“Here I was, thinking Players didn’t fear anything,” I say, pulling the first clumsy suture through while he does his very best to appear sad and noble. I roll my eyes, wondering if he was this melodramatic before becoming immortal.
“Where’d you learn this anyway?” he asks miserably. “Or do you just specialize in victimizing poor Players like me?”
The brown sutures leave a trail of uneven, spiderlike stitches across his skin, which Jude is none too pleased about. “I was going to study healing. At school. Spent so much time looking for ways to fix whatever was happening to me, I thought I’d be good at it.” I omit that I’ve never actually had to stitch anything up before, since I’m sure he’d dive out the nearest window. Becoming a healer sounded fine enough, but I never imagined needing to mend a Player.
I never imagined one showing up to help me, either.
I tug on the needle and thread, forming another misshapenX, and Jude groans—from pain or vanity, I’m not sure.
“We do, by the way,” he says a moment later. “Players. We get scared, too. And maybe you’re right to call me a coward for it.”
I flinch, pausing with the needle raised again. That accusation ran out of my mouth a little impulsively, but I never expected him to agree with it. The astonishment must read on my face because he adds, “You don’t believe me.”
An angry lump forms in my throat, bitterness festering under my skin—toward him, toward the Players I grew up fearing. Toward whichever one broke my family. “I don’t see what Players have to be afraid of.”
His attention moves to his open hand. He closes it into a fist, lets it fall open again. “I didn’t want Lead Player, never wanted the standing that comes with it. My entire life these days, it seems, comes down to reputation.” He exhales.
“You didn’t want to be Lead Player?” I reply, startled by his sincerity and even more curious. I put my focus back on aiming the needle through his flesh and pull it through. He’s the face of the Playhouse, granted more power and prestige than his castmates. Sil seems to rely on him like a second-in-command.
He doesn’t even notice the pinch of the thread now as I sew up the last of the wound, seemingly lost to his own thoughts. “I came to the Playhouse like you did. Angry and powerless. Hell-bent on vengeance at the time. The worst part is I got what I wanted.”
I shudder at the idea, giving up your humanity for revenge. “Is it worth living in a cage?”Forever,I don’t add.Until someone kills you for your place.
“Well, it’s a verynicecage,” he defends. “Nicer when someone isn’t rattling the bars of it, too.” He throws me a pointed look, and I snort. “There are worse things than being trapped.”
“I don’t think that’s true. It seems awful.”
A sharp edge of concern cuts into Jude’s expression, but it vanishes too quickly to be sure if I imagined it. “It’s safer,” is all he says.
Damn, that suture is crooked. He’s going to throw a fit about that later. But the flimsy flicker of the oil lamp on the table offers little light to see what I’m doing.
“Was it enough? To be able to let it go?” I snip the end of the thread and tie it off, then reach for a bandage. “Revenge.”
“I’m still waiting to find out.” Something about the way he says it sets a chill in the air.
Mattia’s warning calls to my mind.Be careful of Jude. All he knows is winning.
“Immortality takes from you,” he says. “It’s a slow taking. Andpower.Gods, power takes more. Power breaks you into pieces you never knew were there. It all comes at a cost.”
My hands work the bandage into a knot, a question on my tongue. “What was the cost?”
Jude watches the floor, blank. “Freedom.”
My mind conjures the gates of the Playhouse, that golden cage. All the Players kept inside like expensive birds. “Was it worth it?”
His eyes flicker up. “Life is a game of playing the cards you’re dealt and then justifying them so you can sleep at night.” He bites down on his jaw, like he didn’t mean to let those words escape.
“Doyou sleep at night?” I tease to lighten the moment, securing the bandage.
He tilts his head, a spark sliding behind his eyes. “What, are you looking to find out? My dressing room is usually unlocked, you know. You’re welcome anytime.”
I roll my eyes at him, but my pulse still skitters when he raises an eyebrow at me. Out of stitches and bandages, I drop my hands, twisting them in my lap, grateful for the small distraction when the lamp seems to burn through its last traces of oil, hissing and dimming.
“Come now, Alistaire, where’ve you gone? Surely you have a very clever comeback. This is our dance, yes? I try to lead and you step on my feet.”
I watch the curling trail of smoke from the oil lamp, opening my mouth to offer a retort—and am mortified to discover I am, in fact, out of them. So I settle for, “Are you always this insufferable?”
“Yes,” he states with a sly grin and leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Are you always this hardheaded?”
