Act III Scene II
This musty cell turns out to be a fine place to stew over my plan. One I won’t be able to do anything about if Jude and I are both executed today.
Not that I can think clearly with Eleutheraen cuffs chafing against my wrists.
My head swims as I lean it against the cool cell wall.
That small sip of Sil’s tonic still burns in my throat with a vengeance that made the journey here horrendously dizzying.
Enough so that I’m not actually entirely certain where I am.
If a single drop of Eleutheraen gold could neutralize the Craft in me, I shudder to think what more would do.
A thought occurs to me, and I reach into my pocket to extract the vial hidden there, trying to remember the last words Galen spoke when he passed it between us.
It’s Eleutheraen gold. Pure, judging by the label—no dilution. I can’t fathom how he got the money for such a thing. It feels like a message, one I’m not sure how to decrypt.
I turn my attention to the cell across from mine, seething. It’s empty.
Until the door shrieks open and two men pile in, leading a third. At once, I’m on my feet.
Jude walks primly into his cell as if two heavily armed guards aren’t dragging him by the elbows. The cell door slams and the guards vanish, leaving us mostly to darkness.
In a breath, I cross my cell and grip hold of the bars separating me from Jude. “How do you know my name?” I demand, my nails biting into the rust.
Without so much as wincing, Jude answers, “How could I not? The world may not recognize you under all the glitter and gold, but I saw you the night you wandered into the Playhouse. You had his face.”
Suspicions confirmed, I feel my chest tighten. “Michail’s.” My father’s.
He sneers at the name. “That’s the one.”
The admission slices through me. My muscles lock, waiting for the punch line. For Jude to look up, laugh, and apologize for making such a cruel joke. But no punch line comes.
Jude knows who I am. He’s known since the day I walked into the Playhouse and lied to me every day since. My mind clings to disbelief, claws for something—anything—to contradict that it was all a sham. This bond between us more than my imagination.
“Gene Hunt. She ties into all of this.” My eyes narrow, accusing. “She knew my name, too,” I breathe. Gene recognized me. “Did she know my father?”
“We all had the misfortune of meeting him.” He huffs. “Peacemaker.”
“Did you kill him?” Jude says nothing. Nausea gathers in my throat. “My father,” I repeat, certain I don’t want the answer. “Did you kill him.”
He raises his chin, bares his teeth. “I’d do it a hundred times over, Riven.”
The shadows clear from my vision. Whatever rose-colored gauze I’d cast over Jude dissipates. He is what he is. A Player. Players always lie.
Somehow, I let myself forget. This is my fault.
Before I can swallow my anger, I push on, frantically reaching for answers and throwing out the first one that makes a little sense. “Did you love her? Gene?”
Jude looks like he might explode with laughter. “No, Riven. I’d go as far as to say the two of us didn’t get along.” He rolls his eyes. “She’d fall in love with anything.”
Anything. The degrading jab sparks a new, awful thought.
“Michail,” I whisper, shocked, the pieces falling together like broken pottery. Part of me has wondered since the night I saw Gene, saw my name on her lips, like she knew who I was. “My father—he loved her.”
Jude says nothing. But his face tells me everything.
My mind reels. A picture begins to take shape. Gene took her own life—onstage in front of thousands. The night Michail was found dead outside the Playhouse. She died, and then Michail wasn’t far behind.
“You killed Gene, too, then,” I conclude, visualizing her notorious onstage suicide.
“Whoa, now.” Jude raises his hands in defense. “I didn’t put anything in that cup she drank from. I just didn’t help suspend her reality when she changed her mind.” He throws me a look. “People often change their minds when they’re dying, wouldn’t you say?”
I draw a hand to where my mark used to be, defensive.
“You’re right, though.” Jude leans his head back to the wall.
“That put me in a tough spot, Gene dying. I never competed with her in the arena, never rightfully claimed my crown as Lead Player. Her role was given to me by default. Some even thought she did it to spare me—to pity me.” He avoids looking at me.
“I have a reputation to fix, Riven. I hope you can understand.”
Then it all snaps into place.
I’m not a prisoner. I’m a trophy.
“You weren’t trying to get out of the Great Dionysia.
You never planned to let me go after trapping me.
” My accusations coil inside me, then all come out at once.
“You wanted to kill me in the arena. In front of everyone. Not in spite of me being a marked but because I’m marked.
Daughter of the Peacemaker, killed in front of an audience. ”
“Well, there’s no need to make yourself sound like a sacrificial lamb,” Jude says. “Death is death; we all do it.”
He never meant to let me go. I’m his key to solidifying his place as Lead Player, to going down in history for killing the first marked Player before an audience of thousands. In the name of his home, destroyed by the North.
Vengeance and triumph and glory all in one fell swoop.
“Was it you?” I blurt. “The night I entered the Playhouse, the night of the casting call. I was attacked. There was a voice—it was singing, and it…” I blink, remembering my attackers. The blood. Right before Sil walked out. “The voice stopped them.”
“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you,’” says Jude.
Gods. He saw me before I even entered the Playhouse. I was an opportunity he seized. “You’re—” My voice breaks, full of fury. A knot forms in my throat. “You are so selfish.”
“I’m an actor,” he says, but there’s hesitation there. Then he shuts his eyes tight. “I didn’t mean for it to go like this.”
I run through everything in my head, only in a different light this time. It all looks different now. “Destroying my mark wasn’t to save me from dying. It was to keep me alive long enough to kill me in the arena,” I accuse.
He winces. “It was, but Riven—”
“You didn’t come back when Dorian took me because you cared. You did it because you want to be the one to slay me. In front of an audience. All for your precious reputation.”
And I fell for it. I have been suspicious of Jude since the moment I laid eyes on him, and he still fooled me. My breaths come faster, my vision shaking with each admission he utters.
“Riven, please, I don’t—”
“Was it a trick, saying that you’d release me? Just a false promise to get me back here?”
“I don’t—”
“And if I refused, would you have just dragged me back here anyway?”
“I don’t know!” he shouts, gold flaring in his eyes, the words echoing off the stone. He reels in his voice. “Riven, listen—”
I’m not listening. All I can think is how utterly absurd and desperate I must be to have believed Jude saw me as more than just the cursed daughter of the Peacemaker. No, Jude is too clever. He saw a weakness, a vulnerability to exploit, and he went for it.
What the hell was I thinking? That Jude had feelings for me? I really have lost it.
Mattia was right. All he knows is winning.
“Riven, please. Would you get out of your head and listen? I am sorry,” Jude calls through the bars into my cell. “There are things you don’t know.”
“And luring me into a damned bargain, to break a curse you put on me—”
“Curse! Riven.” Now he laughs, shaking his head. “Look at you. What curse?”
“My—” I freeze, eyes flickering down to my hands.
The nails that fell off have grown back.
The puckering veins have vanished from my wrists, replaced by shimmering gold and strong cords of muscle.
But most of all: I can feel everything. That eerie numbness, that unforgiving ice that courses through my blood, has vanished.
It happened so gradually, I didn’t even notice.
“Riven,” Jude says, breaking me from my stupor. “If you trust anything of me, then let it be that I’m sorry.”
My laugh bounces against the rusted ceilings above us. “Now you’re sorry,” I say, gesturing widely at our current situation.
“You may not believe me. I expect you won’t, and you shouldn’t. I’m full of Craft and lies. It is all I know. But I swear to Dionysus, Riven, I am sorry. You aren’t—” Jude blows out a breath. “You aren’t what I expected you to be.”
I reach for my rage but come up empty. There’s just hurt.
“Well,” I say at him. “You are exactly what I expected you to be.”