Tella knew Jacks was real. But it was madness to start believing the game was real as well.

Tella slid her wrist from Dante’s grip. “Thank you for that interesting history.”

“Wait, before you—”

Dante cut off.

Tella tensed, afraid she’d started bleeding again, but Dante’s eyes weren’t on her. She looked over her shoulder, to where his gaze had abruptly gone. She thought she saw Jovan. Only instead of being dressed like Jester Mad, as she had been last night, she was cloaked in a robe. It whipped around her ankles as she scurried away.

Dante turned back to Tella, quickly reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a pair of black elbow-length gloves. “If you won’t accept my help, at least take these.” He pressed on one of the pearl buttons lining the gloves.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Five knife-sharp razors shot out from the fingertips.

“You’re giving me gloves with razor blades?”

Tella felt suddenly relieved Dante’s fingers were no longer on her rapidly heating skin, as Scarlett’s words rushed back: “Gloves are a symbolic gift … connected with asking for a girl’s hand in marriage … a young man’s way of saying he’ll take care of a girl, by giving her gloves to protect her hands.”

Tella’s skin burned even hotter as the razors glinted in the torchlight. Ten tiny promises of protection. But Tella knew Dante wanted to marry her about as much Jacks did. He’d probably just stolen the gloves on his way out of Minerva’s, from a girl who just happened to have the same size arms and fingers as Tella.

“What do you want in exchange for these?”

“Maybe I just want to make sure I see you again.” Dante pressed the pearls once more to retract the blades before folding the gloves into her hands.

Then the impossible bastard was striding away.

He went in the same direction as the cloaked figure who looked like Jovan. Tella was half tempted to follow, but that was probably what Dante wanted—to distract her from entering the Church of Legend and finding the next clue.

Tella turned back to the door, but the symbol of Caraval was gone, vanished like magic, which felt like further confirmation she was in the right place.

19

Tella’s religious experiences on Trisda might have been limited to desperate prayers and smuggling letters through the priest’s small confessional, but as she entered the Church of Legend, she could instantly tell this was not an ordinary place of worship.

“Welcome.” A dusky-skinned girl in a dainty top hat greeted Tella with a curtsy made of narrowed eyes and red ruffles. So many red ruffles. Tella knew Legend favored red, but this girl seemed desperate. Red ruffles wrapped around her platinum gown like a stripe on a cane of candy.

“Congratulations on finding our door, but now you must choose carefully if you wish to enter the church.”

The girl waved a ruffled arm and several brassy candelabras sparked to life, illuminating more than a dozen sets of stairs. All covered in thick ruby carpets, they writhed in every direction, up and down and side to side, like escaped blood veins before they disappeared into the black beyond. Some stairs appeared to be more worn than the others, but all of them shimmered with the same dull oak lighting, hinting at shine that had long since dimmed.

“Only one of these will lead you to where you wish to go,” said the girl.

“And where will the others take me?”

The girl’s crimson smile dripped at the corners. “That’s a mystery you must risk if you wish to join our congregation and serve the great Legend.”

Tella didn’t wish to join anything, she definitely had no plans to serve Legend, and she really didn’t feel like climbing up or down any stairs, but she had heard that finding the church was supposed to be like a game.

Tella examined the ruby stairs again. Each possessed a different personality, like the playful golden-lined corkscrews to her right. Then there was the adventurously carved case that stretched straight ahead as if it were a bridge to a fantasyland. The rickety stairs to her left appeared untrustworthy, as did the twisting wrought-iron case without handrails that she wasn’t about to attempt. Lastly, Tella’s eyes fell on a luscious black marble case, polished to a mirror-shine and covered with a deep, untouched garnet-red carpet. They appeared to go down instead of up.

Tella tried to see where the other girl’s eyes darted, curious as to which path she would choose. But her gaze remained narrowed on Tella.

“Decide?”

Tella’s eyes returned to the lush marble case with the untouched garnet carpet. The girl’s expression didn’t shift, but she swore her shoulders stiffened. She didn’t want Tella taking those steps, and Tella had a feeling it wasn’t because this girl feared for her safety.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather choose another set?” asked the girl.

“I think I’ll like what I find at the end of these.”

The girl laughed, but it sounded forced as Tella swept onto the immaculate black marble staircase and took her first step down.

The marble stairway didn’t feel quite like Legend, but Tella sensed that it was trying. With each flight the air grew colder. Candles on the wall winked out, while mysterious black stains spotted the once immaculate carpet and the smooth banister, mimicking drops of dried blood. But Tella had seen enough real blood spatter to know how it usually fell and the color it turned once it dried. Not blood here, an illusion.

Just in case, Tella pulled out Dante’s razor-tipped gloves. They smelled of him, like ink and secrets. But unlike Dante, they were cool to the touch as she slid them on, liking the gentle weight of the hidden blades at the tips of her fingers.

After a few more steps she stole a waxy candle from a sconce. Behind it, holes poked through the wall so bits of dry wind could make the lights flicker. At least they were clever here. Though Tella regretted wearing such a heavy gown as the stairs grew steeper. The wind holes in the walls disappeared next, covered up by thickly framed portraits—all of young men, with top hats.

At first she wondered if these were the church’s members, but the faces were all too handsome, and a little too wicked. Legend.

Not real pictures of him. No one knew for certain what he looked like, but clearly members of the church had attempted to render him. Tella saw skin tones ranging from translucent white to dark shades of brown. Some faces were narrow and as sharp as curse words; others were almost cherubic in their curves or seraphic in their chiseled edges. A few faces were scarred, some grinned, while others glared. Tella’s heartbeat stopped entirely as she spied a narrow face that reminded her of Jacks, with silver-blue eyes and golden hair. The final portrait winked, as if it were all a great joke.

Perhaps it was. Perhaps Legend was toying with her yet again, and the stairs went on forever and ever and ever. Tella’s lethargic legs turned to liquid at the thought. Maybe there was no way to ever truly find Legend, and the church represented an endless search for a man who was unsearchable.

Or perhaps Tella was being overdramatic.

Brighter light lit the stairs below, making it clear there was an ending in sight. Tella shoved her torch in an empty sconce and quickened her pace.

A few steps later pitchy notes of music sounded—a squeaky violin, cimbalom, and a banjo. Tella wouldn’t have said the music was pretty, but it was just the right combination of strange and enticing, matching the tavern she found at the bottom.