Act I Scene XXII
At first, I think I must be floating. Until someone sets me down.
“Move that table out of the way, will you?” Jude’s voice, echoing somewhere in the darkness.
It occurs to me I cannot breathe.
“Gods,” says another voice. Titus? “Do you really think an auditionee could’ve gotten up there and cut the—”
“It wasn’t an auditionee,” answers Jude. “Something worse. Thanks, Titus. You can go.”
“You sure? I can stick around. First death’s the hardest.” A pause. “Bit of a fighter, isn’t she?”
“You have no idea. Don’t waste your time; it’ll be a while. She’s stubborn as a bull.”
Boots pad across the floor, followed by the click of a door shutting. There’s a dip beside me on whatever cushiony thing I’m on. Too cushiony to be an altar. And so far, no one is leaning over me with a blade to cut my heart out. This is good news.
Something cool presses to my collarbone, and I gasp, stars piercing my vision. Pain too all-consuming to be real explodes in my lungs and zips through my shoulder. I try to reach for it and wince.
“Stop, you’re making it worse,” says Jude. But the pressure eases slightly. I drag my eyelids open and make out his blurry silhouette. The dimming lights form a halo around him. There’s a cloth in his hand covered in blood.
Mine, I think. That’s unfortunate.
“Don’t—touch me—” I rasp, squirming away.
He pauses. “Are you serious, Alistaire?” He throws the cloth down. “I’ve seen a lot of people die and a lot of people pull through, but none so determined to hang in the balance. I am trying my best, but it’s rude to push away someone trying to help you.”
“It’s rude to drop a chandelier on someone,” I seethe, but the words turn into a cough that feels like blades raking across my lungs.
“I didn’t drop a chandelier on anyone.” He drags a hand through his hair. “Someone else did, though.”
All the auditionees were onstage. Titus was off somewhere in the wings with Parrish. The rest of the Players were on the platform.
Who, then?
I narrow my eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t believe what I saw, either, so that makes two of us.”
I try to lift my head to stare at what I imagine is a large, gaping hole around my shoulder by the amount of blood on the cloth. But I can’t. Something jerks in my chest, sudden and instinctual. Like a bird fluttering around inside the cage of my ribs, searching frantically for a way out.
Jude must notice something is wrong, because he nods and almost rests a hand on mine before thinking better of it. He sits back, shaking his head. “That’s you—your life is trying to escape to wait out the worst of the physical damage.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
“It wants to escape someplace safe so your body can die,” he clarifies. “That is Reality Suspension. To fool death long enough for it to pass over, to suspend your reality before it comes. We’re Players, not healers.”
This isn’t how I’m supposed to die. The thought pounds through my head with a vengeance. I did not make it this far to give up now, injured at the hands of a Player. Dying under the eyes of another.
RIVEN: “Show me—show me how to do it. Now.” My demand ends in another vicious cough. He gives me a pitying look.
JUDE: “You can’t suspend your reality. That mark…it works like a seal. It keeps us out, but—”
RIVEN: “It keeps me in.” I choke on the tinny taste of blood. What’s happening?
Jude sighs—I must have asked out loud. “It pierced you. I think your lungs might be collapsing. I’m not sure.”
It? It. Mattia? I remember her running at me, lifting her blade—
“Mattia?” I cough again, a rage even deeper than the pain filling my head.
“What the— Lie down,” Jude orders as I try to haul myself up, finding it also a very bad idea and collapsing onto what I realize is the chaise in my dressing room. “And no,” he says. “Not Mattia—not exactly. The edge of the chandelier hit you. Mattia took the brunt of it.”
“She’s dead?” I blurt, hopeful.
“For the meantime,” he says with a shrug. “We’re actors. We live a thousand lives, but we still die at the end of each one of them.”
I remember the world flashing, color draining. Jude had called out a strange word.
The bird in my chest makes another breakout attempt, and I gasp. “What did…you do?”
JUDE: “I suspended Mattia’s reality. And did my best to suspend yours, but…” I try to muster the energy to look confused, but truthfully, I just want him to keep talking to distract me. “Think of it as a pause in the show. A moment backstage.” He shrugs. “It’s time that doesn’t exist.”
So, even if Mattia is dead for now, the moment she died doesn’t exist. A moment to fool death. My heart sinks. She’s alive, then. Or will be when the magic wears off.
The bird throws itself against the wall of my chest again, weaker this time. Dying.
I’m dying.
The wrongness is overwhelming.
Then my hand is grasping furiously at my throat, at the high collar of my shirt concealing the mark beneath. “Get rid of it,” I wheeze. “Get rid of the mark.” I am not dying here. I’ll live out of sheer spite if I have to.
Jude’s eyes fix on mine, uncertain as I reveal the swirls of gold. They seem to squirm, burning hot and ice-cold at once, like they know something bad is coming.
“You’re sure?” he asks, eyes flickering between mine and the mark at my throat.
No, says Galen’s voice in my head. Fainter now.
I nod, startled as the bird in my chest shudders, no longer trying to escape. Then Jude isn’t there anymore. Though I hear him shuffling around somewhere a few feet away.
“One condition,” he says, reappearing and setting something down just beneath my right hand. It feels like paper. He wrestles my palm open and presses a pen into it. “Sign it.”
The contract. Every curse I can think of rolls through my mind.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Come now, Alistaire. You have the only thing an actor really needs anyway.”
I scoff, glaring at him. “And what is that?”
He offers what I think is an attempt at a comforting smile. “Not a thing to lose.”
I groan, but another scorch of pain sends my hand writing my fake name wherever he’s settled it on the page.
Then the paper is gone and so is Jude. I hear what sounds like coals being pushed around.
My vision fades in and out. I can’t seem to properly move my other hand and vaguely recall the not-too-pleasant feeling of it smacking onto the marble stage.
“Let me be clear, Alistaire.” When Jude returns, there’s an iron in his hand, the edge of it burning orange. His words seem a great deal more dangerous while holding it. “Turn on me, or try to hurt my cast, and I will kill you myself.”
I don’t need to be fully coherent right now to know he means that.
“Don’t look away, all right?”
I nod, numb, and focus on the sinister gold of Jude’s eyes against every instinct I have. I almost think they soften but quickly dismiss the thought. I’m delusional from pain. “Right. Good. Focus on me.”
Never look a Player in the eye, warns Galen’s voice.
“When your mark is gone and the Craft takes hold—”
“Player magic,” I hiss with disgust, one eye on the iron sizzling too close to my neck.
He clears his throat. “Don’t think of your body as dying, yes? Just, uh…sleeping. Think of this as a very intense nap.”
“You are the least comforting person I have ever met,” I mutter.
He breathes. “First death’s the worst. I promise.”
The scalding heat of the rod presses into my skin.
I’m not sure if I scream. I’m not sure of anything.
My world narrows to a boiling warmth flooding my every muscle, to the heat of Jude’s palm curving around the back of my neck, to those bright golden eyes that seem more like stars as everything darkens.
Something is wrong. I try to gasp, but the next breath doesn’t come, the air not reaching my lungs. The space between my heartbeats stretches wider, quieter, and it hits me that I’m too late. Too late for this Reality Suspension trick. That unsealing my mark didn’t work—
That bird in my chest makes one final retreat as Jude speaks a strange word. And finally, it breaks free.