Caraval (Caraval, #1)(37)

When Nigel said, Follow the boy with a heart made of black, her first thought was of Julian, selfish and deceitful. Scarlett could easily imagine his heart to be black.

Unfortunately, she could see no sign of the devious sailor, or the jade kissing tent where he told her to meet him. She saw a furry clover-green tent and a shimmery emerald-green one, but no jade-green anything.

Scarlett felt as if the isle was playing with her.

She crossed over to the emerald tent. Bottles covered every surface: floor, walls, the beams holding up the ceiling. Glass tinkled like fairy dust as she peered inside.

Aside from the female proprietor, the only other people in the tent were a pair of giddy young women. Both hovered in front of a locked glass box full of black bottles with ruby-red labels.

“Maybe if we get to that girl first and find Legend we can slip him some of this,” said one young woman to the other.

“They’re talking about my romance tonic,” said the proprietor. She stepped in front of Scarlett, greeting her with a spritz of something minty. “But I imagine that’s not what you’re here for. Are you looking for a new scent? We have oils that attract and perfumes that repel.”

“Oh, no, thank you.” Scarlett stepped back before the woman could spray her again. “What was in that bottle?”

“Just my way of saying hello.”

Scarlett doubted that. She turned to leave, yet something pulled her back into the tent, a voiceless call, drawing her to a crude bookshelf in the rear. Piled with burnt-orange apothecary bottles and vials, labeled with things like Tincture of Forgetting and Extract of Lost Tomorrows.

A voice in Scarlett’s head said she was wasting time—she needed to find Julian and follow his black heart. She started to turn to leave once more, but a celestial-blue ampoule on a high shelf caught her eye. Elixir of Protection.

For a second Scarlett swore the blue liquid inside pulsed like a heartbeat.

The tent’s proprietor retrieved it and handed it to Scarlett. “Do you have enemies?”

“No, just curious,” Scarlett hedged.

The woman’s eyes were bottle green, an intense concentration of color, and their crinkled edges said, I do not believe you. Yet she kindly pretended otherwise. “If someone is about to cause you harm,” she went on coolly, “this will stop them. All you need to do is spray a bit on their face.”

“Like you did to me?” Scarlett asked.

“My perfume merely opened your eyes so you would see what you might need.”

Scarlett rolled the tiny jar in her palm, barely larger than a vial, yet heavy. She imagined the solidly reassuring weight of it in her pocket. “What will this cost me?”

“For you?” The woman looked Scarlett over carefully, taking in her posture, the way she curled into herself or refused to have her back fully to the tent’s opening. “Tell me who you fear the most.”

Scarlett hesitated. Julian had warned her about giving her secrets away too freely. He’d also told her that to win and find her sister she needed to be a little merciless. She imagined this potion could be ruthless, although that wasn’t the entire reason Scarlett pushed out the words in one quick breath. “Marcello Dragna.”

With the name came a fearful rush of anise and lavender and something akin to rotted plums. Scarlett looked around the tent, making sure her father wasn’t standing at the mouth of it.

“This elixir can be used on a person only once,” warned the woman, “and the effects wear off after two hours.”

“Thank you.” As soon as Scarlett said the words, she thought she glimpsed Julian just beyond the border of the adjacent tent. A blur of dark hair and stealthy movements. She swore he looked right at her, but then he continued in the opposite direction.

Scarlett followed hastily, dashing to the cool edge of the courtyard, where the colorful pavilions no longer grew. But Julian disappeared again. He slipped under the arch to her left.

“Julian!” Scarlett crossed beneath the same shadowed arc, trailing a narrow path that led into a dreary garden. But there was no glimpse of Julian’s dark hair behind any of its cracked statues. No sight of his sharp movements near any of its dying plants. He’d vanished, just like all the colors had seemed to fade from the garden, leaving it bleached out and unlovely.

Scarlett searched for another archway Julian might have used to exit, but the small park dead-ended at a shabby fountain spitting out bits of bubbling brown water into a dirty basin containing a few pathetic coins and a glass button. The saddest wishing well Scarlett had ever seen.

It made no sense. Julian’s disappearance, or this neglected plot of earth, left to die in the midst of a domain so carefully cultivated. Even the air felt off. Fetid and stagnant.

Scarlett could almost feel the sadness of the fountain infecting her, turning her discouragement into the type of dreary yellow hopelessness that choked out life. She wondered if that’s what had happened to the plants. She knew how crippling bleakness could feel. If not for Scarlett’s determination to protect her sister at all costs, she might have given up long ago.

She probably should have. What was that saying, No love ever goes unpunished? In many ways, loving Tella was a source of constant pain. No matter how hard Scarlett tried to care for her sister, it was never enough to fill the hole their mother had left. And it wasn’t as if Tella really loved Scarlett back. If she did, she wouldn’t have risked everything Scarlett wanted by dragging her to this miserable game against her will. Tella never thought things through. She was selfish and reckless and—