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.”

Legend laughed, but it sounded so far from humorous that it made Tella sad, not just for Legend but for all of them. “When did you become such an idealist?”

“When I met a girl who loved her sister so much she was able to wish her back to life. You might possess magic, but love like that is real power.”

“And yet all the love in the world wouldn’t have brought Tella back without my magic.”

“She never would have died without your magic, either.” Julian’s smile disappeared. “Tella would have found another way. She didn’t and doesn’t need you to save her. She needs to save you.”

42

Scarlett

Scarlett stared in the mirror that rested above her marble-pink vanity and tried not to cry at what she saw. Tella wouldn’t have cried. Tella would have willed her pain into power and used it to find a way to fix everything—no matter the cost.

Scarlett could do that, too. She could do it for her sister, for Julian, for everyone in the empire, and for herself. Even if it felt impossible at the moment.

At least her sister and Julian couldn’t see her right now.

Scarlett continued to stare at her new reflection in the mirror, as her thoughts took her back to the night before, after she’d delivered her last note to Tella and Julian, when everything had gone so awry.

Once a day, since Scarlett had first arrived in the Menagerie, the Lady Prisoner’s purple eyes turned milky-white, letting Scarlett know she was glimpsing a fragment of the future as she told Scarlett, The only way to defeat the Fallen Star is to become what he wants most. But all the Fallen Star wanted from Scarlett was for her to conquer her powers, and control the emotions of others. And her original plan had been to do just that—to cultivate her powers to change his feelings and make him love her, so that he would become mortal.

But over the last couple of days the Fallen Star had made it clear that if Scarlett mastered her abilities, it would be the catalyst that would turn her into an immortal Fate.

He’d told her this to encourage her to conquer her powers. But Scarlett knew that once she was an immortal, she would no longer be able to love. Love was such a fundamental part of what drove her, she didn’t even know who she’d be without love. What if it made her like her father, who only wanted power?

So, despite Anissa’s warning, Scarlett had planned to get the blood that Tella and Julian needed for their Fated book.

* * *

“Are you certain you want to go through with this?” asked the Lady Prisoner. “I can’t lie, so if I make a threat, I have to be willing to follow through. And if he catches you, your magical key won’t get you out of one of his cages.”

“I know,” Scarlett said. “But if this works, neither of us will have to worry about being caged at all.” Which was one of the reasons she’d chosen to trust the Fate. Scarlett didn’t believe Anissa’s concern for her was genuine, but she did believe that Anissa wanted out of her cage. “I think this will work, but if you’re having second thoughts—”

“Gavriel and I have had skirmishes like this for decades.” The Lady Prisoner hopped off her perch to move closer to Scarlett. “I can handle whatever he throws my way.”

“So can I,” Scarlett said, feigning confidence she didn’t feel as she dropped the wineglass from her hand, shattering it against the marble floor. Sharp shards of glass landed around her feet while garnet wine spread out, staining the hem of Scarlett’s pink dress as the Lady Prisoner reached through her bars and picked up the largest glass fragment.

A moment later Scarlett cried out, loud enough to alert the guard outside her door. He clattered in an instant later. One look at Scarlett, forced against Anissa’s cage, as Anissa reached through the bars to press a shard of glass against Scarlett’s neck, and a moldy green cloud of fear formed around the guard as he reached for his sword.

“I wouldn’t do that, unless you want me to kill her.” The Lady Prisoner tilted her spike of broken glass to the most defenseless part of Scarlett’s throat.

“Now,” she went on conversationally. “Fetch Gavriel. Tell him what you’ve seen and that if he doesn’t come here right now, I’ll slit his daughter’s throat.”

The guard immediately did as he was told. Like Scarlett, he knew the Lady Prisoner couldn’t lie.

“I hope this works,” the Fate whispered once he left. “I really wouldn’t enjoy killing you.”