Act I Scene IV
“Is that you, Riven?” calls my mother’s voice, a hint of apprehension in her tone. Like she hopes it’s anyone but me.
I sniff the air as I kick my boots off in the hall, suspicious of the scents of fried cabbage and braised rabbit. My mother does not cook dinner. Or anything, for that matter.
My eyes fall on the stack of three envelopes that must have arrived while I was gone—but one stands out from the others. The envelope is too rich, too expensive.
My name is scrawled over the back, the seal of the Orkestrian Academy stamped in navy blue over the front.
Before I can break it, my mother’s laugh burbles from down the hall, sending a chill along my spine. She has both emerged from her room and is laughing.
A second, lower voice answers my mother’s, and my eyes widen.
Stuffing the letter into my pocket, I hurry down the hall, a smile stretching across my face. “Galen?”
“Riv!” my brother calls back.
Galen has our aunt Cassia’s wolfish grin and our mother’s chestnut hair. He makes no move to greet me, aware I enjoy hugs about as much as I enjoy having my nail beds ripped out.
“Two coats today,” he comments, one eyebrow raised at my attire. “Isn’t that one mine?”
“It was,” I say with a grin. He left his old jacket after his last visit. It’s far too big, but thicker than my own.
The gold scar below his left eye stretches when he smiles. While my injuries from encountering a Player sank deep beneath my skin, Galen escaped with a two-inch scar that turned him into the stuff of legends at school. Proof that he “fought a Player and won.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Imposing on Mom for dinner at the moment,” he answers.
Ah. That explains the cooking.
Our mother rolls her eyes in his direction as she sets a plate on the counter, though even her feigned annoyance at Galen looks more like admiration. She’s doted on my brother since I can remember.
This doesn’t bother me. I like being doted on about as much as I like being touched.
Still, I’ve never gotten used to the peculiar way our mother’s eyes go anywhere except me.
Like I’m a ghost she can’t see. Occasionally, growing up, I’d catch her staring, lips pale.
Then she’d just shake her head. You look so much like your father is all, she’d say before going back to pretending I don’t exist.
Galen always watched these interactions with his lips pressed together. Don’t mind her, he’d tell me. She just misses him.
I think all of Theatron misses him. An emissary of the council, my father was the North’s hope—our best shot at peace. That peace shattered the moment a Player threw his body from the Playhouse and left his blood to dry on the marble steps.
The Playhouse fled from the violent uproar that followed, and it hasn’t returned to the District of Dionysus—or ventured near the Cut—since.
Until now. And I’m guessing it’s not interested in peace.
“Have something to eat, why don’t you?” Galen slides his plate toward me, probably to draw attention away from the fact that our mother only prepared dinner for one of us.
“If you’re going to be taller than me, you might as well eat like I do,” he teases, though I only have my brother’s height beat by an inch as of this year.
While Galen’s built like one of the massive statues in the District, I’m all overly long limbs and—well, that’s about all I know.
I push the plate back toward him, my stomach uneasy thanks to the palace of monsters that arrived this afternoon. “You’re home early,” I prompt.
“Business in the District. Seems like I got here just in time.” His expression tightens. “The Playhouse requested an audience with the council as soon as it arrived.”
Galen only graduated a year ago and was immediately granted a position on our mortal council’s board of advisers.
It’s no secret that everyone expects him to fill our father’s role, to somehow mediate a new treaty to keep the Playhouse from the North, now that the old one is finally coming to an end.
Like clockwork, our mother excuses herself and vanishes upstairs. She always does when the Playhouse enters a conversation. Or when I enter a room.
My brother watches her go, the worry plain on his face.
I stare at him, stunned. “You mean…you saw them?” I whisper. “The Players?”
“From afar—one of them.” He keeps his voice steady, but I know Galen too well. I sense the quiver of fear beneath his tone. “The council met with the director and Lead Player after they arrived. Said they wished to negotiate the terms of their casting call.”
“Did you?” I ask, leaning in. “Negotiate?”
“What was there to discuss?” Galen laughs, but the sound is dry of any humor.
“He’s as violent as they say, you know. Player Jude.
Snapped a guard’s neck for stepping too close to Silenus.
Announced he’d do the same to anyone who dares disrupt the casting call tonight.
Said any talks of peace would wait until after it concluded. ”
“Gods,” I say under my breath.
For creatures with such great egos, it must be deeply humbling for the Players to be governed by the mortals they once ruled over. To need us. Players require worship, attention. They rely on it to survive the way we mortals require food. Otherwise, they might as well wipe us all out.
But if they’re denied an audience altogether, gods know what they’ll do. Players are dangerous when they’re angry, but they’re godsdamned lethal when they’re bored.
“You know, everyone keeps looking at me like I’m Dad.” Galen shakes his head at the absurdity of it. “Like I should know how to bargain with these monsters like he did.” He shakes his head again, leaving the rest unsaid.
Desperate to change the subject, I unfold the mysterious letter from my pocket and show it to Galen. “Any idea what this is?” I break the seal, but stall at the startled look he gives me.
“Riv,” Galen begins slowly. “That’s partly why I came home—to talk to you.” He looks like he’s about to tear the letter from my fingers. “I hoped to beat the notice here, but—”
My gaze drops down, and I scan the first line.
Riven Hesper: We regret to inform you that upon further inquiry…
“What is this?” My voice comes out sharper than I meant. Dread freezes like a block of ice in my chest as I blink, willing the words to change. To vanish.
“They’ve revoked—” I swallow, my tongue dry. “They revoked my acceptance?”
But why? The semester starts so soon. I already bought my passage to Orkestra—
I exhale. I know why. I can read it all over Galen’s face.
“The university board…” Galen trails off. Like he isn’t friends with the whole godsdamned board. He was the Orkestrian Academy’s golden boy for four years. And before him, our father. “Questions were raised about how safe your attendance would be.”
“Safe for me,” I ask through my teeth, “or safe for the other students?” I mean the words, but I don’t mean them to come out of my mouth with the ferocity of a lightning bolt. “Which is it?”
Cursed by a Player. The words have followed me since I was a child.
Like the Player’s magic—Craft—that poisoned me is going to spontaneously spread to anyone who gets too close.
The same questions were raised in grade school until I was eventually placed on a bench on the far side of the classroom.
Sometimes I felt like one of the Player statues in the District: watched from afar and rarely addressed directly.
It gave me ample time to debate which is worse: to be abandoned by society or to be famously hated by it.
The former, I’ve decided.
“Both,” he admits.
My heart cracks, exposing the simmering coal at its center.
“Who.” My voice is deadly calm.
Galen stills. “What do you mean?”
“You said questions were raised,” I force out. That’s half the truth. My eyes flicker down to the Eleutheraen mark at the base of his throat. I bet if Galen could lie to me, he would right now. “Who raised them?”
He presses his lips into a thin line, the truth on his tongue. “I did, Riven.”
I stare back frostily, daring him to go on.
“And I was right to. The last time I saw you, you looked—”
“What?” I interrupt. “Go on. Say it.”
He averts his eyes. For a moment, I wonder if he’s frightened of me, like the neighbor’s children who throw pebbles at my window.
But when he meets my gaze again, his voice softens.
“Riven, please. I know this was important to you. But you’re worse off now than the time before—and the time before that. And now…”
I stare down at my hands, trying to see what he sees. Long, bony fingers. Gray nails. Dark veins pucker from my wrists. About a month ago, my skin started fading to a pale stone-like hue, not dissimilar to the underbelly of a fish.
“No,” I say in blunt response.
That Player doesn’t get to take this, too. The Orkestrian Academy is a door to a life different from this one. With a new home. And access to the greatest library in Theatron, with probably my best chance at finding answers to what’s happened to me.
Answers to why it hasn’t happened to anyone else.
Maybe even a chance to be recognized on my own merit. Not Galen’s sister. Not the dead Peacemaker’s daughter.
“We need to be honest about what’s happening.” Galen’s tone is steady, firm. Infuriating. “Whatever…ailment this is—”
“Poison. You were there. You can call it what it is.”
“Clearly, it’s serious,” he concludes. “You’d be too far from home, not to mention exerting yourself. You may only worsen faster—” He takes a breath. “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea anymore, Riv.”
Anymore. The word echoes in my head, like a seal on my fate. Anymore sounds final.
Anymore sounds like the Player from ten years ago has won.
I shove the thought down as soon as it surfaces. If I make one decision for myself, it will be that a Player doesn’t get to finish me off.
“I am not helpless,” I bite out, but the words taste sour. Yet, my mind adds. “I’ll take care of myself—”
“Riven, you are not capable of taking care of yourself.” Galen immediately winces, like he wishes he could pluck the words out of the air and put them back in his mouth.
Blood rushes to my head, eyes falling to my brother’s mark once more. He believes that.
The possibility that he’s right only enrages me further.
He pulls in a breath, then utters, “Stay here. I spoke with Mom—” I huff a laugh. Our mother has been counting down the days to my departure as eagerly as I have. “Please—at least until you get better.”
Until. As if I’m not dying a little faster each day.
Like a godsdamned corpse. The insult rings in my ears.
“This isn’t fair, Galen,” I seethe.
“The world isn’t fair,” he answers. “No one chooses the hand they’re dealt. Leave fate to the gods and their whims. It bows to no man.” I cringe at the reference to a phrase we all learned in school. Fate guides the feet of the willing and drags the heels of the defiant.
“I don’t believe in fate,” I say. “Certainly not a fate written by gods who abandoned us. Was I fated to be poisoned by a Player?” I ask, daring him to agree. “Was Dad fated to be ripped apart by one?”
His face hardens, both of us equally shocked at my words. We don’t bring up our father’s death.
“It doesn’t matter. This conversation is over,” Galen says, standing.
“No!” My raspy voice shoots out of my throat like an arrow, startling both of us. It ricochets off the walls. There’s an abrupt creak upstairs, like my mother has shot to her feet.
Too much, I scold myself. My fingernails bite into either side of my chair. Galen’s silver gaze hones in on me. “What?” I snap, failing to reel my voice in again.
“That temper, Riv,” he says softly, shaking his head. “If you don’t get control of it, that anger will be the death of you.”
When I say nothing, Galen moves for the hall but pauses at the door. “I’m sorry, Riven—I really am. And I mean it.” I don’t meet his eyes. Galen pushes the door open. “If we figure out how to…reverse whatever this is, I’ll take you to Orkestra and enroll you myself.”
With that, he’s gone.
I give him a full three-minute head start before I tug on my boots and follow him.