperately hoped he wasn’t. “What did your mother do to you?” “I guess you could say she left me with the circus.”

“Are you talking about Caraval?”

“It wasn’t Caraval then, just a talentless group of performers who lived in tents and traveled the continent. People liked to say my mother only did what she believed was best for me, but my father was more honest. He liked to drink, and one night he told me exactly what sort of woman she was.” “Was she a…”

“I know what you’re thinking, and no. Although I would have respected her more if she was a prostitute. My father said she only slept with him so she could steal something he’d collected in his travels. They’d spent one night together, and when she returned shortly after I was born, to drop me off, she wrote a letter to his wife telling her all about the experience, and ensuring I was never truly welcomed into the family.” Tella imagined a younger Dante, all gangly limbs and dark hair covering the hurt in his eyes.

“Don’t feel sorry for me.” Dante tightened the hand around Tella’s waist and pressed his lips against her head, close to her ear, as he said, “If my mother had been a kinder or better person, I might have turned out good, and everyone knows how boring it is to be good.” “I definitely wouldn’t be here with you if you were good.” Tella pictured the word good withering next to Dante. Good was the word people used to describe how they slept at night and bread fresh out of the fire. But Dante was more like the fire. No one called a fire good. Fires were hot, burning things children were warned not play with.

And yet for once, Tella hadn’t even thought about pulling away from him. She used to think it was ridiculous, the idea that a girl would give her heart to a boy even though she knew it would also give him the power to destroy her. Tella had exchanged things with other young men, but never hearts, and though she still had no plans to relinquish that part of her to Dante, she was beginning to understand how hearts could be slowly given away, without a person even realizing. How sometimes just a look, or a rare moment of vulnerability like the one Dante had just shared with her, was enough to steal a fraction of a heart.

Tella arched her neck to look up at him. Above his head the sky had changed, filling with ribbons of bruised clouds that made it look as if night had fallen backward. Instead of moving forward the heavens appeared to be shifting toward the sunset, to a time when there weren’t any spying stars, leaving them unwatched and alone in the cursed garden.

“So,” she said cautiously, “is all this your way of telling me you’re the villain?”

His chuckle was dark. “I’m definitely not the hero.”

“I already knew that,” Tella said. “It’s my story, so clearly I’m the hero.”

His mouth tipped up at both corners, and his eyes sparked, growing as hot as the finger now reaching out to trace her jaw. “If you’re the hero, what does that make me?” His finger dipped to her collarbone.

Heat spread across her chest. This would have been the moment to pull away; instead, she let a hint of challenge slip into her voice. “I’m still trying to figure that out.” “Would you like my help?” Dante dropped his hand to her hips.

Tella’s breathing hitched. “No. I don’t want your help.… I want you.”

Dante’s gaze caught on fire and he took her mouth with his.

This was nothing like the drunken kiss they’d shared on the forest floor, a rough combination of lust and desire for temporary entertainment. This kiss felt like a confession, brutal and raw and honest in a way kisses rarely were. Dante wasn’t trying to seduce her; he was convincing her just how little goodness mattered, because nothing he was doing with his hands could have been considered good. Yet every brush of his lips was sweet. Where others had demanded, Dante asked, slowly sweeping his mouth across hers until she parted her lips, letting his tongue slip inside as he pulled her onto his lap.

Maybe the fountain’s enchantment was at work because Tella imagined by the time she finished kissing Dante, she’d forget every other boy who’d ever touched her mouth.

Dante’s lips moved to her jaw, gently nipping and licking as his hands found the rope he’d tied around her waist. Knotting his fingers with it, he pulled her closer, until everything was made of just the two of them. Of their hands and their lips and the places their skin met.

They hadn’t even broken apart and Tella was already thinking of kissing him again, and again, tasting not merely his lips but every single one of his tattoos and scars, until the world ended and they were nothing but shadows and smoke, and Tella could no longer remember the sensation of slipping the cloak from his shoulders and running her hands along his back. Or how it tasted when his lips spoke words against her mouth that felt like promises she hoped he’d keep.

And for the first time in her life Tella wanted even more. She wanted the night to stretch into forever, and for Dante to tell her more stories about Fates, and his past, and anything else he wanted to say. In that moment, inside of that kiss, she wanted to know everything about him. She wanted him, and it no longer scared her.

He was right. Tella had wanted to blame the Fates for her misfortunes, but she was the one who’d always run from the possibility of love. And deep down she knew it wasn’t really about the Fates. It was about her mother and how she’d left without ever looking back.

Tella claimed she didn’t want love—she liked to say love trapped and controlled and ripped hearts apart. But the truth was she also knew love healed and held people together, and deep down she wanted it more than anything. She enjoyed the kisses, but a part of her always wished that whenever she walked away from a boy he’d run after her, beg her to stay, and then promise he’d never leave.

She’d accepted the cards she’d been given and turned them into her fate because it felt like the only way to protect herself after her mother left. But maybe if Tella chose to reject what she’d seen in the cards then she could have a new destiny. One where she didn’t have to be afraid of love.

When the kiss finally ended, their cloaks were both puddled on the ground, their arms were around each other, and the sky had moved back to where it should be, to the black hour just before sunrise. Only the moon lingered, undoubtedly wishing it had lips after witnessing what Tella and Dante had just done.

Dante spoke against her mouth, this time loud enough for her to hear his words. “I think I’d like you even if you were the villain.” She smiled against his lips. “Maybe I’d like you even if you were a hero.”

“But I’m not the hero,” he reminded her.

“Then perhaps I’m here to save you.” This time she kissed him first. But it wasn’t as sweet as before. It tasted acrid. Metallic. Wrong.

Tella broke away, and in that moment she swore the stars returned and shined a little brighter simply to be cruel. Light fell over Dante illuminating the blood dripping out of the corner of his mouth. Slow and red and cursed.