“If you don’t trust my knowledge of my sister, then you can find someone else to work with.”
“Believe it or not, Crimson, I like working with you. And I think I remember seeing that palace after we caught the boat last night. If you’re right, and the card is the second clue, the palace is where we should look for the third one. When I played before—”
Julian quieted at the sound of boot steps. Heavy. Confident. They stopped just outside the door to Tella’s room.
Scarlett peeked into the hall.
“Why, hello there,” Dante greeted her, with a smile a little too crooked to be perfect. Again he was dressed in all black, matching the darkness of his tattoos, but he seemed to brighten at the sight of Scarlett. “I was just going by to check on you. Did you sleep well in my room?”
Coming from Dante, the words sleep and my room sounded more than a little scandalous.
“Who’s at the door, my love?” Julian moved behind Scarlett. He didn’t actually touch her, but the way he slid close was just as proprietary. She could feel the coolness of his body caressing hers as he placed one hand on the frame and the other on the door right behind her.
Dante’s charming expression vanished. His eyes darted from Scarlett to Julian. He didn’t say a word, but Scarlett could clearly read his hardening face. She felt something shift in Julian as well.
Julian’s chest brushed her back, and when it did, every muscle was hard and rigid, at odds with his careless tone. “Isn’t someone going to introduce me?”
“Julian, this is Dante,” said Scarlett.
Dante stuck out a hand. The one with a rose inked on the back.
“He was kind enough to give up his room for me,” Scarlett explained, “since there was a mix-up involving mine.”
“Well, then it’s very good to meet you.” Julian shook Dante’s hand. “I’m so glad you could help my fiancée. When I heard about what happened I felt sick. I wish she’d come to me.” Julian turned to Scarlett, all false affection and infuriating looks.
She was wrong about him being disturbed. He was enjoying this. Playing the part of concerned fiancé, just to scare away Dante, when really he couldn’t have cared less.
Scarlett looked back up at Dante, hoping to find a good way to explain she hadn’t really lied. But he no longer looked at her, and his handsome face had shifted from upset to a disturbing shade of indifferent, as if she had ceased to exist.
“Come on, love,” Julian whispered. “We should move aside so he can get a look.”
“That’s all right,” Dante said. “I think I’ve seen what I needed.” He took off down the hall without another word.
Scarlett whirled on Julian the moment Dante was out of sight. “I am not your piece of property and I don’t appreciate your acting like it.”
“But you enjoyed the way he was looking at you?” Julian gazed down at Scarlett, blinking thick, dark lashes as he gave her an intentionally lopsided smile. “You think he practices that look in a mirror?”
“Stop it. He didn’t look at me like that. He’s just a nice person. Unlike some people, he was willing to make a sacrifice to help me.”
“He looked as if he was willing to collect on that sacrifice, too.”
“Ugh! Not everyone is like you.” Scarlett marched out the doorway and down the hall, gripping the second clue—Tella’s picture card.
“All I’m saying is, that one’s bad news,” Julian said. “You should stay away from him.”
Scarlett stopped at the top of the stairs, squaring her shoulders as she turned to Julian, clearly recalling the hungry look on his face when she’d caught him in the barrel room with Tella. “As if you’re any better.”
“I’m not saying I’m a good man,” Julian said. “But I don’t want any of the things from you that bloke does. If I did, I’d tell you to stay away from me too. He won Caraval last time I played. Remember what I said about this game costing people? Even winning comes with a price, and his triumph cost him, a lot. My bet is he’ll do anything to win the wish and try to get back everything he lost. If you think my moral compass is damaged, his doesn’t exist.”
*
“Oh, if it isn’t the happy couple!” The pretty dark-skinned girl clapped excitedly as Scarlett and Julian climbed into her boat.
The last thing Scarlett felt like doing was pretending to be Julian’s blissful bride-to-be, but she managed to add some sugar to her voice. “Weren’t you on a unicycle last night?”
“Oh, I do lots of things,” the girl said proudly.
Scarlett remembered Julian’s warning about her, but as the girl started to row, it was difficult to think she was made of anything other than genuine cheer. Much friendlier than the sailor girl from the night before.
Perhaps Julian just didn’t like anyone who seemed pleasant.
Although, he was now amiable enough to this girl; after flashing her the picture card with their destination, he inquired after her name.
“Jovan, but people call me Jo,” said the girl. As she rowed, Julian asked more questions and laughed at her jokes. Scarlett was impressed with how polite he could be when he wanted, though she imagined most of it was just to get information. Jovan pointed out all sorts of sights. The canals were circular, like a long apple peel spread out around curving lantern-lit streets, full of pubs piping russet smoke, bakeries shaped like cupcakes, and shops wrapped in colors like birthday presents. Cerulean blue. Apricot orange. Saffron yellow. Primrose pink.
While the canals remained midnight dark, glass lanterns lined the edges of each building, emphasizing the brilliant colors as people bustled in and out. Scarlett thought it looked like a sort of jolly dance to the various kinds of music that played. Harps, bagpipes, violins, flutes, and cellos. Each canal had a different instrumental heartbeat.
“There’s a lot to see here,” said Jovan. “If you’re willing to pay and you look hard enough, you’ll find things on the isle you won’t come across anywhere else—some people just come here to hunt through shops and don’t even bother playing the game.”
Jovan continued chattering, but her words were lost as Scarlett spied what seemed to be a commotion on the corner of one street. It looked as if a woman was being dragged out from a shop, forcibly. Scarlett heard a cry, then all she could see was a cluster of people pulling at the woman, made of thrashing arms and kicking legs.
“What’s going on over there?” Scarlett pointed. But by the time Jovan and Julian looked, someone on the street had snuffed out all the nearby lanterns, concealing whatever Scarlett had witnessed in a curtain made of night.
“What did you see?” Julian asked.
“There was a woman, in a dove-gray dress, and she was being dragged out of a shop.”
“Oh, that was probably just a street show,” Jovan said merrily. “Sometimes performers do that to spice things up for the folks who are just observing—probably made it seem as if she’d stolen something or was going mad. I’m sure you’ll see more like that as the game goes on.”
Scarlett almost whispered to Julian that it looked very real, but hadn’t she been warned about that when she’d first entered the game?
Jovan clapped again as she stopped rowing. “Now here we are. The palace on the card. Otherwise known as Castillo Maldito.”
For a moment Scarlett forgot about the woman. Lines of gleaming sand stretched up into a palace shaped like a colossal birdcage, covered in curved bridges, horseshoe-shaped arches, and rounded domes, all dusted with gold-like flecks of fallen sunshine. The picture card had not done this place justice. Rather than being lit by candles, the structure itself glowed. It filled everything with light, making it brighter there than everywhere else, as if they’d found a spot of land that managed to bottle streams of daylight.
“What do we owe you for the ride?” Julian asked.