Finale (Caraval #3)(16)

“Who’s capable of a prank like this?”

“The Prince of Hearts can stop hearts,” Julian hazarded.

“But their hearts are still beating.” Scarlett hadn’t been the one to touch their pulses, but she imagined they were pounding. Hers was. She could feel her heart racing as the plumes of purple panic coming from the family began to curl like smoke from a growing fire.

“I think we should do what it asks, and confess our last lies out loud,” Scarlett said. “Even if we go back to town and find an open apothecary, I have a feeling they won’t be able to fix this.” And Scarlett couldn’t leave these people like this.

Julian shook his head as he looked over the frozen family once more. “I should have gone along with the lie and said I was your cousin.”

“Why do you say that?” Scarlett asked.

“Because the last lie I told was to you.” Julian tore a hand through his hair and when he looked back at her again, it hung over nervous and regretful eyes.

An awful sinking feeling turned inside of Scarlett. His lies had torn them apart before. Lying was the habit Julian couldn’t seem to break, perhaps from being a part of Caraval for so long. But with all his honesty today, she’d started to hope that he had changed. But maybe she’d been wrong.

“I’m sorry, Crimson. I lied when I said I left for five weeks to give you space. I left because I was angry you wanted to meet the count, and I thought leaving would make you want me more.”

It did. It made her want him—and hate him, and just then it almost made her want to laugh. It always hurt when Julian lied because it made her believe that his lies meant he didn’t care. But everything he’d done today proved that he still cared. And she couldn’t get mad at him for manipulating her, when she’d done the same thing to him.

“You’re terrible,” she said. “But I’m terrible, too. I don’t really think the courtship game between you and Nicolas will be fun. The more I think about it, the more nervous I get. I only did it to test you and get back at you for leaving.”

Julian’s grin immediately returned. “Does that mean you’re going to call it off?”

Someone coughed at the other side of the table. Choking, sputtering, wheezing, and the crashing of dropped goblets followed, as the family began to move again.

“Oh, thank you!”

“Bless you!”

“You saved us!”

Scarlett and Julian were immediately enclosed in one family-size hug as the small clan poured out their gratitude. Their bodies were shaking and warm from the sun, and the youngest girl with the braids might have hugged Julian a little longer than everyone else, forming an instant crush on him.

“I thought for certain we were going to stay like that forever,” said the stout woman who Scarlett assumed was the mother.

“People passed by, but no one stopped,” said one of the sons.

“Can you tell us anything about who did this to you?” asked Julian.

“Oh, yes,” everyone said at once. And then all their strained faces went blank.

“Well, the person was…”

“I think…”

Several of them tried to answer the question, but none of them managed it, as if their memories had been stolen.

Scarlett debated voicing what she’d whispered to Julian, about the possibility that the Fates were waking up and Poison was actually the Poisoner, but this family had been through enough. They didn’t need to be terrified by Scarlett’s suspicions.

“We’d ask you to stay and dine with us,” said the fatherly looking man. “But I don’t think any of us will be eating after this.”

“That’s all right,” Scarlett said. “We’re just glad we could help.”

She and Julian let everyone embrace them once again before they returned to the carriage. If this scene really was the work of a Fate, they needed to warn—

“Wait!” cried the youngest girl with the braids. She tore across the grass. Scarlett thought she may have come to give Julian a kiss good-bye, but she ran up to Scarlett instead. “I want to give you a gift for stopping to help us.” The girl solemnly reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out an ugly key covered in greenish-white rust and scratches, the color of buried secrets that should not have been dug up.

“That’s all right,” Scarlett said. “You keep it.”

“No,” the girl insisted. “There’s more to this key than just how it looks. It’s like how my family was when you drove by. I don’t know what it does, but I found it this morning, on the edge of the well. One moment, nothing was there, and then it appeared. I think it’s magic, and I want you to have it, because I think you’re magical too.”

The girl handed her the gift.

Scarlett might have teared up, this child was so precious.

“Thank you.” She enclosed the key in her palm.

It wasn’t until after Scarlett stepped into the carriage and looked at it again that she noticed the object had transformed from an aged piece of rust to a crystalline key that glittered like stardust and bewitchment.





10





Donatella


Tella’s limbs were shaking and her eyes were bleary by the time she neared the boardinghouse. Slipping between worlds had left her feeling like a damp sheet of paper that had been wrung out by rough hands.