Finale (Caraval #3)(75)
“Did you really think I’d keep it?” He dragged her hand up to his mouth and brushed a kiss to her knuckles. “You don’t have to be jealous of the tattoo anymore.”
“I wasn’t jealous.”
“Then maybe I should have left it on longer.” The rose reappeared on the back of his hand.
“You’re wretched.” Tella lifted her free hand to playfully smack him with her book.
He caught her wrist before she could, and then he took her other hand and trapped them both behind her. They’d finally reached the porch of his cottage, and in one quick move he spun her around and pressed her back to the door. “I think you like me because I’m terrible.”
“No.” Tella wiggled against him, but he didn’t budge. “I’ve decided I like nice boys, like Caspar.”
“Lucky for me he doesn’t like girls that way. And I can also be nice. But I think you like it when I’m not.”
He freed her wrist and wrapped his hands around her hips. Tella’s heart raced as his fingers spread out, claiming her as he drew her closer.
Maybe one more kiss wouldn’t hurt.
Waves crashed against the nearby coast, filling the air with salt and damp, while Legend continued leaning—
The door behind her opened wide.
Tella stumbled backward, and she might have fallen if not for Legend’s arms tightening around her.
“Sorry about that.” Julian ran a hand through his hair, looking mildly embarrassed, though she sensed he actually wasn’t. There was something hard in his eyes that wasn’t normally there. And was it Tella’s imagination, or was he refusing to look at her?
He’d promised Legend he’d stay away from the Menagerie, where Scarlett was being kept, but knowing Julian, he was finding ways to meet with Jovan, who was supposed to be watching her sister.
“Is Scarlett all right?” Tella asked.
Julian finally looked at her, and he even managed to smile. But Tella couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. “I just need to talk to my brother.”
Legend’s arms slowly left her waist. “I’ll find you when we’re done,” he whispered.
Tella stepped inside the house and shut the door behind her. But she couldn’t bring herself to go up the curving wooden staircase to her bedroom just yet. If Julian was lying and Scarlett wasn’t all right—if she’d been hurt trying to get Gavriel’s blood, or if she wasn’t able to get it at all—Tella didn’t want to be protected from the information.
She stood close to the door, hands pressed against the warm wood, but there was only silence, save for the ocean waves. Wondering if the brothers were giving her a chance to walk out of earshot, she took a few noisy steps from the door and quickly tiptoed back in time to hear Julian say, “What are you doing with Tella?”
She jolted at the sound of her name, her alarm taking a new direction as she moved closer and peered through the door’s spy-hole.
Legend’s response was too low for her to hear, but she could see his expression. His dark brows slashed down and the look in his eyes shuttered.
“I know you don’t love her,” Julian said.
Tella staggered back a step. She already knew Legend didn’t love her, but the way Julian said the words made it sound so much worse. It didn’t matter that his voice was soft. The words were like a period at the end of a sentence, small but absolute in their power.
“If you care about her at all, then you should let her go rather than try to change her.”
Silence.
Tella dared to look through the spy-hole once more. The sun was almost set. Night was taking over the sky as Legend looked down on his brother with something like an accusation. “That’s her choice to make, not yours. Although you didn’t object when I told you that a blood oath could make you ageless.”
“And I hate myself for it sometimes.” Julian’s voice turned harsh. “I hate not just watching you lose yourself piece by piece, but benefitting from it. Then I saw you with Tella. I thought, maybe after you saved her from the deck, you would change.”
Tella held her breath, but nothing about Legend changed.
He looked like the Legend who’d left her on those steps in front of the Temple of the Stars—closed off and cold and utterly unreachable. “If I’d changed, I’d be dead.”
“You don’t know that,” Julian argued. “Maybe you would have just done things differently. You’re careless with your life. You take chances because you know you can’t die. That’s fine if that’s how you want to live, but don’t be careless with her life.” He looked up at his brother, brown hair sheltering eyes that appeared to be waging a battle between abandon and hope. “Do you remember what the game was like when it first began?”
“I try not to.”
“You should, it was fun.”
“It was barely a traveling carnival,” Legend mumbled.
Julian smiled, as if hope had just won. “It was. But it still inspired people to dream and believe in magic. It made me believe in magic.”
Legend eyed his brother as if he’d lost his mind. “You know magic is real.”
“Just because something is real doesn’t mean you believe in it. The Fates are real, but I don’t put my faith in them. I used to put my faith in you, and I want to do it again. I know you can be better than this.”