Finale (Caraval, 3)

Tella couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned until she’d ripped all the cool silk sheets off her bed. But as soon as she did, they rearranged themselves, tucking her back in. She didn’t know what kind of glamour it was, but she knew it was somehow Legend’s doing.

He was so frustrating and confusing and impossible not to think about.

He hadn’t come to see her after his conversation with Julian. And now that Jacks had taken away his ability to meet Tella in her dreams, she knew she wouldn’t see him there, either. But even if he had, she didn’t know what was left to say.

She needs to save you.

But Legend didn’t want to be saved the way Julian wanted him to be. And Tella didn’t know if she could really save him, or if she might just become the reason he died and didn’t come back to life.

She sat up, abandoning the idea of sleep, and pulled back the delicate blue curtains that surrounded her canopy bed. Everything in the room had a dreamlike quality, from the sparkling chandeliers to the fur-thick rugs and extraordinarily fluffy cushions on her chairs. She imagined that like the sheets that tucked themselves back in, it was all mostly an illusion, but she enjoyed it just the same.

Padding over the soft floors, she wandered to the Ruscica sitting on her desk. It glowed faintly, full of Fated power. But unless Scarlett appeared with the Fallen Star’s blood, none of that power would be unlocked, and they’d have no way of defeating the Fallen Star. Her mother’s death would go unavenged, Valenda would burn, and Scarlett—

Tella stopped her runaway thoughts before they went too far.

Scarlett might not have appeared with the blood yet, but the night had only just begun. It was too soon to worry. She was probably going to come later, with or without the blood. Scarlett possessed a magical key, and if something had gone wrong, she’d have used it to escape.

Tella ran her fingers over the ancient cover of the Ruscica. She’d never even opened it, and yet she was putting a lot of faith in it. She wished she didn’t need blood to read it. But when she opened the book, her wish didn’t come true. The pages were blank and untouched.

Tella eyed the writing set on her desk. The nib of the glass-tipped pen was sharp enough to draw blood. Jacks had said she needed the Fallen Star’s blood to read his story. But Jacks was rarely entirely honest.

Curious, Tella pricked her finger with the pen nib and let the blood drip into an ink bowl, filling it with red, until there was enough to write inside the magic book.

Tell me a story.

She watched as her blood soaked into the paper and slowly re-formed into a new set of curving words: Welcome to the life of Donatella Dragna.

Not what she’d hoped for. Tella already knew this story, and yet she was curious to read what the book said about her.

A table of contents formed beneath the greeting. She’d have expected it to mark her life in years, but the table favored significant events. They appeared to be listed in order of their occurrence. Some were obvious, like The birth of Donatella Dragna, Donatella and Scarlett’s mother vanishes, and Donatella’s first kiss. But she was surprised by some of the other captions:

Donatella spends a week pretending she’s a mermaid

Donatella steals a goat and names him Cuddles

Donatella steals all her sister’s underclothes

Donatella writes her first letter to Legend

Donatella marries the Prince of Hearts

Tella’s blood ran cold. She looked back over the table of contents, to see if there was anything else that wasn’t true. But none of the other claims were false.

Maybe the book had a sense of humor like the Map of All? Or maybe Jacks had given her a fake map that led to a fake library where she’d gotten this fake book.

She hadn’t married Jacks. Tella wasn’t married. She wasn’t even sure she ever wanted to get married.

According to the table of contents, the event happened right after her mother had died. Tella violently flipped through the book until she found the dreaded chapter in question. She read each word carefully, but there were sections that stood out more than others.

If her heart had not been so heavy with grief and pain, Donatella would have known better than to trust the Prince of Hearts.

If she’d not been burning with despair, she would have realized the danger in repeating magical words as her blood mingled with his.

If she’d not just watched her mother die, she would have known that the Prince of Hearts was not taking her grief away because he cared. The Prince of Hearts did not know how to care. He only knew how to take what he wanted, and he wanted Donatella Dragna.

But poor Donatella was too grief-stricken to see it. When he told her to speak, she repeated his words, creating an immortal bond that would forever tie their souls together in eternal matrimony.

No way in all the hells. Tella didn’t want to believe it. But a part of her felt it. If she was being really honest, she’d felt it since the night it had happened, when she’d decided to lie there with him, to sleep beside him instead of leave. She’d felt it again, when she’d gone back the next day to ask for help. And again, when she’d felt so betrayed and so hurt by him after he had nearly killed her, when all she should have been was angry.

If it had been a human wedding, she’d have just slammed the book shut and pretended it had never happened. But this wasn’t something she could ignore or pretend away.

This was an immortal bond that would tie her soul to Jacks’s forever.