“All right.” She lowered her voice. She still didn’t detect any other footsteps, but she wanted to be safe. “It’s a secret because my father’s controlling.”
Julian toyed with the chain of his pocket watch. “What if there was more to it?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I think your father may have actually been trying to protect you. Before you get upset, just hear me out,” he rushed on. “I’m not saying your father is good. From what I’ve seen I’d call him a dirty bastard, but I can understand his reasons to be secretive.”
“Go on,” Scarlett said tightly.
Julian explained what Scarlett already knew, about Legend and her grandmother Annalise. Though Julian’s version of the story was different from her grandmother’s. In his tale, Legend started out with more talent and far more innocence. All he cared about was Annalise. She was the entire reason he transformed into Legend; it had nothing to do with a desire for fame. Then before his first performance, he found her in the arms of another, wealthier man, whom she’d planned to marry all along.
“After that, Legend went a little mad. He vowed to destroy Annalise, by hurting her family the way she’d wounded him. Since Annalise crushed his heart, Legend swore he would do the same to any daughters, or granddaughters, unfortunate enough to be a part of her line. He would ruin their chances at having happy marriages or finding love, and if they went mad in the process, even better.”
Julian tried to say the last part as if he weren’t altogether serious, but Scarlett could still clearly remember her dream. Legend didn’t just make women fall in love, he drove them mad with it, and she had no doubts he was doing the same thing to Tella right now.
“So, when my friends and I learned of your engagement,” Julian went on, “we knew it was only a matter of time before Legend invited you to Caraval so he could break it off.”
Again, he made it sound so much less harmful than it was. But Scarlett’s engagement was her entire future. Without this marriage, she’d be doomed to a life on Trisda with her father.
As the sandy path grew steeper, she struggled to walk up it, thinking back to the foolish letters she’d sent. She’d never signed her full name until the very last one, when she’d written about her wedding—the one Legend had chosen to respond to.
Scarlett could see Julian’s story making sense, but she wondered how a simple sailor would know all this. She narrowed her eyes at the dark-haired boy beside her, and asked the question that had visited her thoughts on more than one occasion. “Who are you really?”
“Let’s just say my family is well connected.” Julian flashed a smile that might have looked charming to some, yet Scarlett could see there was nothing remotely happy about it.
She recalled the gossip she’d overheard in her dream. Julian’s family had turned his sister away after learning of her illicit relationship with Legend. From what Scarlett knew of Julian she couldn’t imagine him to be so judgmental, but he must have felt the guilt all the same. It was an emotion Scarlett was far too familiar with.
For several beats they walked in silence, until she finally gained the courage to say, “It’s not your fault, you know, what happened to your sister.”
For a fragile moment, as thin and long as a stretched-out spiderweb, there was only the waves in the distance, and the crush of Julian’s boots in the sand. Then: “So you don’t blame yourself when your father beats your sister?” His words were whisper-soft, but Scarlett felt each one acutely, reminding her of every time she’d failed Tella.
Julian stopped walking and slowly turned to face her. His steady gaze was even softer than his voice. It reached out to the broken parts of her like a caress. The type of touch that moves through damaged flesh, past fractured bones and into a person’s wounded soul. Scarlett felt her blood go hot as he watched her. She could have been wearing a dress that covered every inch of her skin and she would have still felt exposed to Julian’s eyes. It was as if all her shame, her guilt, the awful secret memories she tried to bury, were laid bare for him to see.
“Your father is the one to blame,” he said. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You don’t know that,” Scarlett argued. “Whenever my father hurts my sister it is because I have done something wrong. Because I failed—”
“Help!” A scream tore through their conversation like a gust of wind. “Please!” A familiar shriek followed.
“Tella?” Scarlett started running, kicking up a flurry of pink sand.
“Don’t!” Julian warned. “That’s not your sister.”
But Scarlett ignored him. She knew her sister’s voice. It sounded only a few feet away; she could feel it vibrating. Louder and louder, it echoed off the sandstone walls until—
“Stop!” Julian’s arm snaked around Scarlett’s waist, pulling her back as the sandy path abruptly ended. A few unfortunate grains skittered off the edge, falling into foamy blue-and-green waters churning more than fifty feet below.
All the air rushed out from Scarlett’s lungs.
Julian’s cheeks were flushed with color, hands shaking as he continued to steady her. “Are you all—”
But the end of his words were sliced off by evil laughter. A sour sound of nightmares and other foul things. It poured out of the walls as pieces of it twisted into tiny mouths.
It was another trick of the maddening tunnels.
“Crimson, we should keep moving.” Julian gently touched the edge of her hip, guiding her back to a safer path, while the tunnels continued cackling, a warped version of her sister’s precious laugh.
For a moment Scarlett had felt so close to finding Tella. But what if she was already too late to save her sister? What if Tella had fallen so madly in love with Legend, given herself to him so completely, that once the game ended she would want her life to end as well? Tella loved danger the same way candlewicks loved to burn. It never seemed to scare her that some of the things she lusted for might consume her like a flame.
As a girl, Scarlett had been drawn to the idea of Legend’s magic. But Tella always wanted to hear about the master of Caraval’s darker side. A part of Scarlett couldn’t deny there was something seductive about winning the heart of someone who’d vowed to never love again.
But Legend wasn’t just jaded; he was demented, adept at making people fall not only in love but also into madness. Who knew what sort of twisted things he was leading Tella to believe? If Julian hadn’t stopped Scarlett just now, she might have run straight off that cliff, and crashed to her death before she even realized her mistake. And Tella leaped forward without thinking far more often than Scarlett.
Tella had been only twelve the first time she’d tried to run off with a boy. Thankfully Scarlett had found her before their father noticed her absence, but ever since then Scarlett had feared that one day her sister would run into trouble that Scarlett could not rescue her from.
Why couldn’t it be enough for him to ruin Scarlett’s engagement?
“We’ll find her,” Julian said. “What happened to Rosa won’t happen to your sister.”
Scarlett wanted to believe him. After everything that had just occurred, she ached to break down and fold into him, to trust him again like before. But the words he meant as reassuring forced to the surface a question she’d been too afraid to think about since he had made his earlier confession as to why he was there.
She peeled away from Julian’s hand, forcing herself to create distance. “Did you know when you brought us to Caraval that Legend would take Tella the way he took your sister?”
Julian hesitated. “I knew there was a chance.”
In other words, yes.
“How much of a chance?” Scarlett choked out.
Julian’s caramel eyes filled with something like regret. “I never said I was a good person, Crimson.”