Before I can break it, my mother’s laugh burbles from down the hall, sending a chill along my spine. She has both emerged from her room and islaughing.
A second, lower voice answers my mother’s, and my eyes widen.
Stuffing the letter into my pocket, I hurry down the hall, a smile stretching across my face. “Galen?”
“Riv!” my brother calls back.
Galen has our aunt Cassia’s wolfish grin and our mother’s chestnut hair. He makes no move to greet me, aware I enjoy hugs about as much as I enjoy having my nail beds ripped out.
“Twocoats today,” he comments, one eyebrow raised at my attire. “Isn’t that one mine?”
“It was,” I say with a grin. He left his old jacket after his last visit. It’s far too big, but thicker than my own.
The gold scar below his left eye stretches when he smiles. While my injuries from encountering a Player sank deep beneath my skin, Galen escaped with a two-inch scar that turned him into the stuff of legends at school. Proof that he “fought a Player and won.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Imposing on Mom for dinner at the moment,” he answers.
Ah. That explains the cooking.
Our mother rolls her eyes in his direction as she sets a plate on the counter, though even her feigned annoyance at Galen looks more like admiration. She’s doted on my brother since I can remember.
This doesn’t bother me. I like being doted on about as much as I like being touched. Still, I’ve never gotten used to the peculiar way our mother’s eyes go anywhereexceptme. Like I’m a ghost she can’t see. Occasionally, growing up, I’d catch her staring, lips pale. Then she’d just shake her head.You look so much like your father is all,she’d say before going back to pretending I don’t exist.
Galen always watched these interactions with his lips pressed together.Don’t mind her, he’d tell me.She just misses him.
I think all of Theatron misses him. An emissary of the council, my father was the North’s hope—our best shot at peace. That peace shattered the moment a Player threw his body from the Playhouse and left his blood to dry on the marble steps.
The Playhouse fled from the violent uproar that followed, and it hasn’t returned to the District of Dionysus—or ventured near the Cut—since.
Until now. And I’m guessing it’s not interested inpeace.
“Have something to eat, why don’t you?” Galen slides his plate toward me, probably to draw attention away from the fact that our mother only prepared dinner for one of us. “If you’re going to be taller than me, you might as well eat like I do,” he teases, though I only have my brother’s height beat by an inch as of this year. While Galen’s built like one of the massive statues in the District, I’m all overly long limbs and—well, that’s about all I know.
I push the plate back toward him, my stomach uneasy thanks to the palace of monsters that arrived this afternoon. “You’re home early,” I prompt.
“Business in the District. Seems like I got here just in time.” His expression tightens. “The Playhouse requested an audience with the council as soon as it arrived.”
Galen only graduated a year ago and was immediately granted a position on our mortal council’s board of advisers. It’s no secret that everyone expects him to fill our father’s role, to somehow mediate a new treaty to keep the Playhouse from the North, now that the old one is finally coming to an end.
Like clockwork, our mother excuses herself and vanishes upstairs. She always does when the Playhouse enters a conversation. Or when I enter a room.
My brother watches her go, the worry plain on his face.
I stare at him, stunned. “You mean…yousawthem?” I whisper. “The Players?”
“From afar—one of them.” He keeps his voice steady, but I know Galen too well. I sense the quiver of fear beneath his tone. “The council met with the director and Lead Player after they arrived. Said they wished to negotiate the terms of theircasting call.”
“Did you?” I ask, leaning in. “Negotiate?”
“What was there to discuss?” Galen laughs, but the sound is dry of any humor. “He’s as violent as they say, you know. Player Jude. Snapped a guard’s neck for stepping too close to Silenus. Announced he’d do the same to anyone who dares disrupt the casting call tonight. Said any talks of peace would wait until after it concluded.”
“Gods,” I say under my breath.
For creatures with such great egos, it must be deeply humbling for the Players to be governed by the mortals they once ruled over. Toneedus. Players require worship, attention. They rely on it to survive the way we mortals require food. Otherwise, they might as well wipe us all out.
But if they’re denied an audience altogether, gods know what they’ll do. Players are dangerous when they’re angry, but they’re godsdamnedlethalwhen they’re bored.
