But something in me defiantly utters the words, “Iam.”
SIL: “You are not,Riven! Michail planted you.Fifteen years ago, he planted you, a Player in the costume of an innocent child, in his own family. Where you’d grow up in a city that would have no reason to suspect you of being anything more than a troubled daughter.”
I blink a few times. The words sound right. But everything in me rejects them. That’s not who I am. I desperately grasp on to that part of me, grapple for pieces of my identity slipping out of reach. Riven Hesper. Daughter of the Peacemaker.
Hesper.Daughter.
I’m neither.
RIVEN: “Why?” The word spears out of my throat. It’s the only one I can manage.
SIL: “We lost access to half of Theatron after being forced into that damned treaty the North is so fond of.Halfour audience—for five hundred years! And the North, they used that time, learned to shield their minds. Build their walls. Marks eventually took root, spread. We were losing too much ground.”
This has been a plan. A long one.
“The treaty would expire. The dust would settle, but if we were to ever win the North, take back the stage that belongs rightfully to the Playhouse, we would need to be tactical. Not by war or by bloodshed. What would that get us? An audience of corpses!” He shrugs. “There is no power to be had over the dead.”
“And so you sent me,” I say, betrayed. By Sil or by myself, I’m not sure.
I look at my hands, then drop them to my sides, guilt falling heavily over me. It hurts to think. Like I’ve been sitting at the tip of an iceberg my entire life and have just dipped underneath the surface to find what happened before my name was Riven. And everything underneath is dark and cold and terrifying.
Sil raises his chin. “Tell me who you are.”
RIVEN: “My name is Riven Hesper.” I answer defiantly, but as I go, my words slow and shift. Not into what I am but what I’m supposed to be. The part I play. “Daughter of the Peacemaker. I come to the Playhouse and eventually give in to my love for Craft. I kill Jude in the arena and win the Great Dionysia. I win audiences over by the masses.” I pull in a breath, the realization taking its hold on me at long last. “I am a bridge that opens the gates to all of Theatron.”
“Good,” says Sil. “Now, tell me who you really are.”
The silence lingers between us until the thing under my skin breaks it. Gold rushes through my veins and blazes bright in my eyes, casting a brilliant glow over my vision.
A second voice, one that doesn’t sound like mine, speaks. And it is horrible.
“I am the first Player,” I say. “Formed from the well of Mount Eleutherae. I was cast in the role of Riven Hesper fifteen years ago to take back the North.”
I’m not their hero. I never was. I can’t save them from the Craft that poisons their minds.
I am the poison. I am the Craft.
Act III: Scene XI
Sil claps, a proud smile on his lips.
I internally strangle the thing beneath my skin, shoving it deeper and deeper before it can resurface again. But the Player underneath is awake now, aware. It fights me back. For a blink, I struggle to remember my name, grasping at my memories like straws.
“My only Player I would trust with such a role. And you played itwell. You nearly broke my old heart when you showed up looking like you did.”
I stare back down at the page crumpled on the floor beside the others. At Jude’s first words to me. “These aren’t records,” I say. “They’re written before they happen. All of it. It was scripted.”
The Script. The book that rests like a breathing entity in Sil’s hands. Director and playwright. Some distant memory hovers at the edges of my mind: of reading the script for this story many years ago. Of signing on for this role.
The role of Riven Hesper. I wanted this. Or, the thing inside me did.
“That can’t be.” Denial throttles my mind. “My father—”
“Michail is not your father,” Sil interrupts. “He was a mortal and a traitor to the North you seem to love so much.”
Dorian’s comment races back to me, chills my blood.
Your Player-worshipping traitor of a father.
