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.