“Whoa, now.” Jude raises his hands in defense. “I didn’t put anything in that cup she drank from. I just didn’t help suspend her reality when she changed her mind.” He throws me a look. “People often change their minds when they’re dying, wouldn’t you say?”
I draw a hand to where my mark used to be, defensive.
“You’re right, though.” Jude leans his head back to the wall. “That put me in a tough spot, Gene dying. I never competed with her in the arena, never rightfully claimed my crown as Lead Player. Her role was given to me by default. Some even thought she did it to spare me—topityme.” He avoids looking at me. “I have a reputation to fix, Riven. I hope you can understand.”
Then it all snaps into place.
I’m not a prisoner. I’m a trophy.
“You weren’t trying to get out of the Great Dionysia. Youneverplanned to let me go after trapping me.” My accusations coil inside me, then all come out at once. “Youwantedto kill me in the arena. In front of everyone. Not in spite of me being a marked butbecauseI’m marked. Daughter of the Peacemaker, killed in front of an audience.”
“Well, there’s no need to make yourself sound like a sacrificial lamb,” Jude says. “Death is death; we all do it.”
He never meant to let me go. I’m his key to solidifying his place as Lead Player, to going down in history for killing the first marked Player before an audience of thousands. In the name of his home, destroyed by the North.
Vengeance and triumph and glory all in one fell swoop.
“Was it you?” I blurt. “The night I entered the Playhouse, the night of the casting call. I was attacked. There was a voice—it was singing, and it…” I blink, remembering my attackers. The blood. Right before Sil walked out. “The voice stopped them.”
“I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you,’” says Jude.
Gods. He saw me before I even entered the Playhouse. I was an opportunity he seized. “You’re—” My voice breaks, full of fury. A knot forms in my throat. “You are soselfish.”
“I’m anactor,” he says, but there’s hesitation there. Then he shuts his eyes tight. “I didn’t mean for it to go like this.”
I run through everything in my head, only in a different light this time. It all looks different now. “Destroying my mark wasn’t to save me from dying. It was to keep me alive long enough to kill me in the arena,” I accuse.
He winces. “It was, but Riven—”
“You didn’t come back when Dorian took me because you cared. You did it becauseyouwant to be the one to slay me. In front of an audience. All for your preciousreputation.”
And I fell for it. I have been suspicious of Jude since the moment I laid eyes on him, and he still fooled me. My breaths come faster, my vision shaking with each admission he utters.
“Riven, please, I don’t—”
“Was it a trick, saying that you’d release me? Just a false promise to get me back here?”
“I don’t—”
“And if I refused, would you have just dragged me back here anyway?”
“I don’t know!”he shouts, gold flaring in his eyes, the words echoing off the stone. He reels in his voice. “Riven,listen—”
I’m not listening. All I can think is how utterly absurd and desperate I must be to have believed Jude saw me as more than just the cursed daughter of the Peacemaker. No, Jude is too clever. He saw a weakness, a vulnerability to exploit, and he went for it.
What the hell was I thinking?That Jude hadfeelingsfor me? I really have lost it.
Mattia was right. All he knows is winning.
“Riven, please. Would you get out of your head and listen? I amsorry,” Jude calls through the bars into my cell. “There are things you don’t know.”
“And luring me into a damned bargain, to break a curseyouput on me—”
“Curse! Riven.” Now he laughs, shaking his head. “Look at you.What curse?”
“My—” I freeze, eyes flickering down to my hands. The nails that fell off have grown back. The puckering veins have vanished from my wrists, replaced by shimmering gold and strong cords of muscle. But most of all: I canfeeleverything. That eerie numbness, that unforgiving ice that courses through my blood, has vanished.
It happened so gradually, I didn’t even notice.
