Finale (Caraval #3)(48)
Someone had a very twisted sense of decoration.
Her stomach churned as she reached the floor-to-ceiling windows and swiftly pulled back the curtains.
More endless arches and arcades of gold and white. Scarlett wasn’t certain where she was, but she wasn’t on a boat at the docks or on the ocean. It looked as if she’d traveled back in time to before Valenda’s ruins had been ruins.
Scarlett turned and ran, her feet bounding over fluffy cream carpets, to search for a door. The Reverie Key still rested in her pocket; all she needed to find was a lock. But the only thing she found was a veil of pink curtains, barely thicker than the gauzy sheets on her bed.
Scarlett tore them apart and barreled into a sitting room full of more frescoes. But it was the gilded cage that gave her pause. It took up almost half the room. On the other side of the cage was a door. But inside the cage was a young woman in a lavender gown, sitting on a swing like a pet bird.
Scarlett could have darted past her. The captive woman’s head was gently bowed and her eyes were closed, as if she’d just rocked herself to sleep. If Scarlett were quiet, she wouldn’t even wake her. But she couldn’t escape and leave another girl captive.
Scarlett took a cautious step closer.
There were no ill colors swirling around the captive young woman, but Scarlett felt a wave of uncertainty as she approached. There was something very familiar about all of this, but her head was still too muddled from the drugs to untangle what it could be.
The gleaming lock on the cage’s golden door was larger than Scarlett’s fist. She reached toward her pocket, wondering if it would open with the Reverie Key, but her dress closed the pocket before her fingers could reach in. At the same exact moment, the captive woman’s head shot up, revealing alert lavender eyes the same color as her dress.
“Aren’t you precious?” Her voice was scratchy as if she’d not spoken for a long time. “Sadly, you cannot free me, little human. Only his true death will allow me to leave this cage.”
“But I can never truly die,” said a new voice.
Scarlett spun to her side.
For a moment she thought she was looking at an angel. The broad man before her was dressed in the purest white and surrounded by sparks that made her think the air around him was a breath away from catching fire.
Scarlett swore the gilded cage beside her looked duller now that he stood near it. His olive skin glowed and his thick brown hair had strands of gold that matched his brilliant eyes. He was clearly not human.
“Hello, Scarlett.” The man before her curved his mouth slowly. It might have been a convincing smile except for his golden eyes, which twinkled and crinkled at the corners a second too late, as if he needed to remind himself that a smile was supposed to touch his entire face. “You look exactly like your mother. But she would never have paused to free Anissa if she thought she could have escaped. Paradise was ruthless.”
He said the word ruthless the way someone else might have said the word beautiful. His smile even reached his eyes this time, making them glitter like stolen stars; they shined brighter than the sparks around him, which warmed the room like genuine flames. Instantly Scarlett knew exactly who the immortal before her was—the Fallen Star. The Fate who’d murdered her mother in front of Tella.
Scarlett faltered backward, shoulders slamming into the cage. She didn’t know what the Fallen Star wanted with her, but she didn’t want to find out. She tried to dart past him toward the door.
“That would be a mistake.” His hand fell on Scarlett’s shoulder, heavy and strong enough to crush her entire arm with one squeeze.
“Gavriel, be a little gentle or you’ll break her,” said the woman in the cage.
The Fallen Star relaxed his hand but didn’t let go. “I don’t wish to hurt you. I’ve brought you to the Menagerie for your protection.”
The only thing Scarlett needed protection from was him. But saying that was probably a terrible idea. She tried to focus on what he’d just told her. When she got out of there—because she was going to get out—she wanted to be able to tell the others exactly where she’d been. “Isn’t the Menagerie one of the Fated places?”
She hadn’t studied the Fated places as much as the Fated immortals, but she recalled the Menagerie was some kind of zoo full of magical chimeras and humans with animal parts, which explained all the disturbing frescoes, and the woman in the cage beside her.
Scarlett wondered if captivity was what he had planned for her as well. Her swirling thoughts couldn’t recall much about the Fallen Star, other than that he’d made all the Fates, and he’d killed her mother. Maybe he also collected women like pets and Scarlett was his next acquisition.
“I think you’re still scaring her,” chimed the young woman in the cage.
“You don’t need to fear me, auhtara.” His grip on her shoulder relaxed a little more as he used that foreign word again. Scarlett was familiar with languages, but it was like nothing she’d ever heard.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”
His teeth flashed with another attempt at a smile that was everything it wasn’t supposed to be. “It’s my native tongue, for ‘daughter.’”
The ornate room spun around Scarlett. She didn’t know if he was trying to frighten or surprise her. She wanted to hope it was a twisted joke. But she doubted this immortal was capable of kidding. He was the monster that other monsters measured themselves against. If what he said was true, Scarlett wasn’t entirely sure what that made her, but she didn’t even want to know.