Finale (Caraval, 3)

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.