Act III Scene XXXVIII
It feels like years ago now. Years since the first night I stepped into the Playhouse and Jude gave me its most important rule. Nyxene protects Sil above all else.
And for the first time, in every memory as anyone I have ever been, Sil looks terrified.
“Over here, love!” Jude shouts at Nyxene, gripping hold of Sil and dragging him backward. “Come this way. I’ll be dealt with first, yes?”
Do not—ever—lay a hand on Sil, Jude warned me. We can’t. Our contracts won’t allow us to kill him.
Jude can’t kill Sil. He can’t snap the neck that he hooks his arm around, can’t break the arm he uses to haul him toward the wings as the director thrashes and furiously bellows at Jude to release him.
But my heart plummets as I realize what Jude is doing. What he means to do.
Nyxene follows obediently, lured away.
He’s buying me time.
“No!” I push to my feet, bolting after Jude, but I can’t hear my own voice over the high-pitched growling of Nyxene’s shadows, the demonic clattering like a violent storm tearing through the Playhouse.
Roaring in Jude’s direction.
She will rip the marrow from your very bones.
As I tear across the stage, golden Craft blooms to the surface, so hot it scorches the soles of my feet, flooding the auditorium.
But the power isn’t mine. It’s Jude’s. He’s siphoning it, pulling every bit of Craft left in the grand illusion of the Playhouse. Gold oozes through the cracks of the stage like an open wound, rushing over the ground and toward its keeper in a brilliant tidal wave.
Immortality takes from you. His words ring loud in my head, snatch the breath from my lungs. And power. Gods, power takes more.
If Nyxene doesn’t kill him, pulling this much Craft into his body to try to shield himself from her will.
A twisted limb of shadow lurches into my path, and the marble between Jude and me shatters on impact. I scream, covering my eyes and searching for a way around the debris as Jude calls out, “Riven!”
I jerk my chin up, and my heart stumbles at the sight of strips of his skin peeling, melting. Craft burns through his blood and what’s left of his costume as he restrains Sil’s outraged attempts to break free.
Power breaks you into pieces you never knew were there, Jude told me once. It all comes at a cost.
Nyxene surges after him in sharp, twitching movements, her hissing whispers swelling into shrieks.
Through the light, Jude’s eyes burn like hellfire. “Script!”
The word slams into me, pushing me into action.
I whirl to where Sil dropped the Script to the ground, like all the answers will be written out on the floor around it. What does he mean? I can’t touch it. Gene did. She ripped pages out, and it did nothing.
Riven. Script. At those words, the world tilts. The fleeting image of Gene’s last moments—her very same last words—blazes across my mind. No. No. No—
Still, I grasp for the Script—but my vision scorches white, and I snatch my hand back. Damn it. Damn it.
My heart thunders in my chest. Jude bought me time. He bought me time, and I can’t waste it. But this is one of those instances where I sincerely wish Jude didn’t have unhinged confidence in my capabilities. Because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to save either of us.
What feels like a blizzard hails over the stage, freezing my hands as Nyxene screeches past.
I jerk my head up, like I’ll be able to decode what the hell he means through looks alone, only to see shadows hacking through the golden veil of Craft Jude is desperately wedging between himself and Nyxene, every muscle in his body straining with the effort.
Still, he won’t release Sil, dragging him farther.
A flash of terror scorches through me as a jagged claw emerges from the dark like an onyx blade.
And rips into Jude’s shoulder.
His scream slices through the air, unholy and otherworldly, shaking the foundations of the stage. Overhead, Craft bleeds down the walls, like the whole Playhouse cries with him.
At the call, I bolt across the stage without thinking, running at Jude and abandoning the Script—and whatever he meant—behind me.
But Nyxene is faster. One of those branch-like limbs lashes out, and a night-black talon slices at my neck. I choke, warmth flooding down my collarbones as I grab at my throat, gasping as Craft pours out from the wound—
When my hand brushes something. A chain hanging there at my neck.
A vial.
Script.
My world freezes.
I turn and face the Script, grabbing the Eleutheraen gold at my neck. A little prop Sil didn’t know I had. The chain clatters to the stage as I tear it from my throat, and I feel the earth rumbling beneath me as I run.
Ripping those pages out won’t change what’s been written. But maybe—
Jude lets out another wretched cry, and the sound nearly drains what willpower I have left to keep my legs from locking as I bolt in the opposite direction across the platform and land before the Script lying open on the ground.
It thrums with power, brimming with every character we have ever played. With every story we have ever performed.
Maybe Galen was right. Maybe the world is unfair, and maybe fate cannot be escaped.
But maybe—just maybe, it can be rewritten. It has to be.
Jude shouts something, but it barely sounds like him. I can’t even make out what the words are—they break, cut into a scream that rakes nails down my heart, a guttural snarl heralding the end of a losing battle.
I look up, and Sil’s eyes blaze back from the darkness as Jude pulls the two of them deeper into the wings. My director’s enraged gaze locks on the Script, which is out of his reach.
I am finally out of Sil’s reach.
I clutch the vial like a sword between us and look to Jude one last time, finding him in between seconds of dying golden light as Nyxene shreds into the last of his Craft. But the sight it illuminates cleaves whatever is left of me in half.
Thin scraps of skin stretch over Jude’s face like he’s wearing a brilliant mask, one of his eyes coated in a filmy layer of gold so thick, I wonder if he can see through it. The left side of his body is torn in devastating, gruesome layers, where Nyxene shredded through flesh.
My hands shake as I twist the cap off the vial. This Script was the possession of a god. I don’t know that there’s any way to destroy such a thing, a power strong enough to raise a Playhouse and trap us into it.
But if it has the power to cage us, I have to believe maybe it can free us, too.
It will. Fate herself will have to deal with my wrath if it doesn’t.
As Jude drags Sil backstage, luring Nyxene away, I raise the vial, conveying the question with a single warning look.
His eyes lock on mine, and his words peek through my memory as he nods once, and as the light around him dims.
To die is to be forgotten.
Flickers.
I imagine the world will never forget me.
Goes out.
The last thing I see is the Finders Keepers ring on his finger, glinting in the darkness as I say, “Find me.”
And tip the vial over the Script.