Finale (Caraval 3)

Once again, she thought of Mistress Luck’s warning—immortals only felt obsession, fixation, lust, and possession. But maybe Legend felt more.…

It would get around that he’d been rejected by Jacks’s tarnished former fiancée. Just the rumors would make Legend look weak—a terrible way to start a reign. But he hadn’t even hesitated to defend her.

It made her want to give him something in return.

“I think I know how to find out if the Fallen Star has another weakness.”

Legend’s eyes glittered, as if he’d just won points in the game she thought they were no longer playing. But for once she would gladly give him the points.

“We can buy one of his secrets at the Vanished Market, and I was thinking you could visit it with me.”

His dark brows drew together, suddenly wary. “How’d you find the location of the market?”

“She learned it from me.” Jacks’s smooth voice licked a cold trail up her spine.

Tella spun around.

Jacks was standing directly in front of her, looking exactly like the Prince of Hearts she’d been obsessed with as a child. All pale glowing skin and brilliant golden hair that hung over unearthly blue eyes. His gaze was a little bloodshot, but his smile was exquisite, knife-sharp and polished, like a blade eager to be used.

“How did you get here?” Legend’s voice was lethal, but when Tella looked back at him, his eyes were fixed on hers. They filled with something like hurt before thinning to a look that was closer to an accusation.

“The better question is, how did he get here?” Jacks slit his eyes toward Tella.

“I—” Tella started. But—she paused to look back up at the sky full of impossibly close stars—maybe she wasn’t actually in this part of the palace? Maybe Tella hadn’t stopped to listen to a pair of servants, and maybe Legend hadn’t truly defended her in front of them.

Maybe Jacks was asking why Legend was there because Jacks still knew him as Dante—and Dante was not supposed to have magical abilities, like the power to enter dreams.

Tella’s gaze lowered to the ripped hem of her ice-blue gown, and she willed it to mend itself, something she’d only be able to do if she was in a dream. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, almost as soon as she’d begun to think she wasn’t in a dream, the dress began to mend. The rip vanished, and a new tear inside of her heart took its place.

This wasn’t real. Legend had risked nothing to defend her in front of those servants, because they were only in a dream.

Until that moment, she’d always loved her dreams with Legend—they’d felt like something special that the two of them had shared. But this felt like a deception.

Her gaze sliced from Legend’s stormy eyes to Jacks’s cutlass smile, feeling as if she was standing in the middle of an immortal game board. She hadn’t liked how Jacks had tricked his way into her dreams, but it was almost worse that Legend had tricked her once again into believing an illusion was real.

“Both of you are terrible.”

Tella willed herself to wake up, and her eyes flashed open just as her sky carriage came to a halt.

She must have fallen asleep while traveling across the city, her visions of Valenda at night seamlessly turning to dreams without her even realizing it.

She climbed out of the coach to find servants buzzing around the palace grounds and painting everything with night dust, but it didn’t glitter as much, the stars no longer looked close enough to touch, and none of the servants glanced her way or whispered behind her back.

* * *

It wasn’t until the following morning, when Tella was back in her borrowed palace room, that she heard the voice of a servant.

“Miss Donatella.” Her name followed the loud knock that had woken her up.

Tella threw on her robe and dragged herself out of the raised canopy bed and across thick carpets. Perky sunlight warmed her skin as she opened her main doors. Two royal maids stood on the other side, the same ones who’d been in her dream last night.

They each held one end of a shiny black box, almost as long as Tella was tall.

“We have a gift from His Highness, Prince Dante,” the birdy maid said as both girls set the box atop the closest couch.

“He also wanted to make sure you received this.” The other maid handed Tella a crisp black envelope along with a curious smile.