Finale (Caraval, 3)

The Fallen Star dropped the woman’s broken body, letting it fall to the floor with an ugly thud.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.” He stepped over the body to reach Scarlett, and only then did his mouth fall into an impeccable frown. “It seems you’re still not quite there, but I’m glad you’re finally making progress.” His fingers ignited. He brought one to the ruby bars imprisoning her head. At once the entire cage sparked and vanished, freeing Scarlett’s head and neck.

Her shoulders sagged, finally rid of the weight of the cage. Her head had never felt so light. But she couldn’t bring herself to thank him. After the initial relief passed, all she could do was stare at the dead woman on the floor. “Was that really necessary?”

“Don’t feel bad about her death. Long ago she betrayed me. I was always going to kill her. I almost killed her when I found her imprisoned by the Temple of the Stars, but I thought she might be useful first.”

He reached out to smooth a damp lock of Scarlett’s hair from her cheek, his touch surprisingly light.

Scarlett still wanted to pull away; she wanted to use the Reverie Key and finally flee. She’d failed at getting the blood; she’d failed at conquering her power. But, as the Fallen Star continued to push away the hair stuck to her face with something like affection, Scarlett flashed back to the first time they’d met and how he’d mentioned the striking resemblance she’d had to her mother—the woman he’d made a child with, the woman he’d killed, and, according to a note that Tella had sent, also the one woman the Fallen Star had loved.

Maybe Scarlett had been going about this entirely wrong. Maybe she didn’t need to conquer her powers to make him love her. Maybe Scarlett could bring back the feelings of love Gavriel had had for her mother and make him human long enough to kill him.

She took a shuddering breath at the thought. She didn’t want to use real love as a weapon, or to murder or kill. But love was the only weapon Scarlett had. And this wasn’t just about her. This was about the woman lying dead on the floor, and all the people across Valenda and the entire Meridian Empire who would suffer if she did not stop Gavriel.

“How did you meet my mother?” Scarlett asked softly.

His hand stilled against her hair.

The question instantly felt like a mistake, but Scarlett pressed on. “My other father—”

The hand on her hair dropped away entirely and the peaceful peach colors that had briefly surrounded him darkened to an orange on the verge of catching fire.

But at least she was still getting him to feel. Apathy was the opposite of love, so even though she was clearly taking his emotions in the wrong direction, at least she was taking them somewhere. She just needed to do a better job guiding his feelings so that he felt what she wanted him to.

“I meant to say, the man who raised me,” Scarlett corrected. “Although, he wanted nothing to do with me until I became old enough to marry off. I hate him.”

The Fallen Star’s eyes sparked with a little more interest. Hate was an emotion he understood. But Scarlett would have to be careful, or he would latch on to it instead of love.

“I don’t want to hate you, too. But you keep frightening me,” she said. “And I don’t believe that makes me weak, I think it makes me smart. I’m grateful you took the cage off, but if you want me to keep working to unlock my powers, you need to give me a reason to trust you. Clearly, my mother had a relationship with you. Or, she slept with you at least once.”

His nostrils flared. Scarlett was dancing on a knife’s edge. “Our relationship was more than that.”

“Then tell me about it,” Scarlett said.

“I think I’d like to hear this story, too,” chimed Anissa.

Flames licked the bars of her cage as Gavriel shot her a glare.

“You’re being scary again,” Scarlett said.

“I am scary. But I do not wish to scare you.”

The corpse on the floor gave Scarlett a different impression, but she didn’t want to argue with him. Not when he was motioning for her to follow him out of the room and into the halls.

He rarely let her leave her rooms.

Everything was monstrously large and tinted with magic, making Scarlett even more aware of her fragile humanity, as they passed ancient pillars that were as thick as small cottages and frescoes covered in chimeras and human-animal hybrids. As one of the Fated places, the Menagerie’s appearance had been restored once the Fates who’d been trapped in the cards had woken up. But Fated places required blood and tithe sacrifices to become fully alive, so thankfully the creatures in the paintings weren’t real. Even so, Scarlett swore their eyes watched and their ears listened when the Fallen Star finally spoke.

“Paradise was the boldest thief I ever met. There was nothing she was afraid to steal. She loved the thrill and the danger and the risks. I think that’s why she was attracted to me.”

“Why were you attracted to her?” Scarlett asked.

“It started when she threatened to kill me.”

Scarlett wanted to think he was joking, but he appeared entirely serious. “Before we met, Paradise was hired by the Church of the Fallen Star.” His rich voice swelled with pride and Scarlett filled with dread.

She had heard of the Temple of the Stars, but she’d not known there was a church dedicated solely to the Fallen Star. Although she shouldn’t have been surprised. The Temple District had everything, including a Church of Legend, which no longer sounded strange in comparison to the way Gavriel described his house of worship.

“The Church of the Fallen Star wanted her to steal a Deck of Destiny from Empress Elantine. Others had tried before, but all of them had been caught and killed for their failure—my church didn’t want anyone to know they wanted this particular Deck of Destiny, because it was the deck imprisoning me and all the other Fates. Eventually they recruited Paradise. By then word had spread of the job’s deadly reputation. But Paradise wasn’t afraid to accept it. And unlike everyone who went before her, she succeeded in stealing the cards.”

His mouth curved into a smile so small Scarlett doubted he was even aware of it. He really had admired her mother.

“Paradise didn’t trust my church not to betray her. So, she only brought them one card—the card that happened to imprison me. She said the rest of the deck was hidden somewhere safe and that she’d share its location after her payment was delivered. She’d planned on fleeing the city. But things didn’t go as she planned.

“The Church of the Fallen Star first formed in order to track down this Deck of Destiny and set me and the other Fates free. Before paying Paradise, they had to make sure the cards were authentic, so a member of their congregation sacrificed himself to release me.”

Just the word sacrifice made Scarlett want to cringe, but the Fallen Star’s smile twitched wider, the way someone else might at a fond memory. If he was actually trying not to frighten her with this story, he was doing a wretched job.

“As soon as I was released, I went after Paradise to find the Deck of Destiny and free all of my Fates. But she no longer had the deck. While my church had been releasing me, Paradise and her lover had used the deck to read their futures, and they’d seen the magic in the cards. Paradise still didn’t know exactly what the cards were, but she was clever enough to recognize that they were worth far more than my church was offering. She had planned to ask for a larger sum. Only when she woke the next morning, her lover had taken the cards and vanished. I found her tied to a bed. She had no idea who or what I was when I arrived. She threatened to kill me if I didn’t untie her, and I was instantly intrigued.”

His voice turned wistful as if he were reaching the romantic part of the story, and yet the fiery colors around him where growing rabid, licking at the steps, clawing at his cape, and making Scarlett nervous that her plan was not going to work the way she wanted.

“We started as reluctant allies. The world had changed so much since I’d been trapped that I was in need of help to locate the Deck of Destiny, and she needed someone to protect her from my church. Neither of us wanted the other to know how intrigued we were with each other. I didn’t admit to myself what I truly felt for her until the day she told me she was pregnant with you.”

This was the part where Scarlett would have expected him to look her way. And he did. But it would have been better if he had not. There was something almost savage in his golden eyes—they held all the violence of hate mixed with the passion of love, as if all of this had happened yesterday rather than eighteen years ago.

“I was going to make Paradise an immortal after she gave birth. But before I could tell her who I was, she found out on her own and chose to turn on me. She had located the complete Deck of Destiny and instead of sharing it with me, she put me back inside one of the cards. I wanted to spend eternity with her, and she betrayed me.”

The Fallen Star stopped abruptly, pausing on a landing that overlooked a glistening white canyon. He’d never taken Scarlett here before, but she recognized the cracked wheels of death scattered around the edge, and the river of red cutting through it. This was the place Tella had described when she’d told Scarlett how he’d murdered their mother.

Scarlett took a step back.

He immediately grabbed her arm. “I’m not going to harm you—I need you, and this is why.” He squeezed until it hurt. “Paradise took the strongest feelings I’d ever had and used them against me. If I’d loved her she could have killed me. Love is the one weakness I’ve never been able to defeat. Humans try to make it sound as if it’s a gift. But once they find love, it never lasts, it only destroys, and for us it brings eternal death. But I believe that once you conquer your powers, you can permanently take away this fault that would allow me to return human love.”