Finale (Caraval #3)(5)
“I’ll be back before you need to leave,” Tella said. “I know how important this afternoon is for you. But I need to go out.”
Tella wanted to leave it at that. Scarlett didn’t understand Tella’s relationship with Legend, which was admittedly complicated. Sometimes Legend felt like her enemy, sometimes he felt like her friend, sometimes he felt like someone she used to love, and every once in a while, he felt like someone she still loved. But to Scarlett, Legend was a game master, a liar, and a young man who played with people the way gamblers played with cards. Scarlett didn’t know that Legend visited Tella in dreams every night, she only knew that he showed up sometimes. And she believed that the version of him Tella kept meeting was not the genuine Legend because he only visited in dreams.
Tella didn’t believe Legend was still acting with her. But she knew there were things he wasn’t telling her. Although Legend did ask the same question each night, that question had started to feel like just an excuse to come and see her—a distraction to hide the real reason he only appeared in her dreams. Unfortunately, Tella still wasn’t sure if he visited because he truly cared for her, or because he was playing yet another game with her.
Scarlett would be upset to learn that he’d been showing up in her dreams every night. But Tella owed her sister the truth. Scarlett had been waiting weeks for this day; she needed to know why Tella was suddenly running out.
“I have to go to the palace,” Tella said in a rush. “I think something has happened to Legend.”
Scarlett’s dress turned an even darker shade of purple. “Don’t you think we’d have heard rumors if anything happened to the next emperor?”
“I don’t know, I only know he didn’t visit me in my dream last night.”
Scarlett pursed her lips. “That doesn’t mean he’s in danger. He’s an immortal.”
“Something’s wrong,” Tella insisted. “He’s never not shown up.”
“But I thought he only visited—”
“I might have lied,” Tella interrupted. She didn’t have time for a lecture. “I’m sorry, Scar, but I knew you’d be unhappy. Please, don’t try to stop me. I’m not objecting to your meeting with Nicolas today.”
“Nicolas has never hurt me,” Scarlett said. “Unlike Legend, he’s always been kind, and I’ve been waiting months to finally meet him.”
“I know, and I promise I’ll be back to watch Mother before you leave at two o’clock.”
Just then the clock chimed eleven, giving Tella exactly three hours. She had to leave now.
Tella wrapped her arms around Scarlett and pulled her into a hug. “Thank you for understanding.”
“I didn’t say I understood,” Scarlett said, but she was hugging her sister back.
As soon as she pulled away, Tella picked up a pair of slippers that laced up to her ankles and then padded across the faded carpet into her mother’s room.
She pressed a kiss to Paloma’s cool forehead. Tella didn’t leave her mother very often. Since they’d moved out of the palace, she’d tried to stay by her mother’s side. Tella wanted to be there when her mother woke up. She wanted to be the first face her mother saw. She hadn’t forgotten the way Paloma had betrayed her to the Temple of the Stars, but rather than choosing to remain angry, she was choosing to believe there was an explanation, and she’d learn it when her mother woke from her enchanted sleep. “I love you and I’ll be back very soon.”
* * *
Tella considered getting herself arrested.
She didn’t want to get arrested, but it might have been the quickest route to the palace. Too many visitors, from all over the empire, had descended on Valenda for the Sun Festival. They overflowed the sky carriage lines and clogged the streets and sidewalks, forcing Tella to take a longer route to the palace, and to skirt the delta that led out toward the ocean.
The Sun Festival took place every year on the first day of the Hot Season. But this year was especially rowdy, since it also marked an end to the Days of Mourning and the countdown to Legend’s coronation, which would take place in ten days—though only Scarlett, Tella, and Legend’s performers knew him as Legend. The rest of the empire knew him as Dante Thiago Alejandro Marrero Santos.
Just thinking the name Dante still hurt a little.
Now, Dante felt more like a character from a story than Legend did. Yet the name always pricked her like a thorn, reminding her how she’d fallen in love with an illusion—and how foolish it would be to completely trust him again. But she still felt compelled to go after him, to ignore the festival and all the excitement buzzing through the streets.
Now that the Days of Mourning were over, the black flags that had haunted the city were finally gone. Dour frocks had been replaced with garments of sky-kissed blue, turmeric orange, and minty green. Color, color everywhere, accompanied by more delicious fragrances—candied citrine, tropical ice, lemon dust. But she didn’t dare stop at any temporary street stalls to buy any treats or imported fizzing ciders.
Tella’s steps quickened and—
She abruptly stopped next to a boarded-up carriage house. Several people rammed into her back, knocking her shoulder against a splintered wood door as she glimpsed a hand with a black rose tattoo. Legend’s tattoo.