Finale

by Stephanie Garber

  Jacks tugged Tella away with a hand around her waist, but she continued to fight him. “No—Mother!”

  “Gavriel, what’s going on?” Scarlett said, trying to rip his attention away from her sister, who appeared to be going off script. “What is that girl talking about?”

  “Don’t listen to her.” The Fallen Star marched down from the burning throne, leaving a trail of blood behind him, but it looked almost peaceful compared to the emotions attacking him. Usually his angry feelings flared out like sparks that wanted to set anything nearby on fire, but these emotions seemed to be burning him, digging into his shoulders and arms like barbs at the end of a whip.

  He wasn’t angry with her or the Assassin, or even Tella; he was furious with himself. His emotions had erupted when she’d appeared, but they had flared when Tella said the word alive. He truly regretted killing Paradise.

  But it still wasn’t enough to make him love her now.

  When he had loved Paradise in the past, Paradise had also loved him. And Scarlett didn’t love him at all. Maybe that’s what she really needed.

  She thought she could do it. She’d brought her sister back to life with love. Scarlett was loving. She knew the colors of love and the shapes they took. She knew what it felt like to fight for love and to lose it and to give it with no design of getting anything back in return. And maybe that’s why it wasn’t working now. She didn’t want to give him her love.

  She’d seen him do too many horrible things. And even though he was mostly angry with himself right now, the emotion was so strong, it made her think he might do something hideous very soon, either to her or her sister, who was still dangerously close.

  Scarlett had to find a way to change his feelings. She tried to find a spark of love for him again. She hadn’t wanted to love her mother, either, but Paradise was more deserving. Or maybe no one deserved love. Maybe love was always a gift, but it was so much harder to give it to the Fallen Star because he’d spent his entire existence battling against it. He saw it as a disease rather than a cure.

  “It’s going to be all right. I’m going to take care of you, and I’m going to make sure that our child is absolutely extraordinary.” He gave her a smile that was all teeth and inhuman hunger, without a shred of love.

  Her plan wasn’t working the way it was supposed to.

  57

  Donatella

  Tella should have tried harder to stop her sister from going through with this plan.

  The Fallen Star looked almost bored when Tella had stepped into the throne room with Jacks, but now he looked as if the wrong word might cause him to set the entire throne room ablaze. His eyes flickered like flames. But it was the way he stared at Scarlett, with a terrifying brand of protectiveness, that told Tella he might lock her sister up in this tower as easily as he might set her on fire if she said the wrong word.

  Panic shook Tella’s limbs. Jacks’s arms tightened around her, pulling her closer to him. But not even his reassuring touch could completely calm her. If she didn’t do something soon, Tella feared that she was going to watch history repeat itself with the Fallen Star and her sister.

  “Tella,” Jacks whispered, “there’s no saving her. Your sister’s plan isn’t going to work. We need to get out of here before he takes his rage out on you.”

  An intense bolt of fear washed over Tella—Jacks was right. She would be much safer if she went with him. He would never let anything happen to her. Jacks would protect Tella until the end of time.

  But Tella could not leave her sister to fight the Fallen Star on her own. Scarlett would never win. Even if the Fallen Star kept her alive, it didn’t look as if he would ever love her. If Tella couldn’t kill the Fallen Star, she at least needed to help her sister get out of there.

  “Trust me, Jacks, I have an idea.” It was a terrible idea, but many of her most successful ideas were.

  “Mother!” Tella cried. “He’s not going to take care of you.” She broke away from Jacks and leaped between Scarlett and the Fallen Star.

  The Fate’s eyes turned red and flames erupted once more.

  58

  Scarlett

  The moment Tella lunged between Scarlett and Gavriel, his hands burst into flames, creating an arc of sparks and black smoke as he reached for Tella’s delicate shoulder.

  Scarlett didn’t even think—she just shoved her sister out of the way and flung herself in the Fallen Star’s path.

  Sparks flew.

  Tella screamed.

  Scarlett might have screamed too. The Fallen Star collided with her, his hands scorching the same shoulders he’d burned earlier that night. All Scarlett could feel was pain. Then his arms were holding her up instead of burning.

  “Paradise.” The flames on his fingers went out, and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked frightened. His brows were pulled tight together over eyes shot through with red. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Did you also not mean to kill her?” Tella accused.

  Gavriel released Scarlett and his hands flared into fire once more, incandescent balls of fire forming in his palms.

  “Stop this!” Scarlett screamed. “Paradise wouldn’t have wanted you to hurt her daughter, or your daughter.”

  The Fallen Star’s eyes cut back to her. The flames of his fingers went as black as betrayal.

  He’d caught her slip—he knew that she was not his Paradise—but Scarlett wasn’t sure it was a slip. Her performance had failed to elicit any feelings of love, so maybe it was time to stop performing.

  She took a step toward him, looking in his injured eyes instead of at the hands that had burned her multiple times. She couldn’t think about self-perseveration—it was too closely related to fear, and she remembered what her mother had written about fear giving Fates power.

  Scarlett refused to be afraid. Fear was poison to love. And love was poison to fear. She still couldn’t bring herself to love him. But she could bring herself to be vulnerable, and maybe that would get through to him.

  “I know you’re afraid of love, I know it’s hurt you in the past and you see it as a weapon. You think love is a disease, but you’ve become the disease. Your fear of love is destroying you and everyone you touch. And it doesn’t make you powerful, it makes the world around you tragic.” Scarlett waved a hand around his catastrophic throne room, with its ugly stage, its awful cage, and a throne still burning with angry fire. “You told me you didn’t love Paradise, but I know you did.”

  He didn’t flinch. But he didn’t lash out, either.

  “You loved my mother and I know that she loved you. The Assassin did go back in time. He took me to see Paradise and she was bursting with her love for you. She wouldn’t want any of this for you, and she wouldn’t want you to do the things that you’ve done.”

  His eyes finally lowered to the gaping hole in Scarlett’s sleeve and the ruined skin beneath it, blistering and burning from where he’d touched her.

  Scarlett took a tremulous breath and forced herself to take a step closer. “I forgive you.”

  For the longest heartbeat of Scarlett’s life, his expression remained indecipherable, but the flames lighting up his hands turned from black to gray, the color of regret. They crackled as they licked his fingertips, the only sound in the throne room, until finally, softer than anything Scarlett had ever heard: “I did love her. I loved her so much it scared me, and then I never let myself love again.” A golden tear fell down his face. “I wish I could take back what I did to her.” Another tear fell, followed by another and another.

  Scarlett didn’t know if they were all for her mother. His eyes were wells of endless pain, as if her father was finally feeling the weight of all the unspeakable things he’d done.

  The flames lighting his fingers died.

  When he cried another tear it was clear instead of gold; it was human and it was beautiful and it was the last thing he did before Tella stabbed him in the heart.

  “No!” Scarlett fell with
Gavriel to the floor. Tella’s knife had reached his heart and he was dying quickly. It was what Scarlett wanted, but she wished she’d never had to want it.

  His mouth twitched with something too forlorn to be called a smile. “We both know I don’t deserve your sorrow.…”

  With the last of his strength, Gavriel picked up the white dagger she’d dropped. His fingers could barely produce sparks, but somehow he managed to quickly melt the blade of the dagger until it formed a crude flame. The flame-shaped blade glowed with a color she’d never seen before. If she had to describe it she would have said it looked like magic, reminding her of what Gavriel had said in the dungeon, about Fates transferring their power into objects.

  He placed the knife back in Scarlett’s hand. “When I pass … this will free the ones I trapped.… Use it the way I would not have.…”

  Then the Fallen Star died.

  And Scarlett cried. She cried for the horrors he had been, and she cried for the wonders that he could have been instead.

  59

  Donatella

  Tella felt as if the whole world should have stopped or cheered for her. She’d just slayed the Fallen Star. She’d killed the monster who’d murdered her mother.

  She’d also come close to dying. She could still smell the smoke and the char from the flames that would have scorched her. Her hands shook and her heart raced. But then Jacks was there, sliding a cool, comforting arm around her and pulling her close. “It’s all right, my love.”

  But it isn’t all right, said a tiny voice inside her head. The same annoying voice urged her to pull away from Jacks—there was a truth about him that she’d chosen to forget. But Tella didn’t want to remember it. She liked the seductive lie that was Jacks. She liked his cruel games and his teasing smiles and the way he bit her whenever they kissed. The throne room might have looked like a page ripped from a horror story, but Jacks was her Prince of Hearts and he’d turn it all into a fairy-tale ending. She leaned into his touch and the world became hazy.

  “I did it,” Tella said, her voice tinted with disbelief.

  “Of course you did, my love. But we need to get out of here now.” Jacks held her tighter as he tugged her away from Scarlett. Tella had seen her fall to the floor with the Fallen Star, but she hadn’t gotten up. She remained slumped against his lifeless body.

  “Wait, my sister—”

  “Look at me, Donatella.” Jacks twisted her around until she was facing him. “Do you still want to spend the rest of your life with me?” He asked the question as if it were the only thing that mattered in the world. Never in her life had Tella felt a question with so much power. Though Jacks looked almost powerless as he asked it. He was a mess of gold hair, sea-salt blue eyes, and bitten lips, beautiful in a way only broken things could be, and Tella wanted him exactly how he was. She wanted him fractured and chaotic and completely untamable. The feeling was as consuming as what she felt from him whenever he kissed her—as if it would never be enough, even if she gave him everything.

  “You are the only thing I want right now.”

  A ghost of Jacks’s smile returned, and yet it looked so much more real than every other smile he’d given her. He looked happy. Despite the death and the wreckage and the smoke in the air, he glowed in a way she’d never seen him glow before. “You’re all I want as well. But we need to leave right now or someone might try to stop us from being together.” He released her shoulder to capture her hand.

  He roughly pulled her through the disastrous throne room as if their lives depended on leaving. Jacks stormed past Jester Mad’s abandoned stage, spilled puddles of wine, and a mirror that looked as if it had a person trapped inside. He barely stopped to open the massive doors that led to the sparkling glass courtyard.

  Night had taken over and winking stars reigned from above, reflecting on the glassy ground as—

  “Tella!” Legend’s voice cut through the night, loud enough to startle the sky and tie her stomach into a knot.

  Tella closed her eyes, as if she could undo the effect Legend had on her. She didn’t want him anymore. She couldn’t even look at him when he’d been in the cage; one glance at him and feelings she didn’t even know she possessed had erupted. She hated Legend. She hated everything about him. But somehow the low sound of his voice still tangled her up.

  “Don’t stop.” Jacks jerked her hand so she was flush against him once more. She willed her feet to run with him. To go wherever Jacks went. He was the boy she wanted to follow to the ends of the earth. But her body was betraying her to Legend, again. Her legs wouldn’t move, and her toes had dug into her slippers, as if begging for purchase against the ground.

  Jacks yanked harder on her hand, his icy grip tightening around her fingers. But Tella couldn’t even look away as Legend approached.

  He looked like the ending of a doomed love story. His dark clothes were ripped, there were fresh burns on his chest, and eyes that had once been full of stars were desolate, black with desperate gray cracks, and painful red lines snaking through the whites.

  Her throat went tight. It shouldn’t have hurt her. She hated him—she hated him for all those months he’d played with her heart. Even now he still held a piece of it. He’d always hold a piece of it, said a tiny voice inside of her. But Tella ignored the voice. She wanted to take her heart back and give it fully to Jacks.

  “Why can’t you leave us alone?” she cried. “Haven’t you tormented me enough?”

  Legend’s eyes met hers, wide and pleading.

  But Tella was done giving in to him.

  “Undo whatever you’ve done to her!” Legend roared at Jacks.

  “He hasn’t done anything,” Tella said. “You’re the one who keeps hurting me!”

  “I think that’s her way of asking you to leave.” Jacks smirked and gave Tella’s hand a gentle squeeze. He no longer held her as tight—he knew that she belonged to him.

  “Tella, listen to me,” Legend begged. “You can fight what he’s done to you.”

  “The only one I want to fight is you!” She pulled free from Jacks, prepared to finally shove Legend away forever. But as soon as she let go of him, Jacks vanished and the world shifted. Magic filled the air, thick and sweet. The glass courtyard beneath Tella’s feet turned into smooth moonstone steps as the golden tower behind Legend disappeared and a new illusion took its place. A temple made of glowing white, topped in a domed roof covered in outstretched wings—the Temple of the Stars. Above it, radiant red fireworks mingled with more stars than Tella had ever seen, re-creating the moment that Legend had walked away from her, right after saving her.

  Tella’s heart stopped beating altogether. She could still picture the flat way Legend had looked at her that night, and the coldness in his voice as he’d told her that he wasn’t the hero in her story. But now his eyes were brilliant as stars once again, full of bits of gold that glittered in the night. He was gazing at her the way he had in the painting on his wall, as if he never wanted to leave her, as if he adored her, as if he wanted to be her hero after all.

  “Undo this illusion!” Tella said, unable to stand the sight of it—or him. He wasn’t a hero. And she’d never wanted a hero. She was the hero of her own story, and it was time to save herself from him. “Bring back the courtyard and Jacks.”

  Legend’s brows slashed down, the feeling in his eyes intensifying. Once upon a time, the brilliant look in them could have convinced her that he had the ability to give her the world. But now Jacks was her world, and there wasn’t room for Legend. If she was being honest, there had never been enough room for him; he was too all-consuming.

  “I know you think you want him, but he’s controlling your feelings,” Legend said, his voice growing lower and deeper with every word. “You have to fight against it.”

  “You’re just jealous! You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to have me.” She tried to shove against his chest, to push him away at last. “Please, stop torturing me. Just let me go.”

&n
bsp; The edge of Legend’s mouth slowly lifted. “You’re the one holding on to me, Tella.”

  “No—I—” She looked down to see her fingers gripping his frayed shirt.

  Two warm hands wrapped gently around her shoulders as Legend held her in place.

  Her heart beat faster. She really needed to pull away. But she couldn’t move. Her body was remembering a time when he wouldn’t get this close to her, when he wouldn’t put his hands on her. All she’d wanted was his touch, and now he was holding her as if he planned on keeping her for a very long time.

  His smile grew. “I’m not jealous of Jacks. I know your feelings for him aren’t real. And you’re wrong if you think I don’t want you. I’ve wanted you for so long, and I’ll never stop wanting you.” His grip grew firmer as he pulled her even closer, until she was pressed against his chest.

  Her breaths came out short, in tiny, angry gasps. But no matter how hard she tried to push him away, she still couldn’t manage to do it. When she thought of Jacks, her heartbeat calmed, but then it craved the way that Legend made it pound. Because he didn’t just own part of her heart—it belonged to him fully.

  No! Tella tried to shake the thought out of her head, she tried to remember Jacks and the way he made her feel, but all she could feel right now was Legend as one of his wonderfully warm hands traced down her spine. “Do you still want to know why I walked away that night on these steps?”

  No, she said, but somehow the word “Yes” came out instead.

  His palms heated, and the hand on her shoulder slid to her neck and into her hair, tilting her face up, forcing her to look into his eyes. They were still glassy and dark with flecks of gold that looked like shattered stars, and she told herself she hated them.

  Jacks’s eyes were beautiful; Jacks’s eyes were the ones she adored. But Legend’s eyes had captured hers, and she couldn’t stop staring into them. She told herself his eyes were just another illusion, the same as all the feelings that were threatening to take her over. She shut her eyes, but it didn’t help. It only made her more aware of Legend’s deep voice as he said, “I’m sorry I left you that night. I shouldn’t have left, I shouldn’t have hurt you. And I shouldn’t have gotten scared and run away when I realized that I was falling in love with you.”