Act III Scene XXXIII
My legs grow heavier with each step, the Player beneath my skin alive, awake, furious, grasping for control but no longer able to puppet me so easily.
When I emerge into the hall outside the arena, Compelled spectators seem to be making frantic exits through every mirror portal in sight.
And if every mirror is open, that means at least one thing so far has gone according to plan.
Sil will have fled to the Greenroom, where he expects to find the other Players.
But I flee to the lobby instead, where the Players will have actually gone.
Hopefully.
I spy Arius’s long golden hair first, and relief washes over my very bones as Parrish pokes her head out from behind him while Mattia and Titus wander in from the opposite side.
“For the record,” Titus calls at me as I tear into the lobby. He cracks his knuckles. “Opening all the mirrors at once is a fucking nightmare.”
I fly into his arms with a hug before doing a brief head count.
Not just of Titus, Arius, Mattia, and Parrish—but of Cicero and Cora from the costume wing.
And of the ten nameless crew members dressed in black and masked with deliberately plain faces, five of whom played the roles of my fellow auditionees only weeks ago and have been resting in the temporary, unnamed roles of stage crew ever since.
All of whom I paid a visit to last night after my attempt to get Jude on board failed miserably.
At my confession, I watched as the memories of their lives, of who they were, who they are, and who they will be next crashed over their eyes, as the shared ache for home shimmered in their faces.
Each made an agreement with me, and for a moment, the victory of that was enough.
But Jude’s absence might as well be a presence in and of itself.
“All here?” I take notice of the clump of hair missing from the side of Titus’s scalp. Gold swells beneath it. He took the fourth wall break first, and maybe the hardest.
Parrish’s palms are lined with ripples of gold. There’s a chip in Arius’s nose.
“All who matter…and then some.” Titus nods at Parrish and the obscure jar of trinkets, rehearsal room keys, and what might be a live grasshopper resting in her hands. She shakes the jar at Titus and murmurs that she can take whatever props of hers she wants, then turns to me.
“Where is Jude?” Parrish asks, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. “I thought he’d come.”
My eyes burn. I thought he’d be with me, too. I felt certain he would change his mind. With a small shake of my head, I say, “Let’s get out of here.”
I cast a fleeting glance at the clockface hanging grimly over us, its hands taunting me and indicating ten minutes until midnight, which marks the end of the Great Dionysia.
My heart outpaces its ticking as the window on our freedom narrows.
Our contracts will seal the gates once more at the stroke of twelve, keep our feet from crossing the threshold until the next one. Sil’s leash on us, ready to tighten.
Hurrying toward the grand entryway, I throw open the Playhouse doors.
They crash loudly into the night as I descend the steps.
A waiting crowd outside screams their surprise, gathered at the gates and anticipating the celebration of a victor—not the chaos of thousands flooding back through the mirrors in desperate escape as cracks climb the sides of the Playhouse.
No one understands what the last few hours have meant for the Playhouse, for Theatron.
Only that something has gone deeply wrong.
Taking my place at the front, I turn to watch my cast file down the steps.
Arius throws me a smile. I nod back, remembering our hushed conversation from the night before.
I followed you out of the well, Arius said.
I will follow you back in. He took to the idea fastest, keen to mend all we’ve broken.
I can’t help but think his short fables of wisdom and consequence will return to find eager ears. He tells them so well.
Parrish, whose tales I expect children have missed dearly, hops down the steps, filing off to my left. You know, she said last night, stroking a stuffed animal as if it were alive, I’ve grown sick of this place. A little cage-like, don’t you think?
Titus grins at me, though gold has torn through the left side of his smile. His stories make me laugh the most. Well, Riven, he said. It’s been a pleasure performing with you. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.
Mattia gives me a resolute nod on her way down. I have no doubt the world will once again fall in love with the sagas I’ve heard her craft—epic and sweeping adventures that keep even me on the edge of my seat after all this time.
I expected her to fight me, to be the hardest to bring back to the reality of what we are. But ever since her run-in with our scripts hidden in Gene’s portrait, her skin has thinned, her costume becoming heavy and worn after hundreds of years wearing it.
She only looked at me and said, He won’t go, you know. Jude.
We move to the landing under the watchful eyes of a baffled audience screaming for our attention, the moon high and bright as I raise my face to the sky. Gold sinks over my vision as my cast readies to move the Playhouse one last time.
The ground rumbles violently as the theatre sinks into the ground, black mist billowing over us and obscuring the world beyond the gates.
The air strains taut as the wails of the audience fade.
Above, the sky darkens until we’re fully immersed, left with nothing but the golden light streaming from the Playhouse windows.
At the sound of the doors opening, I turn and freeze at the figure tearing from the doors like a hellhound. Jude.
For a moment, a weight releases from my chest. He’s changed his mind. He’s here. We can all—
“Riven, stop,” Jude shouts, his voice like a crack of thunder as he races down the steps.
At that word, at the fury that sharpens it, my hope gutters and slips away. Something between fear and dread takes its place as he closes in, the angles of his face morphing monstrously.
But the theatre is already rising up again, the ground rumbling and snapping as the Playhouse reaches its final resting place. Around us, the shapes of hills and burned trenches materialize, the sky a dusty gray.
All that remains of the real Eleutherae. Home.
The moment Jude recognizes our surroundings, fire ignites behind his eyes, so overrun with Craft that I can barely see the whites of them.
As the Playhouse settles, he turns on me, his face full of dread. Not just as he takes in Eleutherae but as he notices the rest of our cast. His eyes dart from them back to me. “What have you done?”
I lower my hands, step forward, and, in spite of all my resolve, of knowing he meant it last night when he refused my idea, I reach for him. “You can come with us. Please.”
“It isn’t that simple,” he pleads between uneven breaths. “You don’t know what will happen if we leave.”
“Maybe.” I look beyond him, at the Playhouse doors at his back. “But we know what will happen if we stay.”
“Riven,” he tries again, his tone softer now, playing a familiar melody on my heartstrings, like the right words will mend everything. I wish they would. “I am not your enemy. Surely you remember that.”
I press my lips together, unsure either of us knows what we are to each other in this moment.
“What I remember,” I say, “is growing up in a world without music. Without story, without color. Without anything that I am made of. And it isn’t fair—to me or to anyone.” My breath catches. “Maybe if I’d never left the Playhouse. Maybe if I never learned what we took—”
“You won’t fix the world this way.” He moves forward, and I move back. The child I saw in the mirror flickers through my mind. “We can’t. And even if we could, this world wouldn’t deserve it.”
I wish the anger would come back, but none is there in his face, just a winking ember of hope.
Something in me wavers, grabs hold of his words and starts to examine each one—because I think he’s right.
I can’t fix the world. I don’t know how.
I don’t even know how to fix all the damage we’ve already caused.
“I don’t need to save the world,” I whisper, and as his expression breaks, I force the next words from my throat. “But I won’t be used to destroy it, either.”
That ember of hope goes out, and something dark ignites in his eyes instead, alive with unholy rage as his hands shift with light, maybe to try and order our cast inside, maybe to move the Playhouse away from here—I’m not sure, and I brace for a fight.
But as the mist clears, Jude goes still, his eyes moving beyond me to our home. Eleutherae.
It’s not the paradise I conjured in the arena.
It’s burned and vile. The flowers are flat and withered, choked by dry weeds.
The sky drifts overhead in ugly shades of dark gray, mist too thick to see the stars.
No matter how many years pass, Eleutherae can’t heal.
Not when all of its Craft has been drained, stolen.
His jaw tightens as he turns to take in the Playhouse behind him, the hairline fractures webbing up its sides.
And I see it as he lowers his brow, tilts his head—that inkling of doubt. He drops his shoulders, looks to his cast. “All of you?” he calls out, his voice hoarse.
Silence answers.
I’m not sure what exactly does it. If it’s the twisted words throttling the air between us. The crumbling theatre, empty of our cast members’ laughter. Or maybe it’s the audience of one still inside, controlling our worlds with the tip of a pen.
There are worse things than being trapped, Jude told me once. It’s safer.
“Nothing bought with fear is worth having,” I say quietly.
Jude steps back like I’ve slapped him, disbelief drawing his expression taut, as if he’s replaying everything that led to this moment and can’t puzzle out where he went wrong.
Until his eyes fall on me, then drift to the closed gates beyond, and finally, finally it dawns on him. He lowers his chin, like he’s about to nod, to speak something, anything—
His expression breaks, pinching with pain. Jude lurches, grasps at his chest like he can’t breathe. At the same time, my spine goes stiff as steel.
He doesn’t have to say what’s wrong. I feel it, too. A pull in my blood to go back into the Playhouse, a visceral warning that we’ve all run our storylines rogue.
Sil. Sil and the Script.
“He’s coming,” is all Jude gasps out, and before I can respond, he races past me, storming for the gates.
The world seems to groan beneath our feet as he throws them open to Eleutherae, where there’s no audience to greet us. “Go,” he says, turning to us. No one moves. “All of you!” he roars. “Go.”
The stillness breaks at the command. I draw a breath of relief as my cast startles and turns for the exit without arguing, filing quickly through the gates, where they’ll begin their short trek to the well on top of the mountain.
Mattia throws a questioning look over her shoulder at me as she departs, and I nod. Go. Right behind you.
I turn to Jude, expecting him to follow, but he’s already tearing back toward the steps.
His stride falters, then stops short when he reaches me, meets my eyes like he’s looking at them for the last time.
“I will not apologize for loving you, dear heart,” he says.
“But I hope you’ll forgive me for having done it so dreadfully. ”
The words are as cutting as they are a salve, but there’s something unspoken just beneath them that makes my heart plummet. “Jude, why are you saying—”
“For the same reason we’ve never made it out.” He holds my gaze, decision made. “I’ve tried. I’ve read this story a hundred times.”
“We’ve—” I uselessly grasp for my memories, but they’re blurred at the edges. “We’ve tried to leave before?”
“He’ll call us back so long as he holds the Script.
One of us was always going to have to stay behind.
” Jude breathes, looks longingly at our cast as they begin their walk to the well, and those eyes that were full of fury a moment ago soften, cloud with fear like he’s sitting front row at a play of his own nightmares, like he knew he was always cast to be left behind.
“You were right to call me a coward all that time ago, Riven. But, gods, I love trying to prove you wrong.”
It was me who led us through those gilded doors at the beginning of all of this, he told me. I will be the last to walk out of them.
“I’ll hold him off as long as I can.” His voice is steady as he drops his hands, but the shallow breaths rising in his chest betray him, the color draining from his face as he looks to the waiting doors of the Playhouse, beckoning him, and two words ring like a bell through my head.
Not yet.
But before the thought reaches my lips, he runs back up the stairs, stopping only to look over his shoulder, something unreadable in his expression. “Be free, Riven.”
Then he’s gone, vanishing inside the Playhouse.
And all of a sudden, it’s silent.
I stare at those gleaming doors, which hang open like the jaws of a beast, and I almost think my shadow has followed his back in.
I won’t leave you behind, Jude once told me.
“Damn it all, Jude,” I mutter under my breath, stubbornly changing course as those two words crawl along my spine. Not yet. My legs ache as I run up the steps of the Playhouse and fly through the entrance just as a loud, brassy song vibrates through the ground.
The chime of the grand Playhouse clock declares midnight.
Behind me, the gates seal.