Legendary

Tella attempts to negotiate in order to stay with her sister, but the matron refuses; the only space for Tella would be a nest in the servants’ quarters, if one is available. Before the guard can remove Tella from the premises, Dante interferes and informs the matron that Tella is the heir’s new fiancé. Although the woman does not believe them, she finds Tella a room in the Golden Tower. Rumor has it that the Golden Tower is the original “Tower Lost” displayed in various Decks of Destiny. While she settles into her room, Tella overhears two servants discussing the murderous rumors that follow Jacks, Elantine’s heir—whose fiancé she is currently pretending to be.

The following morning, Tella receives two letters and a package. The first letter, which accompanies the package, comes from Jacks and instructs her to wear the dress he provides so that he can easily find her at the Fated Ball. She considers not wearing the dress but decides that it is the perfect revenge for Dante’s actions the prior day. The second letter comes from Scarlet, who plans to spend the day with Julian but will meet Tella in the courtyard an hour before midnight so that the sisters can attend the Fated Ball together. Tella decides to tell Scarlet everything, knowing that her sister will still help her to win Caraval.

Tella waits in the courtyard for Scarlet’s arrival, but her sister is uncharacteristically late. She searches the courtyard for Scarlet and instead finds Dante, who offers her fashion advice before insisting that she not attend the Fated Ball at Idyllwild Castle. In her certainty that the evening will go as planned, she insists on doing so and continues looking for Scarlet. Armando arrives. He tells her not to wait for Scarlet because he found her earlier, and she was unhappy to discover his ruse; when he left her, she and Julian had a heated argument.

Tella and Dante proceed to the ball with time running out, though she wishes that Dante would not follow her. As the carriage progresses to the castle, the stars disappear, reappear, and create the Caraval logo.

Tella observes Legend’s constellations while Dante explains how the stars will guide participants to the next clue on the following day. He tries one last time to convince Tella not to attend the Idyllwild Castle’s Fated Ball, but she remains determined to do so despite the fact that the moat that does not reflect the stars and the castle resembles a cage.

Tella and Dante enter the Fated Ball, and Tella gets caught up in the event’s grandeur. She must remind herself that Caraval is only a game. One of Legend’s players, Jovan, drops down from an aerial performance to welcome them to the game. Tella tries to interrupt Jovan because she has been part of Caraval before and believes that she knows what he will say, but Jovan insists on continuing because the welcome message has changed. Rather than the usual warning that everything they see is only part of the act, this welcome message insists that everything is genuine, no matter how fantastic it may seem. Jovan also warns that the Fates want to return to the world, and the only way to stop them is to win Caraval by recovering an object more powerful than the Fates and winning a rare prize from Legend. As Dante starts to guide Tella out of the ballroom, he notices that she tenses at the sight of the massive cage in the middle of the dance floor. However, before they can leave the room, Elantine’s heir stops them.

Elantine’s heir, Jacks, invites Tella to dance. Tella is caught off-guard when she realizes that he is the noble who threatened to push her out of the carriage. As she and Jacks go to the dance floor against Dante’s wishes, Jacks reveals that he is not only Elantine’s heir, but also he is the “friend” with whom Tella has been communicating for over a year. He is disappointed that she could not bring him Legend’s name, but he agrees to give her one more chance, though he changes the terms of their agreement. He now wants more than Legend’s name. His first condition is that Tella must convince the party guests that he and Tella are madly in love and are genuinely engaged, so that his position does not fail. He will not reveal the second condition until she accomplishes it. They arrive on the dance floor and dance offbeat and between other party-goers, but Tella sees Jacks’s charm. However, that changes when he kisses her fiercely and then bites her, drawing blood. He removes her scarf, and as she pushes against him, she realizes that he has no heartbeat. Jacks, her “friend,” is one of the Fates—the Prince of Hearts.

The Prince of Hearts freezes everyone momentarily so that he and Tella can talk. He is surprised at her shock, for he believes that the coin he sent her is an obvious clue. He gives Tella one final chance to meet his requirements but assures her that she will die if she fails him again. Now, instead of Legend’s name, he wants the man himself. To live, Tella must win Caraval and deliver Legend to Jacks, or her heart will stop. At the same time, she also must continue to convince everyone, including Dante, that their engagement is real. When Jacks unfreezes everyone, he announces his “engagement” to the party-goers, who applaud.

Back in the sky carriage, Tella still cannot believe that the Fates are returning to the world and that the Prince of Hearts kissed her. She asks Jacks why he wants Legend when he initially only wanted the man’s name; Jacks informs her that it makes no sense to merely accept Legend’s name when Tella can deliver the man in person. She asks for proof that Jacks knows where her mother is and that he knows her real name. In response, he gives her the card in which her mother has been trapped for seven years—a card with a dying heartbeat like her own. He makes her read the first clue and guides her to the Temple District, where he believes that the first clue is sending her.

Dreams of death haunt Tella’s nightmares. The next morning, when she wakes up, she can feel that her heartbeat has slowed overnight. After she tucks her mother’s card away for safe-keeping, she puts on the new outfit that Jacks has sent her—a sapphire-blue lace dress—and travels to the Satine District to keep an appointment he made for her at Minerva’s ModernWears (Tella is to obtain clothes that will support the illusion that she is Jacks’s fiancé). When she arrives, she believes that she must be in the wrong place. The Satine District contradicts her expectations of a luminous and expensive place for Valenda’s elite. Instead, the district looks rundown, as though it hosts many illicit enterprises. While she searches for Minerva’s, she finds the shop that she has used in the past to correspond with Jacks—Elantine’s Most Wanted. The proprietor directs her to Minerva’s and tries to warn her about the establishment, but Tella does not listen. When Tella arrives, she finds a guard sitting outside who unlocks an excessive number of locks to let her in.

Minerva guides Tella to an interior room and asks her to wait, as she has arrived early for her appointment. Tella is confused about this. When she enters the room, she finds Dante waiting for her and realizes that he intercepted Jacks’s note and changed the time of her appointment at Minerva’s so that he could talk to her about the Fated Ball. He now reveals that he knows that Jacks is the Prince of Hearts. He asks Tella what the Prince wants. Mindful of Jacks’s threat, Tella maintains the ruse that she is happily engaged to Jacks and that his kiss did not kill her because she is his true love. However, Dante does not believe her. Before he can fully convince her to tell him the truth, Minerva returns and chases Dante out. As he leaves, he gives Tella one final warning that Caraval is very real and urges her not to trust the Prince of Hearts.

Minerva brings in a cart of costumes and tells Tella to pick any costume she desires. She sorts through her options and finds an unfamiliar costume. She asks Minerva about it. The seamstress pales and says the costume should not be there, as it symbolizes Elantine’s Lost Heir, whom nobody believes exists. Despite Minerva’s protests, Tella chooses this costume as hers, claiming that the Prince of Hearts does not fully control her despite his power.

Tella returns to her room to find Scarlet waiting for her. Although Scarlet should not be in Tella’s room, she finds a secret passage linking their chambers. However, she wants to discuss Tella’s supposed engagement and demands to know what Tella is involved in. The more Tella insists that the engagement is genuine, the worse Scarlet feels because she does not believe it. Scarlet pleads with Tella to remember that Caraval is nothing more than a game and that she can trust no one while the game is occurring. Scarlet states that Tella should not participate in Caraval, but Tella insists. Scarlet will not participate in Caraval herself, so Tella assures her that she knows what is real and what is not.