Caraval (Caraval 1)

Scarlett rolled the tiny jar in her palm, barely larger than a vial, yet heavy. She imagined the solidly reassuring weight of it in her pocket. “What will this cost me?”

“For you?” The woman looked Scarlett over carefully, taking in her posture, the way she curled into herself or refused to have her back fully to the tent’s opening. “Tell me who you fear the most.”

Scarlett hesitated. Julian had warned her about giving her secrets away too freely. He’d also told her that to win and find her sister she needed to be a little merciless. She imagined this potion could be ruthless, although that wasn’t the entire reason Scarlett pushed out the words in one quick breath. “Marcello Dragna.”

With the name came a fearful rush of anise and lavender and something akin to rotted plums. Scarlett looked around the tent, making sure her father wasn’t standing at the mouth of it.

“This elixir can be used on a person only once,” warned the woman, “and the effects wear off after two hours.”

“Thank you.” As soon as Scarlett said the words, she thought she glimpsed Julian just beyond the border of the adjacent tent. A blur of dark hair and stealthy movements. She swore he looked right at her, but then he continued in the opposite direction.

Scarlett followed hastily, dashing to the cool edge of the courtyard, where the colorful pavilions no longer grew. But Julian disappeared again. He slipped under the arch to her left.

“Julian!” Scarlett crossed beneath the same shadowed arc, trailing a narrow path that led into a dreary garden. But there was no glimpse of Julian’s dark hair behind any of its cracked statues. No sight of his sharp movements near any of its dying plants. He’d vanished, just like all the colors had seemed to fade from the garden, leaving it bleached out and unlovely.

Scarlett searched for another archway Julian might have used to exit, but the small park dead-ended at a shabby fountain spitting out bits of bubbling brown water into a dirty basin containing a few pathetic coins and a glass button. The saddest wishing well Scarlett had ever seen.

It made no sense. Julian’s disappearance, or this neglected plot of earth, left to die in the midst of a domain so carefully cultivated. Even the air felt off. Fetid and stagnant.

Scarlett could almost feel the sadness of the fountain infecting her, turning her discouragement into the type of dreary yellow hopelessness that choked out life. She wondered if that’s what had happened to the plants. She knew how crippling bleakness could feel. If not for Scarlett’s determination to protect her sister at all costs, she might have given up long ago.

She probably should have. What was that saying, No love ever goes unpunished? In many ways, loving Tella was a source of constant pain. No matter how hard Scarlett tried to care for her sister, it was never enough to fill the hole their mother had left. And it wasn’t as if Tella really loved Scarlett back. If she did, she wouldn’t have risked everything Scarlett wanted by dragging her to this miserable game against her will. Tella never thought things through. She was selfish and reckless and—

No! Scarlett shook her head and took a deep, heavy breath. None of those thoughts were true. She loved Tella, more than anything. She wanted to find her, more than everything.

This is the fountain’s doing, Scarlett realized. Whatever despair she felt was the product of some sort of enchantment, most likely meant to keep anyone from lingering there too long.

This garden was hiding something.

Maybe that was why Nigel had told her to follow Julian and his black heart—because Nigel knew that it would lead her here. This must be where the next clue was hidden.

Scarlett’s boots clicked against dull stone as she moved closer to where she’d spied the button. It was the second one she’d seen that night. It had to be part of a clue. Scarlett used a stick to fetch it out. And that’s when she saw it.

It was so insubstantial she almost missed it—eyes that cared less might have overlooked it. Beneath the grim brown water, etched into the edge of the basin, was a sun with a star inside and a teardrop inside of the star—the symbol of Caraval. It did not feel as magical as the silver crest on the first letter Legend had sent her; of course nothing felt charmed in this awful garden.

Scarlett touched the symbol with her stick. Immediately, the water started draining, taking every feeling of wretchedness with it, while the bricks of the fountain shifted, revealing a winding set of stairs that disappeared into a dark unknown. It was the type of staircase Scarlett was reluctant to venture down alone. And she was running dangerously low on time if she wanted to get back to the inn before sunrise. But if this was where Julian had disappeared and if he was the boy with the heart made of black, Scarlett needed to follow him to discover the next clue. Either Tella could be the thing Scarlett chased after, or Scarlett’s fear could be what chased Scarlett away.

Trying not to worry that she was making an immense mistake, Scarlett darted down the steps. After the first damp set, sand circled around her boots as she spiraled farther down the stairs, which reached much deeper than the steps to the barrel room back home.

Torches lit her descent, casting dramatic shadows against light-gold bricks of sand that grew darker with each flight. She imagined herself to be three stories below; it felt as if she’d entered the heart of the Castillo. A place she was becoming quite certain she did not belong.

The concerns she’d tried to bury resurfaced as she plunged farther down. What if the boy she’d followed wasn’t Julian? What if Nigel had been lying? Hadn’t Julian warned her about trusting people? Each fear squeezed the invisible chain around her neck, tempting her to turn around.

At the foot of the steps, a corridor stretched out in multiple directions, a snake with more than one head. Dark and tortuous, magnificent and frightening. Cold air blew from one tunnel. Warmth breezed out of another. But no footsteps sounded down any of them.

“How did you get down here?”

Scarlett spun around. Dim light flickered over the mouth of the cold corridor, and the red-lipped girl who’d been unable to keep her eyes off Julian as she’d rowed Scarlett and Julian to La Serpiente the night before stepped out.

“I’m looking for my companion. I saw him come down—”

“No one else is down here,” said the girl. “This isn’t a place you should—”

Someone screamed. As hot and bright as fire.

A weak voice inside her reminded Scarlett it was only a game, that the shriek was just an illusion. But the red-lipped girl across from Scarlett appeared genuinely scared, and the wail sounded incredibly real. Her thoughts flashed back to the contract she’d signed in blood, and the rumors of the woman who’d died during the game a few years ago.

“What was that?” Scarlett demanded.