Intermission Scene X
Jude doesn’t take his watch later. Which is probably my fault for forgetting to wake him. So imagine my surprise when he wakes me up.
“Alistaire,” Jude’s voice whispers. He darts back before I can run him through with my knife on impulse. He points at the dagger, annoyed. “See, that. Where was that instinct when Dorian’s damned hunters tried to—”
The door rattles, and by the way his attention shoots toward it, I think it isn’t the first time.
Jude leans across me, unlatches the seal on the window, and pushes it open. I don’t know who could be trying to get in, but I know that there’s no such thing as an ally out here.
“How could they have found us?” I dive headfirst through the window onto the flat roof, gasping when the wind meets my neck, like ice pouring down my back.
“Well, Alistaire, the thing about being a creature that is particularly known for attracting attention is it makes it difficult to sneak around.” He throws one long leg out the window after me as I crawl across the roof. “Simply feeling drawn to this room could be suspicious enough for some.”
He maneuvers cleanly down a pipe onto the icy grass, and I attempt to follow suit. Except when I do it, I land clumsily on my hip while Jude mutters a snide remark about neglecting my combat training before hauling me to the closest desolate road, slippery with frost.
The light emitted by his skin is particularly conspicuous in the dark. Suddenly, he turns, as if a thought has just occurred to him, and yanks my hood over my head. “The rule applies to you, too, now.”
I groan and try to ignore the gold glow hovering over my hands.
Fear of an escaped Player has apparently encouraged everyone to stay inside after dark. The streets are quiet as death as we go, ice crunching under our boots. Bounty posters with Jude’s face paper the walls of fur shops and firewood stands. I nearly shout at him when he pauses to autograph one.
We pass more than one news rack closed for the night but full of frantic headlines. My eyes sweep over them as cold seeps into my bones.
escaped player: jude stepharros to stand trial under law
“They give me no credit,” he mutters, skimming an article surmising Jude will begin slaughtering a city any day now. “I’ve been wandering out here two days and I’ve only killed—” He pauses and starts counting on his fingers, then gives up. “Never mind. Let’s go.”
It takes several tries to find a shop with a lock that isn’t made with Eleutheraen gold. Soon enough, I point out a bakery and amble around the back. Jude stands watch while I pick at the iron lock with one of his earrings, then motion him inside.
Thank the gods it’s warm in here. My bones might splinter if they get any colder. I sink onto the floor of the pantry, deciding the bag of flour in the corner will make a fine pillow.
Jude follows a moment later and tosses a bag of rolls at me.
I greedily tear it open and scarf down four.
He chews on a piece and gives up, wincing and pressing a hand to his jaw like he’s in pain.
Then he tosses the bread across the room and sinks against the wall beside me.
His breaths are more labored than before, and he’s shivering violently.
Lines of gold bleed down his forearm now, that mysterious wound of his spreading farther like a disease, deteriorating everything it touches.
“What’s…” I pause, unsure what I’m asking. “What’s happening to you?”
He draws in an unsteady breath, stares at the ceiling. “Alistaire, tell me—tell me a story, will you?” His words come out ragged, like he’s begging for water. “Please.”
“I—” I freeze. “I don’t know any stories.” And I don’t think a story is going to fix whatever is happening to him. Maybe he’s searching for a distraction.
Jude lets out a breath and then struggles to pull in the next. “Right. I’ll tell you one, then.”
When he speaks, I’m swept into another world. His words weave into the cold air around us like a blanket, warm and sparkling. Each utterance paints a more vivid portrait in the darkness. I scoot closer, my ears eager to hear more, and he pauses.
“No, keep going,” I prompt, surprised how badly I want to know how it ends.
“I thought you hated stories,” he taunts back. And he’s right, I do. Stories are bad. They’re lies.
But the way Jude tells stories, I wonder how I’ve lived a day without them.
“I think I hate them less when you tell them,” I say quietly.
He pauses, drained, then nods and goes on. When he’s done, his voice is tired, like spinning the tale has taken something from him. His breaths grow more strenuous, the glow around him wavering like a dwindling lantern.
My mouth opens, and the words, “Are you dying, Jude?” fall out a little too bluntly.
He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, finally, “Death is a matter of opinion, Alistaire. To die is to be forgotten. I imagine the world will never forget me.”
“In your opinion, are you dying?”
He sighs deeply, stares at the white scar across his palm. “Yes.”
I have a feeling Reality Suspension can’t fix whatever is happening to him.
Turning on my side, I face him and whisper, “Does it have to do with Sil? Him and that book he always carries.”
Jude winces. “Alistaire, if you care for me at all, you’ll tell him this little journey back was made in utter silence. You and I, we didn’t speak. Nothing of note happened.”
A chill hovers over the words. He almost sounds frightened.
“I won’t tell,” I promise, wondering at what Sil might do. Is Sil more powerful than the Players? I’m not entirely sure what he is. “And I do,” I add, quieter. The words cling desperately to my throat, trying their hardest not to make it past my teeth. “Care for you.”
A lot, I think. Enough to follow him back to the Playhouse, if only to ensure Jude doesn’t face the consequences of leaving his post when I forced him to.
Jude’s brows shoot up; he’s apparently shaken free from whatever trance he’d found in his palm. “Now, don’t tell me that block of ice you call a heart has started to thaw,” he teases, turning to face me. “I imagine it would take someone entirely irresistible to do that.”
I shove him, but he catches my hand, laughing, his fingers wrapping around mine.
In one stubborn motion, he tugs both of our hands to his chest. The sudden shift drags me across the cold stone, narrows the gap between us.
Jude’s eyes look more like stars this close, softer.
Part of me waits for the usual unease to surface, to send prickles down my spine and swallow the warmth from my veins.
But that anger, that rattle of disgust, never surfaces. Only a rush that skitters up my veins, a feathery feeling that flickers in my chest when he tucks a loose lock of hair behind my ear. In spite of the bitter chill, Jude’s skin feels like he’s been standing over a fire for hours.
And I think maybe I’m done fighting. I don’t want to fight the weight of Jude’s arm falling over my shoulders, the warmth like summer sun that encircles me and pulls me into his chest, or the easy way he tucks his chin into my hair.
“Alistaire?”
I crane my neck up, waiting for another biting remark about that ice-cold heart of mine.
Instead, he says, “Why are you so angry? Really.”
Defensiveness rises in my shoulders, but this time, I catch it and coax the sharp words back down my throat.
I’ve been asking myself the same question.
“I don’t fit properly anywhere.” The words take a moment to find.
“And it doesn’t feel fair. Like I’m this badly cut piece of a puzzle that doesn’t fit with the others. ”
Jude considers my words, leans his head back into the wall. His chest rises and falls for several beats, the timbre of his voice lowering. “If you have to saw all your edges to fit, you’re probably in the wrong puzzle.” He looks down at me. “And no offense, but you have a lot of edges.”
“Do you ever feel that way?” I press. “Like the person you are doesn’t fit.”
“I’m an actor, Alistaire.” He laughs. “I spend most of my days pretending to be someone I’m not. None of us really belong anywhere.” Then he smiles, and for once, it isn’t a smirk or a telling grin. It’s just a smile. “But life is worth finding the right puzzle.”
I press the tips of my fingers to where my mark used to be, unsure I fit in any of them now anyway.
I don’t have any idea where I belong. “I think maybe you’re right.
” The words escape my mouth unexpectedly, but I’ve thought them through.
I’ve thought them through a lot. “The North—it isn’t all good.
” And in spite of what I’ve been taught every day of my life, I add, “And maybe you aren’t all bad. ”
He meets my gaze, and I spy something more than the typical pride and mischief behind his eyes. It almost looks like relief. “Alistaire,” he begins. “There’s something I need to tell—”
He pauses, chokes like he’s swallowed gravel.
Then he clutches his throat, like he can’t breathe, and I sit up, concerned.
“Jude?” For once, I hope he’s just being dramatic.
“I need to—” He gasps for air between coughs, each more vicious than the last. I press a hand to his chest, where gold has begun to bleed through the white of his shirt. His heart is staggering between beats, labored and uneven.
All the color has drained from his face by the time his phantom fit ends, but it leaves his voice a thin rasp.
“It’s almost over,” is all he says, fading like he can’t keep his eyes open anymore. The light around him dims like a candle flickering in the wind. “We’re almost done.”