“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.
36
Tella shot up in bed with a start. Heart pounding, pulse rushing—two more confirmations she wasn’t cursed any longer. It should have made her feel ready to conquer the world. Instead, she couldn’t shake the heavy sensation that the world was preparing to conquer her.
Her first instinct was to check the Aracle to see if her future had changed, but she could no longer trust the card, and she was done letting the Fates dictate her choices.
The shadows crawling over the floor and the sleep lines etched into her arms made it clear she’d been out for hours. Even though she no longer planned to finish the game, she hadn’t meant to sleep so long.
It was nearly twilight. The light pouring through her window dyed everything inside her suite an eerie red, except for the pearly white letter sitting quietly at the edge of her bed, as if it had been waiting for her.