فصل 35

35

Tella hoped the sun would rise soon because this bizarre night needed to end. If Tella’s world flipped on its head one more time, she would crack.

What had her sister been doing with Jacks?

Of course, Tella still wasn’t certain the young woman who’d stepped out of the coach was Scarlett. Tella hadn’t gotten a clear look at her face. But Tella knew her sister and she knew Jacks, who was low enough to drag Scarlett into this mess.

Tella leaped out of her coach the moment it touched the ground and nearly twisted her ankle. It didn’t stop her from rushing out of the carriage house, but it did delay her long enough to lose her sister.

“Are you running from someone, or chasing after someone?” The Prince of Hearts stepped out from the edge of the stone garden, blocking Tella’s path as he tossed a glowing purple apple back and forth between the tips of his nimble fingers. Again, he didn’t wear a coat and his shirt was only half ironed, as if he’d grown impatient and taken it from a maid before she could finish her job. His pants were unwrinkled, but when the rising sun hit the buttery leather, Tella thought she saw a spatter that looked like blood.

She took several deep breaths, attempting to calm her racing heart. “What were you doing with my sister?” “Do I detect some jealousy?”

“You’re delusional.”

“Am I?” Jacks sauntered between forever frozen servants deeper into the stone garden, forcing Tella to follow.

“This relationship isn’t real,” Tella groaned. “How could I be jealous?”

“Maybe you’re wishing it was real.”

“You flatter yourself too much.”

“Only because my fiancée doesn’t flatter me enough.” Jacks’s tone was flippant, yet he didn’t take his eyes off Tella as he propped one booted foot against the terrified stone statue at her side. Then he pulled out a dagger from his boot and began to peel the skin off his apple, as if he’d suddenly lost interest in their conversation.

“You still haven’t told me what you were doing with my sister,” Tella demanded. “I want you to stay away from her.” Jacks looked up from his knife. “She’s the one who came looking for me.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I promised I wouldn’t tell.”

Tella snorted. “Don’t act like you have a conscience.”

Jacks sliced off the last bit of skin from his apple and took a deep bite. “Just because my moral code is different from yours doesn’t mean I don’t have one.” “Maybe you should reevaluate it,” Tella said. “By most people’s standards, killing someone is worse than breaking a person’s confidence.” “Have I killed anyone since you’ve known me?” Jacks ran his tongue along the tips of his sharp white teeth before sinking them into the apple once more. Glowing juice, as red as blood, dripped from the corner of his mouth. Mocking her as he ate.

He acted careless and lazy but he was the most calculating and confident of them all. He probably viewed her the same way he saw his apple, as something juicy to take a bite out of and then discard.

Another drop of red fell from his lips and Tella launched herself at him. She knocked the apple from his pale hands. Then she went for his throat.

His hands went around her wrists in a flash. “You can’t kill me.”

“But I can try.” She kicked at him.

He easily dodged it.

“You’re only going to tire yourself out,” he said calmly. “You already look exhausted. Save your strength to win the game tonight.” She continued to kick.

He effortlessly evaded her again. His cruel face appeared bored.

But Tella swore she felt the blood rushing through his veins, heating the hands still encircling her wrists. He might have appeared indifferent, but his heart was beating as fast as hers.

Tella stopped mid-kick. His heart was beating.

She stumbled back and he let her go.

“You have a heartbeat.”

“No. My heart hasn’t beat in a very long time. You’re the one who’s delusional now.” His voice was colder than she’d ever heard it, yet the chill it brought did not erase the searing memory of his hot hands around her wrists.

“I might be a lot of things, but I know what I felt,” Tella said.

Only one person could make it beat again: his one true love. They said his kiss had been fatal to all but her—his only weakness.… “I made your heart beat,” Tella crowed. It was wild and absurd, a truly feral idea. But Tella felt the truth in her heartbeat as well, which now sped up rather than slowed. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. It had never felt so strong. So free. “I’m your one true love. Your kiss can’t kill me.” Jacks’s scowl deepened. “You shouldn’t believe every story you hear. Do I look as if I’m in love with you?” “You always look like a monster to me, but that doesn’t mean the myth’s not true.” And Tella imagined she didn’t have to love him to be his true love. Given that he was a Fate and pure evil, Tella also imagined love for him was not the same as it would have been for a human. But that part didn’t matter. What mattered was that being his true love meant she was immune to his kiss. She no longer needed to win the game to live.

“This changes nothing.” Jacks’s expression turned so sharp that a fistful of knives would have looked soft in comparison.

But Tella was used to his mercurial looks. They couldn’t hurt her, and neither could his poisonous lips.

“No,” Tella said. “This changes everything.”

“Not for your mother.” Jacks crushed the heel of his boot atop the apple Tella had knocked onto the ground, until the fruit was nothing but bleeding flesh and juice. “You still need me if you want to free her.” “Maybe I no longer care about saving her.” Tella said it as if she meant it, but the words tasted sour in her mouth. Not quite a lie, but not the truth.

Jacks seemed to sense her lack of conviction. He flashed a dimple as he prowled closer. “You called me a monster and even I think that’s cold, Donatella.” His dimple vanished, and for a moment she saw his face hollow out with terror, the same way it had the first time he’d spoken of being trapped inside of a card. “If any part of you ever wants to see your mother alive again, you’ll rethink helping me. Legend fears the Fates going free and stealing his power, and he wants our powers more than anything. If he ever gets his hands on the Deck of Destiny with the Fates, he will destroy all of us, along with your mother. The only way to save her is to win the game and help me free them. Unless you’re foolish enough to take her place, and based on what you just said, I doubt you’re willing to do that.” Jacks chucked her chin with one slender finger before sauntering out of the garden as if their conversation had changed nothing at all.

When Tella trudged back into the palace just after dawn, the golden tower had been transformed for Elantine’s Eve. The banisters were covered with boughs of glistening fabric, reminiscent of the Unwed Bride’s veil of tears. And to Tella’s discomfort, every maid she saw had painted red stiches on her lips, transforming themselves into Her Handmaidens.

The sapphire wing where Scarlett stayed was the same. Tella had stopped by there first to find out why her sister had been with Jacks. Of course Scarlett had not answered the door.

Tella might have pounded on her sister’s door a little harder, or waited a little longer, but her body was begging for sleep, and maybe Jacks had been telling the truth. Maybe Scarlett had come after him to warn him not to hurt her sister. It sounded like something Scarlett would do.

Tella had passed more maids with stitched-up lips on the way to her tower room. They must have been working since before sunup. When Tella had left the night before, each door had been unadorned, but now different masks hung atop every archway and entry, an old tradition meant to honor the Fates in the hope they would bring blessings rather than curses.

The Maiden Death’s cage of pearls hung above Tella’s door. Tella knew it was merely another Elantine’s Eve tradition, yet it felt like a warning, one more reminder of what she had to lose if she decided to give up on the game. She no longer needed to win Caraval to live, but could she leave her mother trapped in a card?

Tella wanted to hate her. She’d meant it when she’d shouted at the sky that her mother could rot in her paper prison. And yet half of Tella wanted to free her even more than before. She wanted to prove to Paloma that she wasn’t just a useless ornament to be given away, that she was fearless and clever and brave and worth loving.

Her mother’s cursed ring weighed down Tella’s finger. Maybe Dante would find this loophole he’d mentioned, to skirt around the curse, but if he didn’t, Tella knew she couldn’t enslave herself to the stars to rescue a woman who might never love her.

But what if Dante succeeded in finding a way for Tella to use her ring to get into the stars’ vaults without having to give herself away?

If Dante was really Legend, could Tella then turn on him and give him over to Jacks, knowing what Jacks planned to do?

Everything was so twisted.

Tella told herself that if Dante was Legend it meant he didn’t care about her. But maybe he hadn’t offered to heal her earlier that night because he’d believed she was no longer cursed. He could have thought that when he’d given her his blood before, she’d been saved. But if that was true, why had she been bleeding again?

Tella wanted to think the best of Dante, but whether he cared about her was beside the point. If Dante was Legend, he would not hesitate to destroy the Fates.

Tella wasn’t usually one to make safe choices. In her experience, the safe choice often felt like not making a choice at all, like politely stepping back and allowing others with more power to do what they saw fit. Legend and Jacks both had more power than Tella. But they each needed her to get the one thing they wanted: her mother’s Deck of Destiny. Without Tella, neither of them could touch that cursed deck. Without Tella, Legend couldn’t destroy the Fates and Tella’s mother, and without Tella, Jacks could not free the Fates or steal Legend’s magic, so that he’d once again be at his full power and have the ability to control hearts and feelings and emotions.

It seemed both expected her to win the game for them. But perhaps the only way Tella could really come out victorious was if she chose to no longer play in their games, if she left her mother where she was, and her cursed cards where they were, safe in the stars’ vault where neither Jacks nor Legend could touch them.

Something like guilt prickled inside of Tella at the thought of allowing her mother to remain trapped in a card. But Paloma had treated Tella’s life as if it were a piece of collateral. Her mother was no better than Jacks or Legend, and Tella would be damned before she allowed any of them to use her like a pawn on a game board again.