“Does it matter what I say? Would you tell me the truth, if I asked if it was all real?”
“If you have to ask, I’m guessing you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me,” Tella said.
“Yes.” Dante took another step. “To everything.”
“Even us?”
His head dipped a little. “After all that just happened, I would think that was already obvious.”
“But maybe I still want to hear it.” More important, she needed to hear it. Tella believed the game was real. She wanted to believe whatever was happening between her and Dante was real as well. But she knew that just because she’d finally admitted to herself that she wanted more with him didn’t mean he felt the same. The game might have been genuine but that didn’t mean everything about their relationship was. “Dante, please, I need to know if you’re only here because of Legend, or if this is real.”
“What makes something real, Tella?” Dante hooked a finger into the rope around her waist. “Does seeing something make it real?” He tugged on the rope and pulled her closer, until all she could see was his face. “Or does hearing something make it real?” His voice turned a little rough. “What about feeling something, is that enough to make it real?” His free hand slid up and underneath her cloak until it rested over her heart. If Tella’s heart had been working properly it might have leaped into his palm from the intensity of his rough voice and his dark, depthless eyes as he lowered his head toward hers.
“I swear to you, this—us—we were never a part of Legend’s plan. The first time I kissed you I did it because I’d just died and come back to life, but I wasn’t feeling alive. I needed something real. But tonight I kissed you because I wanted you. I haven’t stopped wanting you since the night of the Fated Ball when you were willing to risk your life because you wanted to make me angry. After that, I couldn’t stay away.”
His hand slowly slid up from her heart to around the back of her neck, pressing against her tender skin as he leaned in even more. “I kept coming back to you, not because of Legend, or the game. But because you’re so real and alive and fearless and daring and beautiful and if what’s between us isn’t real, then I don’t know what is.”
Dante’s fingers tensed around her neck and he kissed her again, as if it were the only way he knew how to finish what he’d been saying.
It didn’t last nearly long enough. But it upended her. It made her wonder if jewels hidden away safely in boxes sometimes longed to be stolen by thieves—because now he was definitely stealing her heart, and she wanted him to take even more.
When he ended the kiss, his hands wrapped gently around her waist, a soft contrast to the barbed tone of his voice as he said, “Now, tell me why you were bleeding.”
Tella took an uneven breath.
It was time to confess the truth.
“It happened the night of the ball when Jacks kissed me,” she said. She’d meant to keep it short and simple, but the moment she opened her mouth it all started spilling out, as fast and sloppy as water pouring from a shattered jug. The entire history of her relationship with Jacks, why she first made a deal with him, how she’d failed him, how he’d given her a card with her mother trapped inside of it, and everything he’d threatened if Tella failed him again.
For his part, Dante remained still and unreadable as the statue poured an endless stream behind them, except for whenever Tella said Jacks’s name; Dante’s teeth would grind together then. Otherwise he remained painfully calm.
“Let me make sure I have this right,” Dante said. “If you don’t win this game and give Legend to Jacks, then you’ll die.”
Tella nodded.
Dante worked his jaw as if preparing for another round of curses. “Did Jacks say why he wants Legend?”
“Jacks told me he wants his full powers back, but I think it’s more than that. I believe Jacks wants to harness Legend’s power to free all the Fates from the cards they’re trapped in.”
Dante’s hands tightened around Tella. “This is my fault. I should have admitted it was a mistake you weren’t on the list. If I hadn’t told that lie about you being engaged—”
“I probably still would have kissed him,” Tella finished. She no longer wanted to believe in fate, but that night had felt fated. Even without Dante’s lie Jacks would have found her at the ball. She wouldn’t have had what he wanted and things would have progressed the same way. “It’s not your fault. Jacks is the one who cursed me. He did this.”
“I could kill him.” Dante’s hands fell away from Tella as a splinter of moonlight cut across his face, slicing between the two sides of his torn expression. It was the way someone looked in the middle of a fight when they were debating between what they should say and what they wanted to say.
Then his hands went around her once more, as if he’d come to a sudden decision. “Do you trust me?”
Tella took a ragged breath. When Dante was gone she wanted him there. When he was there she wanted him close. She liked the feel of his hands and the sound of his voice. She liked the things he said, and she wanted to believe them. She wanted to trust him. She just wasn’t sure that she did. “Yes,” she said, hoping that by saying the words it would make it true. “I do trust you.”
A sliver of a smile. “Good. There’s a way to fix all of this, but I need your trust. Legend is at his most powerful during Caraval, and his magic comes from the same origin as Jacks’s. If you win the game, Legend will heal you. You don’t need Jacks.”
“But to win, I have to give myself over to the stars, and I don’t know that I can do that.”
“You aren’t going to do that,” Dante promised. “I’ll find another way for you to get inside their vaults.”
“How? You heard Theron. He said only my ring can open the vault, but it’s cursed until my mother’s debt is paid.”