Intermission Scene VII
Exhaustion creaks in my bones by the time we near civilization, a village settled at the bottom of the icy hills that, in my opinion, could benefit from a nice set of stairs.
The sun rises higher as we walk, morning breaking clear onto the horizon and easing the harsh winter winds.
I shiver. I’ve never been this far north before and decide I won’t be making another visit anytime soon.
Some unspoken agreement to work together lingers between us. Until Jude finds a mirror, or until I find passage back to the District, at least. I can’t really follow through on my threats or carefully plotted plans to turn him over.
And if I’m being honest with myself, I don’t think I could do it anymore anyway.
In the light, I notice Jude is holding his arm. The overcoat he must have traded his cloak for at some point is torn at the bicep, confirming something sharp ripped into fabric and flesh alike. He’s favoring his right leg, but I can’t tell what’s wrong with the other one.
Dorian put up one hell of a fight, I guess.
A different question is rising into my throat, though. Why? I trail after him in the snow, my boots sinking into Jude’s larger footprints. Why did you come back?
The forest is unforgivably quiet, save for the crunch of ice beneath our feet and a biting wind that seems determined to get under every layer I’m wearing.
Doesn’t he feel remorse? Something? There’s not much to read from the set of his shoulders, long legs moving through the woods with the sort of inhuman grace reserved for elk.
“That was…” My words shatter the long-standing silence. Jude doesn’t flinch. But someone needs to acknowledge the last few hours out loud. I still can’t banish the stench of smoke and burning flesh from my nose, the raw screams from my ears. “That was awful.”
Jude stops cold in his tracks. Around us, tall, dark trunks with gnarled branches seem to listen in, the only witnesses to the grisly scene we left behind.
“Yes,” he agrees. “And anything less would have painted a bright, vulnerable target on both your back and mine for the next group.” He aims a meaningful glare at me over his shoulder, a crown of frost gathering in his hair.
“Do you feel justified now? Is it nice to have all your suspicions confirmed, to have watched me be the monster you so desperately believe we are? Or is it possible, Alistaire”—he points behind us, the way we came, voice rising—“that the North is harboring its very own monsters?”
I can’t help but think of that conversation with Cassia. No. No. The North is good—
I grit my teeth, unable to break my gaze from his hands, stained rust red, his rings tarnished. “You didn’t have to—”
He whirls on me, hair whipping against his forehead in the wind. “You’re right, I shouldn’t have had to. That was embarrassing of you to need rescuing.”
I stop short, offended. “They took my weapons. Bound me with chains; they were going to poison me—”
“Yes, sounds terrible. I can’t imagine what that was like,” Jude deadpans, but the sarcasm doesn’t reach his eyes, which are blazing gold with Craft after whatever unspeakable power he invoked back in the cabin.
“Except I broke free, didn’t I?” A startling, angry edge cuts into his voice. “I was poisoned, wasn’t I?”
Guilt shrouds my mind, and I recoil, but after what I witnessed a few hours ago, it chills me to think what Jude could have done without a dampener on his Craft.
Regaining confidence, I stomp after him. “That isn’t fair.”
“It is! It’s fair to expect you to do what you’re perfectly capable of. Why didn’t you break free? You could have killed all of—” He shakes his head, takes a steadying breath. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were ready to let them poison you.”
“Because I wasn’t capable—”
You are not capable of taking care of yourself.
Galen’s accusation comes back to me with startling clarity. I’ve been told my entire life that I can’t. That I’m helpless. We quarreled over it so much at home; maybe I started to believe it at some point.
Jude looks to the sky in disbelief, a hoarse cackle escaping his throat.
“You snuck into the Playhouse. Marked. I watched you run at Mattia with a dagger. Somehow, you smuggled a lethal weapon out of Marigold’s mitts and lived to tell the tale.
And then you used it to harass me.” He points a finger in my direction.
“You’re going to try and convince me you’re defenseless?
You scare the living daylights out of me, Alistaire!
So yes, I’m angry. Because the only way that back there got as far as it did is because you let it. ”
My face flushes. “Why should you care—”
“Because you should care!” he roars, turning back around, closing the space between us in two strides. His hands clamp onto my shoulders, heat bleeding through the cold. “You should be burning with rage that someone tried to hurt you.”
I should pull away, but the warmth that seeps from his grip holds me in place. His eyes search mine, flickering back and forth like he’s awaiting some signal there that only he would recognize.
That anger will be the death of you, Galen’s voice reminds me. I shove it away.
Jude is right. I am angry. I’ve always been angry.
I huff a breath. “That isn’t how we handle things in the North. Death isn’t always the way.”
“The North!” His tone slips off its hinges, incredulous.
“Of course. The North.” He throws his arms wide, gesturing back the way we came.
“That’s who you’re defending?” He winces at the movement, from whatever’s happened to his arm.
“Are they as charming as whoever drove you so helpless that you walked into the Playhouse?”
“You don’t know anything about the life I come from,” I defend, but doubt creeps into my mind as the scratch on my shoulder burns where the Eleutheraen chain dug into it. The North did this to me. And I’m one of them. Aren’t I?
“I think I’ve gathered enough.” His tone calms, irritatingly more unnerving that way. “Tell me, do they fear you more or less now that you have Craft beating in your heart? Or was it only when they assumed you did.”
That strikes a nerve. I clench my teeth, cornered and desperate to change the subject. “How’d you find me?” I ask, but I already know. I can feel it still, a golden thread humming between us. A wiser woman would have severed it before leaving the Playhouse.
I’m not entirely certain why I didn’t.
Jude inhales once, twice, breaths vaporizing between us. “Craft binding. We’re linked.” I’m about to tell him to unlink it when he quietly adds, “You could have at least tried to hold them off until I got there.”
I throw my head back, exasperated. “How should I have known you were coming to help?”
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
“How should you have known I would—” he finally says, making a point of looking wronged.
“You think I didn’t know what they would’ve done?
I’m not entirely heartless, Alistaire! In fact, I’d have been there sooner, but I was slightly detained after being poisoned.
” I shrink back as he points an accusing finger at me.
“And you didn’t need me. Say, where did that terrifying resolve of yours run off to? ”
His skin has gone nearly white. For once, Jude looks sincerely furious.
Fine, then. Good. I’m itching for a fight.
“You are one to talk,” I hiss between my teeth, “about courage.”
“Am I?” he taunts. “Do tell!”
“You’re a coward, Jude!” I shriek, and he aims a lethal glare at me.
I go on anyway. “You’re a selfish Player who only ever thinks of himself.
One with more power than even you know what to do with and a reputation you are terrified to live up to.
According to you, you’d rather go to all the trouble of using me to get out of the Great Dionysia than just facing it yourself! ”
Jude’s eyes flash with the dark glint of a challenge. It occurs to me in a vague way that maybe I should be more careful about picking fights with Jude, based on what I just witnessed. But at the moment, I don’t care.
“And you,” he whispers back, taking a single step forward, and I raise my head, daring him, “are determined to be miserable.” Stubbornly, I plant my feet in place as he stalks closer.
“You harp on whatever odd imaginings about yourself that that ungodly cunning force of a mind churns out, plotting and conniving but never once realizing—” He cuts himself off with a near-hysterical laugh.
“You know what? You’re right. I’ve done you a terrible disservice, sharing my stage with you, offering you power, strength, knowledge.
I’m sure the two of us are much happier shivering out here than wandering the warm halls of the Playhouse.
My fault for saving you. Do forgive me.”
I reach for a retort, but the words hitch beneath my ribs. I have felt stronger, less hollow, less cold. And maybe I did like the way I felt on that stage—seen. Seen and not feared.
Something in me resents it with a fierceness.
The familiar rasp of my tone returns, and I think I’ve almost missed it. “That was quite the little show you put on back there to call a rescue.”
“Well! No one else bothered,” he points out and shrugs. “In fact, someone told them where you would be and where you were taking me. Someone fed them that information. And frankly?” He feigns a look around. “I don’t see whoever that someone is showing up to help.”
The air between us constricts. I find myself questioning if he’s not mad at me so much as for me. But something in me resents that, too.
“Do not act all high-and-mighty with me,” I say.
“There are quick ways to kill and there are slow.” I shudder at the memory of scarlet smattered across white snow.
“I’ll take my bets that you went for grandeur and spectacle as usual.
” I lower my tone to match his. “That’s all you care about.
Attention. And you always get it—from everyone.
” I realize my mistake just a beat too late.
Jude tilts his head, that mean grin returning. “You could just say you’re jealous. It would save us both the time.” He shrugs again, then turns to walk off, calling, “Who could blame you? The world adores me, you know.”
Snow crunches under my boots, and I realize I’ve stalked after him.
“What, you think I envy you? That I want to be one of you?”
“No.” Jude turns cleanly in the snow to meet me, making the bold assumption I won’t stomp on his toes at the first available opportunity. “I dare say you prefer misery over company.”
“I prefer it over your company.” I flinch. I didn’t mean that at all. And the hurt on his face makes it worse. But I’m committed now. “You and your Player ego—”
“My ego.” He lets out a sharp laugh. “Do you know something about egos, Alistaire? Actors wield them like shields. Wear them like blindfolds. Shove them into every crack in our armor for protection. But egos love misery, and that’s how I know you have a vicious one.
Pain is protection, too. Pain will blame everything outside itself and never once check to see if something is broken within. ”
My skin goes cold. The world seems to slow as all I manage to do is stare back, mouth agape, feeling a little like I’ve been stripped naked in spite of my layers of leather and wool.
“Don’t pretend to know my mind.” I can’t help myself—I reach for my ire, for that thread of power, and it crackles like fire in response.
But I can’t tell which side it comes from.
I square my shoulders, tugging on that power and letting Craft burn through my veins.
“You’re so used to everyone ogling at how beautiful you are, you can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to be me—” My voice cracks like a whip. “I am allowed to be angry.”
“Anger can be anything onstage given the right costume. It’s a pretty mask, that’s all. Tell me, what’s behind yours? I’ve grown curious.”
I huff a breath. “Charm is one, too—just as much.” We may keep different weapons in our arsenals, but they all still cut at the end of the day. I tilt my head. “Is that why you came back?” He stiffens. “Because you can’t stand someone wandering the world who doesn’t worship the ground you walk on—”
“Is it so hard to believe that I care for you, Alistaire?” he snaps, and I freeze, all the harsh words rising up my throat dissolving. He presses a hand to his chest and adds, “Can’t I be good? Just for once.”
The thread between us crackles with power—and something more now. Something new.
“Or does that scare you, too?”
Jude’s eyes glint gold in the darkness, sweeping down to take in the curve of my lips, the set of my jaw, before flickering back up to mine. And for the first time, I wonder if what I’ve mistaken for hatred is just a mirror.
The thought sends me a step back. Then two more.
Jude’s gaze narrows on mine as my feet move away. “Fear does not make you a coward. Yielding to it does.”
Coward. The word cleaves through the hard shell of my skin, nestles under it. And starts to burn. Maybe I am a coward. I do like being miserable and alone. There’s safety in it, a certainty that no one can leave if there’s no one to lose in the first place.
And comfort—comfort in the certainty that Jude is terrible. That Players are terrible. Or there was until he paraded in and started shaking up all my carefully crafted convictions.
But it may be too late. Because as he turns to leave, I say something that does truly and deeply frighten me. “Stay.”
And I think he knows it, too. Because as he turns, sees both a question and its answer written across my face, he mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “Dear heart, I think you’ll ruin me.”
Whatever words he has left are lost to the wind as Jude storms furiously forward—
And crashes his mouth into mine, stealing the breath from my lungs.
It isn’t a gentle kiss, not like the hand he slips carefully into my hair, not like the arm he coils around my waist. My mind wipes itself blank, clear as the white blanket of snow around us, the cold long forgotten beneath the burn of his touch.
Whatever confusion and reservations still waver through me are lost to the roar of my own pulse as my hands find the collar of his shirt and pull him closer, kissing him back, just as foolish and reckless—
Until a shred of common sense bursts through the door of my mind.
What am I doing?
I tense, and Jude pulls away, his chest rising and falling. My own shock is mirrored in his expression as I clap a hand over my mouth. My heart races as I search for words in the air between us and come up empty-handed.
Around us, the forest holds its breath, waiting for someone—anyone—to break the silence.
Finally, Jude does.
“I don’t care that I’m going to pay dearly for that,” he says and, without explaining, walks off.