Legendary recap

Donatella Dragna owes a stranger something impossible. In exchange for word of her missing mother she promised to deliver Legend's true name, which no player has ever discovered, so when Caraval announces a second game in Valenda for Empress Elantine's birthday, Tella goes to win it. In the capital she is shadowed by Jacks, a young man who turns out to be the Prince of Hearts - one of the Fates, immortal figures pictured on the Deck of Destiny Tella inherited from her mother, imprisoned long ago and very interested in getting out. The game's clues run straight through the history of how the Fates were bound, and Tella realizes she is not solving a puzzle so much as being steered through one. She grows close to the performer Dante while Scarlett works out her own position with Julian. By the end Legend's name has been spoken and his disguise broken - he had been playing Dante - the Fates are free and walking the empire, Empress Elantine is dead after revealing that the sisters are her family, and Tella's mother has been recovered only to warn her how badly this has gone.

In the first book, Scarlett and Donatella Dragna got off the island of Trisda and away from their violent father to attend Caraval, the performance game staged once a year by a showman known only as Legend. Tella was taken as the game's prize, and Scarlett spent five nights buying clues with secrets, memories and days of her life to find her, watching both her sister and a sailor named Julian appear to die before the game closed. All of it was staged: Julian was one of Legend's performers, and Tella had agreed in advance to play the missing prize and fake her fall. Scarlett won the game and its wish. What Scarlett was not told is what her sister traded for the part: Tella had bargained with a stranger who promised her word of Paloma, the mother who abandoned them, and what she owes in return has not been paid. The sisters are beyond their father's reach, Scarlett and Julian are unresolved, and the next Caraval has been announced for Valenda, capital of the Meridian Empire.

Tella is carrying a debt she has told no one about, least of all her sister. To learn what became of their mother she promised a stranger the one thing Caraval has never surrendered - Legend's true name, which no player has ever discovered and which his company guards absolutely. Invitations then arrive for the next game, to be played in Valenda as part of Empress Elantine's birthday celebrations, and Tella intends to use it to pay what she owes. Scarlett, who came out of the last Caraval with a wish and a grievance, has her own reasons for going and her own unfinished business with Julian.

The sisters reach Valenda, a capital in the middle of a long imperial celebration and filling up with Caraval players. Tella has her mother's Deck of Destiny with her, a set of cards that has never behaved like an ordinary fortune-teller's deck. She has also acquired Jacks, a pale-haired young man who is impossible to be rid of, unbothered by locks or threats, and far too interested in what Tella is playing for. Tella is entering the game for information rather than for its prize, which puts her at odds with every other player in Valenda, including her sister.

The game opens. Tella chases the clues hard, because the answer she needs is the one thing the game is built to protect, and she finds that Legend's performers - Dante, Caspar and Nigel among them - are as much a part of the puzzle as the clues are. Jacks turns up wherever she goes and keeps pushing her toward parts of the game she would not have chosen for herself, and it becomes clear that his interest in Caraval is much older than hers. Scarlett is drawn into the game on her own track, with Julian beside her and neither of them willing to say what they want from the other.

Jacks stops pretending to be an ordinary person. He is the Prince of Hearts, one of the Fates: immortal figures out of the old stories and the same figures pictured on the Deck of Destiny Tella inherited. His kiss kills whoever receives it, with one exception he has spent a very long time looking for. The Fates were imprisoned long ago and Jacks wants them out, and the game Tella is playing runs directly through the history of how they were bound, which is not a coincidence and was never going to be.

The clues carry Tella further into the Fates' history and toward the place where they were sealed away. She grows closer to Dante, who helps her past the point a performer following a script would, while Jacks presses harder and makes plain how little he cares what it costs her. Tella can no longer treat the game as theater: what the players are being led to do has consequences outside Caraval, and she is the one being steered toward doing it.

The game breaks out of its own shape. What the players have been guided toward is the release of the Fates, and Tella's private bargain, Jacks' agenda and Legend's game turn out to be a single problem rather than three. The imperial court is pulled in around the empress's celebrations, Scarlett and Julian are exposed to the consequences along with everyone else, and Tella has to decide what she is prepared to trade for her mother now that the price is no longer only hers to pay.

The game ends. Legend's true name is given up, and the disguise he ran it behind is broken: he had been playing the performer Dante, at Tella's side throughout. The Fates are released and walking the empire as people rather than as cards. Empress Elantine dies during her own birthday celebrations, telling Donatella first that the Dragna sisters are her family, which places them inside the empire's succession rather than outside it. Tella has what she bargained for and has helped bring about something far larger than the debt she meant to settle.

The closing pages return to Paloma. The sisters' mother is recovered, but her first concern is not the reunion: the Fates are free, she knows more about how they were bound than she has ever told her daughters, and she is certain that what has just been done is a catastrophe rather than a victory.

The game closes with Legend's true name given up and the disguise he played it behind broken: he had been moving through his own Caraval as the performer Dante, close to Tella the whole time. Tella can settle the debt she came to pay, but the price of the game she was steered through is that the Fates are no longer bound. They are loose in the Meridian Empire as people rather than pictures on a deck of cards, and the stories that made them sound like fables turn out to have been the polite version. Empress Elantine dies during her own birthday celebrations, and before she does she tells Donatella that the Dragna sisters are her family, which changes what the sisters are to the empire and to the succession. Tella also gets what she bargained for: her mother, Paloma, is recovered. Paloma's first response is not relief but alarm - the Fates walking free is the worst thing that could have happened, she knows far more about how they were bound than she has ever told her daughters, and the sisters are standing in the middle of it. Scarlett and Julian end the book still entangled, and Jacks, having got what he wanted, is under no obligation to anyone.