Caraval (Caraval, #1)(7)

Scarlett picked up a piece of sin paper and carefully penned a note.



* * *



I need to see you tonight.

Meet me at Del Ojos Beach.

One hour past midnight.

It’s important.





* * *





Before handing it to a priest with a generous donation, Scarlett addressed the message, but she didn’t sign it. Instead of her name, she drew a heart. She hoped that would be enough.





4

When Scarlett was eight, to keep her from the shore, her father’s guards warned her about the sparkling black sand of Del Ojos Beach. “It’s black because it’s really the burnt remains of pirate skeletons,” they said. And being eight, and slightly more foolish than now, she believed them.

For at least a year she didn’t venture close enough to the beach to even see the sand. Eventually, Felipe, an older son of one of her father’s kinder guards, revealed the truth—the sand was just sand and not the bones of pirates at all. But the lie had already buried itself inside of Scarlett, as lies that children are told often do. It didn’t matter how many other people confirmed the truth. In Scarlett’s mind, the black sand of Del Ojos Beach would always be burnt pirate skeletons.

As she walked there in the night, the speckled blue moon winking eerie light over the unnatural sand, she thought back to that lie; she felt it sneaking into her slippers and moving between her toes as she neared Del Ojos’s rocky black cove. To her right, the beach ended at a jagged, black cliff face. To her left, a broken dock like a massive tongue jutted into the water, past stones that reminded Scarlett of uneven teeth. It was the kind of night where she could smell the moon, thick candle wax dancing with the salty scent of the ocean, full and glowing.

She thought of the mysterious tickets in her pocket as the smoldering moon reminded her of how their metallic scripts blazed earlier that day. For a moment she was tempted to change her mind, give in to her sister, and to the tiny part of her still capable of dreaming.

But she’d done that once before.

Felipe had booked them passage on a schooner.

She and Tella had only made it onto the boat’s plank, and going that far had cost them so much. One of the guards had been especially rough with Tella, knocking her out as he dragged her back to the estate. But Scarlett had stayed conscious as she was pulled off the dock. She was forced to stand on the edges of the rocky beach, where water from glowing blue tide pools sunk into her boots, and she watched as her father took Felipe into the ocean.

She should have been the one to drown that night. She should have been the one whose head her father held under the water. Held until her limbs stopped thrashing and her body went as still and lifeless as the seaweed that washed onto the shore. Later people believed Felipe had drowned accidentally; only Scarlett knew the truth.

“If you ever do something like this again, your sister will suffer the same fate,” her father warned.

Scarlett never told a soul. She guarded Tella by letting her believe she’d just become extremely overprotective. Scarlett was the only one who knew they could never safely leave Trisda unless she had a husband who could ferry them away.

Waves clapped against the shore, muffling the sound of footsteps, but Scarlett heard them.

“You were not the sister I was expecting.” Julian strolled closer. In the dark he looked more like a pirate than an ordinary sailor, and he moved with the practiced ease of someone Scarlett felt it would be unwise to trust. The night dyed his long coat an inky black, while shadows lined his cheekbones, turning them sharp as two knife-edges.

Scarlett now debated how wise it was to risk sneaking off the estate to meet this boy so late at night on such a secluded strip of beach. This was the sort of wild, reckless behavior she was always warning Tella about.

“I’m guessing you’ve changed your mind about my offer?” he asked.

“No, but I have a counteroffer for you.” Scarlett tried to sound bold as she pulled out the elegant tickets from Caraval Master Legend. Her fingers did not want to release them, but she had to do this for Tella. When Scarlett had gone back to her own room earlier that evening, it had been ransacked. It was such a disaster, Scarlett hadn’t been able to discern exactly what her sister had made off with, but Tella had obviously been thieving things to prepare for this ill-fated voyage.

Scarlett thrust her tickets toward Julian. “You can have all three. Use them or sell them, as long as you leave here early, and without Donatella.”

“Ah, so it’s a bribe.”

Scarlett didn’t like that word. She associated it too much with her father. But when it came to Tella, she’d do whatever she had to, even if it meant giving up the last thing she still dreamed about. “My sister is impulsive. She wants to leave with you, but she has no idea how dangerous it is. If our father catches her, he will do far worse than he did today.”

“But she’ll be safe if she stays here?” Julian’s voice was low, slightly mocking.

“When I get married I plan to take her with me.”

“But does she want to go with you?”

“She’ll thank me for it later.”

Julian bared a wolfish smile, the whites of his teeth shining in the moonlight. “You know, that’s exactly what your sister said to me earlier.”