I plant my feet on the marble, pressing my lips together, unsure what to say.
TITUS: “Because you might as well have.”
In a single movement, Titus throws Galen down the steps and runs at me, going for the hilt of his blade. I have barely enough time to register the awful sound of Galen’s back hitting the marble, or the shine of the weapon aimed for my throat, before Jude slides between us, shoving him back hard. “Titus—not now.”
Titus recovers, looks at Jude with eyes like hellfire. “Oh, I’llgetto you.”
A heightened awareness sets in Jude’s shoulders at the invitation of a fight, one I’m not sticking around for.
TITUS: “Perhaps someone can tell me”—he addresses Sil but points at Jude—“why thefuckhe can leave?”
I turn, my feet tearing down the steps toward my brother.
PARRISH: “I’d like to know that, too.” Her voice, a mild and sweet melody most of the time, sharpens into something cunning, lethal.
“Silenus, control your Players,” I hear someone call out.
My knees smash into marble at the bottom, on the landing. I reach for Galen, who’s struggling to push himself up. “Are you all right?” I whisper.
“No one?” I hear Titus shout from behind us. “No one can tell me whywehave to stay in here and Jude can apparently leave whenever the hell he wants?” Titus heaves a breath. Then: “Open the gates.Open them. Now.”
SIL: “Titus, standdown.”
“Silenus, control your—”
TITUS:“Let meout.”
I ignore the pounding of Titus’s nearing steps as he races down the stairs, Mattia, Parrish, and Arius behind him. Sil is shouting something indiscernible.
“Galen,” I press, ignoring the crowds watching us closely, like this is the grand finale of some sick play. “Can you walk?”
My brother coughs, the wind knocked out of him. His head is bleeding—he must have hit it when he fell.
Beyond us, the Playhouse gates scream open. Titus has apparently reached them.
“Come in.Everyone, come in!” Titus is screaming now, his feet apparently unable to pass the threshold. “If we can’t go out there, you might as well come inside! Who the hell cares, if Jude here can break all the rules?”
For some reason, the marching of foreign boots entering Playhouse grounds makes my hackles rise. I push the noise out, turn my attention back to Galen, to the brownish bruise painted across his jaw.
“What happened?” I whisper to him.
“Riv,” he begins, grasping at my shoulders. I almost think he’s going to hug me, when I realize he can’t. Not in front of all these people. For my sake. “You look—” He coughs a laugh. “Terrifying.”
My chest eases when he makes a joke, all while looking straight into the gold of my eyes without shuddering in disgust. Then, without warning, my brother hoists himself up and grips my collar, pulling me toward him so abruptly, I let out a startled cry. Some part of me expects a blade to cut right through my rib cage.
Instead, the weight of a small item drops into my coat pocket.
“Riven,” Galen says, determined, hands on my face. He dips his head in a single, subtle nod, his eyes communicating something in a language I don’t understand. But still, there’s a kindness in his gaze that edges on proud. A gaze that hovers over most of my memories and always promised to protect us both from Craft and Players.
And then it’s gone. His eyes wipe clean, blank.
His jaw slackens. Galen’s weight slumps onto me. I focus downward, where the tip of a blade protrudes from his chest. It vanishes, and Galen falls out of my grip onto the marble.
I peer upward to where Eleni stands just behind him, an Eleutheraen blade in her hands.
Intermission: Scene XIII
My mind refuses to make sense of the blade she holds.Myblade. My father’s. The one left in my bag when Jude and I fled the cabin of Dorian’s hunters.
