“Or doesthatscare you, too?”
Jude’s eyes glint gold in the darkness, sweeping down to take in the curve of my lips, the set of my jaw, before flickering back up to mine. And for the first time, I wonder if what I’ve mistaken for hatred is just a mirror.
The thought sends me a step back. Then two more.
Jude’s gaze narrows on mine as my feet move away. “Fear does not make you a coward. Yielding to it does.”
Coward.The word cleaves through the hard shell of my skin, nestles under it. And starts to burn. Maybe I am a coward. I do like being miserable and alone. There’s safety in it, a certainty that no one can leave if there’s no one to lose in the first place.
And comfort—comfort in the certainty that Jude is terrible. ThatPlayersare terrible. Or there was until he paraded in and started shaking up all my carefully crafted convictions.
But it may be too late. Because as he turns to leave, I say something that does truly and deeply frighten me. “Stay.”
And I think he knows it, too. Because as he turns, sees both a question and its answer written across my face, he mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “Dear heart, I think you’ll ruin me.”
Whatever words he has left are lost to the wind as Jude storms furiously forward—
And crashes his mouth into mine, stealing the breath from my lungs. It isn’t a gentle kiss, not like the hand he slips carefully into my hair, not like the arm he coils around my waist. My mind wipes itself blank, clear as the white blanket of snow around us, the cold long forgotten beneath the burn of his touch. Whatever confusion and reservations still waver through me are lost to the roar of my own pulse as my hands find the collar of his shirt and pull him closer, kissing him back, just as foolish and reckless—
Until a shred of common sense bursts through the door of my mind.
What am I doing?
I tense, and Jude pulls away, his chest rising and falling. My own shock is mirrored in his expression as I clap a hand over my mouth. My heart races as I search for words in the air between us and come up empty-handed.
Around us, the forest holds its breath, waiting for someone—anyone—to break the silence.
Finally, Jude does.
“I don’t care that I’m going to pay dearly for that,” he says and, without explaining, walks off.
Intermission: Scene VIII
“Thank Dionysus!” Jude announces, throwing open the doors to a dark, run-down tavern with only a few patrons and even fewer lanterns.
I wonder what type of person finds themselves in such a place first thing in the morning. Though given that I’m one of them, who am I to judge?
“Your best wine, I thank you,” Jude declares, sliding a few gold pieces to the bartender, then collapsing onto a peeling stool that’s seen better days. His disguise is thinner than I think it should be: hair cropped short in a honey-blond color, eyes farther apart and masked in shades of blue. He’s either too tired or too lazy to bother disguising his frame and height.
I take the disguise as a comfort, because I don’t have a clue how to face the Jude I was arguing with an hour ago. Even though my mind has been replaying and overanalyzing it from fifteen different angles since then.
None of them make sense. None of them work with the pieces I have of who Jude is.
Worse, I’m not sure I want them to.
The man on the other side of the bar raises an eyebrow at the coin, and I don’t have time to ponder where on earth Jude evengotthat money before it’s plucked off the counter and replaced with a wooden cup filled with a deep-red hue.
“And one more thing,” Jude adds. “You wouldn’t happen to knowwherewe are, would you?”
Before suspicion can etch into the bartender’s face, I gesture to the wine and mutter, “It isn’t his first.”
“Cartonia,” the man replies with a thick accent and moves away before Jude can ask for a golden chalice instead.
I drop my head in my hands, the answer digging into my pride. We made it to Syrene, but I failed so extravagantly at delivering a Player to the council that I didn’t get us halfway to the meetup point.
“Well, Alistaire,” Jude says, swirling his cup. “We have quite the journey ahead of us. Four days’ walk, I’d say. Three if we’re lucky.”
“And I wish you the very best on it,” I say, ashamed by my complete and utter failure. “We’ll be parting ways shortly.” I know when to cut my losses.
