Act II Scene XII
What feels like an arrowhead slamming into my chest tears me from my surroundings and whisks me into darkness.
I stay there, in the dark, feeling far away, tearing deeper and deeper through layers of nothing until—
A woman’s eyes, kind and thoughtful and promising. This is for the best, I hear as a cup is forced to my lips. I can’t feel my hands, bound tight. But I feel the burn of Eleutheraen gold in my throat.
The world blurs again. This time, I shrink inward, like a child. I’m in a brick alley, filled so thick with smoke that I worry it may suffocate the stars above. Rolling over, I shake the shoulder of the figure sleeping beside me.
“Wake up,” I say. The voice isn’t mine. It belongs to Jude, but younger, naive. “Lukas!” I try again with Jude’s childlike voice.
The boy sits up, dazed. “What, Jude?” His eyes widen as he takes in the blanket of smoke around us. His voice trembles. “What’s happening?”
Horns blare in the distance, followed by shouts of alarm and confusion. Someone zips into the alley like a shadow, slight and frantic and somehow familiar.
“Get up!” orders the shadow, a girl. Juliet. Her clothes and hands are damp with ash. My chest tightens as I reach for the tattered pack at my other side.
“Leave your things,” she urges, pulling Lukas to his feet. “We need to hide.”
A chorus of clashing metal resounds in the distance. Juliet tugs at her dirty braid, leading us out of the alley, into the street. “One of the North’s armies, someone said,” she explains hurriedly as we run. “From Syrene.”
Smoke stings my eyes. “Why haven’t they called in the Players to help?” I ask.
My boldness shrivels as the ground shakes beneath our feet, what feels like an explosion nearby. A city I know well, suddenly utterly unfamiliar in the red light of slaughter.
“They did!” she shouts over the panic.
The streets burn hot, chaotic with disorder and fear.
As we run, I look over my shoulder, squeezing Juliet’s hand when I spot the army, like an endless colony of ants rushing down the hill in the distance.
They spill out from the caravans that arrived yesterday.
Caravans that rolled in last night, gifted from Syrene, filled with costumes and food to celebrate the Great Dionysia.
Or so we were told.
“Dionysus,” Lukas swears, halting to a sharp stop. “Look!”
I do, and the Playhouse is gone, vanished. Fled.
The air still hums where it stood. Then I see what’s taken its place, and the breath tears from my lungs.
Juliet’s scream cuts through the smoke.
Several stakes blaze ahead, each crowned with a figure writhing in Eleutheraen fire—Players, their skin burning gold, their screams piercing the night.
Something shifts in me as I watch their bodies still, their Craft burning away, given to the sky. The fear around my heart shrivels, collapses in my chest. It hardens into something else entirely.
I mouth a silent vow to the dead Players. Then my feet are moving.
The world blurs again, and everything speeds up. Suddenly, I’m in the Playhouse, Gene leaning so close that I can feel her breath in my ear. “Help me stop this, Jude,” she whispers, her eyes wide.
Then I hear a hushed, sharp argument between myself and Sil that ends in a swift decision.
The scene shifts. Gene, running downstage, her voice fierce. “It’s not real!” she roars at them. “None of this! It’s not real!”
A tightness in my chest releases when she, at last, collapses on the platform. I hold her under a stage light while she chokes up spots of gold that foam at her lips. The audience watches in awe. They don’t remember this part of the show.
Her eyes lock on mine, full of hate. She’s fighting to suspend her reality.
I won’t let her. I can’t.
The world shifts, and Sil stands in front of me now. “Do you see what you’ve done, Jude?” He’s upset. On the verge of tears.
I am, too. I’m terrified.
Another blur. This time, I see the halls of the Playhouse. My feet slow when I notice someone stealing quietly behind a curtain.
Alistaire.
And once again, I feel certain I have seen her face before. And, with even more certainty, that I will never let her leave this Playhouse.
Somewhere, someone is screaming in the muffled way you hear things underwater.
“The damn mirrors are broken—try that one!” Titus’s voice, I think.
“Get them out—now.” Sil’s voice.
“She attacked him, didn’t she? I told you there’s something off…” Definitely Mattia.
My muscles feel rigid. Bits of broken glass bite into my skin where I’ve fallen. I recall strange dreams of a burning city, of an army hidden in caravans disguised as gifts. Players burning upon golden stakes.
Finally, I remember the woman—Gene. The ghost in the mirror and the way she lunged at Jude. She didn’t look very dead to me. I remember him barely making out the word “éxodos” before she reached him.
Jude suspended his reality, gave it over to me, casting me deep into his mind, his memories.
He knew the woman in the mirror meant to kill him.
Gene Hunt is not dead. But she wants Jude to be.
Carrying two lives instead of one is much heavier. With what feels like the effort of moving a mountain, I turn my head, broken glass sliding beneath my hair. Jude’s eyes are open, empty. Blotchy shades of sickly yellow and purple paint his throat.
A large piece of broken glass protrudes from his neck. Gold gushes from it.
Titus’s heavy steps approach, and I think I see him point a long finger down at Jude’s lifeless eyes. “Tell me that one isn’t ours.”
It occurs to me in a distant, amusing way how easy it would be to end Jude’s life right now. This monster who’s destroyed cities and lives and trapped me. To catch hold of that little light full of memory and life fluttering somewhere in my mind and crush it—
Are you frightened because you hate me or frightened because you don’t?
The thought crashes into my anger, violently derails it.
“Alistaire!” Sil. The director is on his knees, leaning over me. I don’t have the energy to look as disgusted as I feel when he lifts my head from the broken glass with the gentleness of a concerned parent. “Alistaire, let him go.” Like he knows what I’m considering. “Please—let Jude go.”
For some strange reason, his plea resonates with a part of me I don’t recognize. My eyes flutter open, finding Sil’s wide with worry. I let my head roll to the side, where Arius is frantically checking over Jude, extracting the glass from his neck. Parrish sobs just behind him.
I tell myself that Jude is lucky he’s no use to me dead. That I need my bargaining chip alive.
I’m so convincing, I nearly believe that’s the reason I meet Jude’s open, glassy eyes and mutter, “éxodos.”