Act II Scene XIV
The rattle of a chain precedes a set of wild, unfocused eyes peeping through the cracked door.
“Jude?” Marigold whispers, hopeful. She moves away from the door to make room. Inside, her music box plays cheerily along.
“Yes! It’s me, uh, Jude,” I say, correcting my pitch. Gods, I do a bad Syrenian accent. I search frantically for things Jude might say. “Please hold the applause, I know I’m pretty,” I add awkwardly.
Her face is damp with wet trails over the gold of her cheekbones.
Curiosity surfaces on my tongue, almost forming the words: Why are you crying?
And I stop myself long enough to remember Jude has a tendency to make statements and wait to see if someone argues with them.
So I clear my throat and rephrase: “You’ve been crying. ”
Marigold huffs, bequeathing me an unsettling glimpse of her razor teeth.
I’m a lot bigger than her in this form, but that doesn’t make me feel much better when she’s got nails like unpolished daggers.
The chain at her ankle drags when she moves, though it’s hard to see it beneath her dress, which is patched from about a hundred different fabrics and patterns.
She skulks past the portrait of Jude, still on the easel.
Only now the canvas is absolutely mutilated. Like she’s dragged those sharp little nails right across the face. The edges are singed.
This may not be as easy as I hoped.
“I’ve come to free you,” I say, but the statement comes out like a question.
Marigold turns abruptly. “Leave the Playhouse?” she hisses in a way that sends alarm bells ringing in my head.
“No! No, of course not,” I backpedal but inch forward. “Only from this room—you ought to get bored in this room, yes?” He always does that. Adds “yes?” at the end of statements like no one could ever refuse him. “I’ll take you to the auditorium, where you can see the rest of tonight’s performance.”
Her expression darkens, but there’s a glint in her eye at the mention of a performance. “He said I’m never to leave this room, not ever.” Sil, I presume. “Not since I—” Marigold begins to weep. Loudly. “My dolls.”
I pause. “Okay, is that…a no?”
“I have a contract,” she whispers, sniffling and annoyed. Then she narrows her eyes at me. “You have a contract.”
I hadn’t thought about that. Jude would have one. I don’t know what it entails, but Marigold gives me the impression that leaving the Playhouse is a no-no. Though clearly, he can.
“Contracts can be amended,” I say with a shrug and a grin, the way I think Jude would. “Where is yours?”
“With the rest of them, and yours,” she says, hesitant.
I blink, not saying anything.
“The stage,” she clarifies, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Right! Forgot where I left that old thing,” I reply nervously, tucking away this information.
Her brow lowers. “The freckle below your left eye is missing.”
Well. Damn it.
I’m about to say something about makeup when she grabs a godsdamned hammer off the table and swings at me.
Ducking, I skirt behind the table and push it between us. “Now, Marigold, I’m sure we can talk about this,” I say, as if a monster who arose from the ruins of the Eleutheraen well is going to reason with me.
Marigold freezes, and I realize my mistake. I’d pronounced the first part of her name “mare” instead of “mahr.” “You don’t sound like him,” she says, showing all her teeth.
Well. It was worth trying to do this peacefully. I fly across the table, foot aimed for her chest, knocking Marigold onto her back while I snatch the Eleutheraen arrowhead from my bag.
I hold it high and bring it down hard on the base of the chain in the wall.
It takes Eleutheraen gold to break it—and for once in my entire time at the Playhouse, it would seem I’ve lucked out.
Because this arrowhead wasn’t just dipped in Eleutheraen gold, it’s outright crafted from it.
No wonder Mattia couldn’t destroy it herself.
The chain loosens but doesn’t break. My luck runs out after that, because when I look up, I notice two horrifying things at once.
One, Marigold’s jaw unhinging as she screams and lunges at me.
Two, the smell of lavender and the woman watching by the door.
Gene Hunt observes, quiet as death.
She looks different. Her eyes, which bled gold before, are overtaken with it now, bright and feverish. A glow radiates over her skin, suggesting she’s more apparition than flesh, though the skin she has is peeling right off. It flecks down her neck, torn away entirely at the shoulder.
The air surrounding her stirs uneasily, as if struggling to hold on to her form.
Then she moves, impossibly fast, as she shoves Marigold away from me.
I’d thank Gene, except she whirls around, wielding…
The striking gold of my own missing knife in her hands.
I blink, having only enough time to think, I should move, before she lunges.
“Where did you get that?” I shout, skittering away. Her blade—my blade—sinks into the wall, and the room shakes from the impact of Eleutheraen gold meeting a Craft-based foundation.
Somewhere upstairs, an orchestra sings to life, summoning me back to the stage.
Intermission is over.
Seized by panic—the preamble to all good decisions—I grip the workbench and throw it at Gene just as an enraged screech closes in from behind.
I whirl, reaching for my arrowhead, as Marigold flies at me, shrieking like a vengeful spirit.
Her screech cuts off, vanishing behind her golden tongue. But her mouth hangs open.
We stare at each other, our eyes slowly turning downward where the jagged point of my arrowhead is lodged into her side.
I barely register what I’ve done by the time Marigold falls back onto the crooked floorboards, dead.
A very warm hand grips my wrist from behind.
“I’m not him!” I scream, thrashing out of Gene’s reach to point my arrowhead at her.
The door shudders. Her eyes go as wide as the clockface behind her. She brings a finger to her lips, as if to say, Hush.
I start yelling instead. “I’m not Jude! I’m not him. Believe me, I understand the indisputable urge to shut him up for good, I do. But I’m not the one you’re looking for.”
The door shakes in its frame again, only this time, fingers of darkness stretch through the cracks like smoke, bleeding across the walls. And with it, an echoing, staccato clicking that makes the collection of skulls on Marigold’s shelf chatter their teeth.
Nyxene. Jude’s warnings of the gruesome Stage Manager creep out of my memory, sinking into the air, heavy and foreboding.
Ice edges into my veins, then into every part of me, like I’ve been pushed into a cold bath. Darkness unfurls over the room.
The shadows are Nyxene’s first and only warning, Jude once told me. Shadows he said to stay away from by any means necessary.
Nyxene is coming. My heart lurches. I’m not supposed to be down here.
And I’ve killed the Prop Master.
Gene rushes at me, knife held high. Clearly, she has it out for Jude, but on the bright side, Mimicking his form gives me a height advantage.
I catch her wrist with one hand and hold my arrowhead to her throat with my other.
It catches on a little half-moon necklace at her neck, snapping the silver and sending the pendant clattering to the floor.
I gasp, my grip on her wrist slipping as Gene pushes the blade down toward my eye with unholy strength.
I’m cold. So cold I can’t feel my toes, my fingers, or the hand just barely keeping my own knife from plunging into my skull.
In the corner of my vision, Nyxene’s shadows grow like vines around the room in the shapes of reaching hands—hundreds of them.
The door shakes on its hinges once more, Nyxene demanding entry.
The arrowhead in my other hand drops to the floor as I clutch my heart, gasping against the ice seeking a way in. One of Nyxene’s shadows stretches far enough to brush Gene, a wraithlike finger of midnight grazing her shoulder.
It’s the first time I hear Gene make a sound—a cry as the dagger tumbles from her grasp. I twist free, dropping to my knees to wrap my fist around the fallen dagger. I can hardly feel my legs as I straighten and point the tip up at her. “What do you want from me?”
Gene shakes her head frantically, begging my silence. As if I’m doing her any favors.
But the damage is done. The door bursts open, and darkness floods in. Shadows everywhere stretch wider and higher and colder. And with it, a high-pitched shrieking distorted by low, rasping whispers that send my skin crawling.
I fly back into a corner, trying to breathe, but the cold air burns my lungs.
Nyxene: a silent, lethal monster. The Playhouse’s guardian that cleanses magic from the stage after shows, that guides patrons out once the curtain falls. That keeps actors in line. Heard, felt, and never seen.
But I see her now, and the sight makes my knees shake. A frigid, solid darkness that reeks of peril and melds into the shape of a monstrous Stage Manager. Somewhere, deep in the midnight mist, I glimpse fierce silver eyes. About twelve of them.
Gene pinches her brow, as if gathering concentration. Her lips part, struggling to form words. Frustration dampens her expression, her hands curling into fists.
Then her eyes snap open, and a single, strangled word escapes her lips.
“Riven.”
I shove my back into the corner again, almost dropping my knife. “How do you know my name?” I demand, but it’s useless. Gene lets out a furious cry that shakes the lanterns hanging above. She looks pleadingly at me and whispers one more word: “Script.”
All at once, Nyxene flies at the Player, dozens of shadows racing up Gene’s legs and cutting clean through the glow of her skin like butter.
A guttural warning pounds in my ears as the shadows encase the dead Player in mist, otherworldly screams ripping what was Gene into shreds of darkness and gold.
It’s vicious, visceral.
And then it’s nothing.
As silence rings out like a bell, my mind seizes on her last words, strangled but clear.
Riven.
Script.