We both catch the emphasis on that last word.This.This is something I can heal from.
Abandoning our Script—that, I would not heal from. None of us would.
Alone, that is.
But I’m not alone anymore. I never have been.
What would it take?I wonder, looking at my cast.What would it cost to win our freedom?
My gaze falls on Jude, and I already know what it would take. What it will cost.
I will skin that costume off you myself.
It’s going to cost me Jude.
Act III: Scene XXI
That night as I try to fall asleep, a chest full of memories cracks open, and several roles I’ve lived spill out. I grasp at them like straws but come up empty with a vague feeling of loss.
Under the lamplight, I roll the little bottle of Eleutheraen gold between my fingers. Galen’s parting gift, proof that he was here. In a strange way, it’s the only thing left to cling to that makes me feel real, human, my own. Galen must have suspected on some level what I was. Maybe he chose to love me anyway. It doesn’t mix well with Sil’s claims of mortals being foolish and selfish. Humans love, and they seem to do it selflessly.
A soft tone startles me from that strange place between dreams and consciousness.
It’s a small voice, gentle and humming behind the mirror I draped a curtain over before going to bed. With no one to speak to, I don’t need a mirror anymore. According to Mattia, Cassia was arrested hours ago. She’s in a holding cell now, awaiting trial. Another person I’ve failed to save.
The floor is cool beneath my feet as I pull myself out of bed, attempting to keep pressure off my bad leg, though feeling has slowly started to return to it, to cut through the icelike stillness, after Arius spent several hours mending the wound.
“Dear Riven Hesper,” whispers the voice as I reach the glass. A child’s. “Please don’t tell anyone about this. I don’t think you’re bad.”
A very foolish child, apparently.
I’ve heard prayers thrum at the edges of my mirror before. This one sounds different. I pull the fabric from the glass, press my ear to it, and listen carefully.
“Please keep this a secret. I have always wanted to see the Playhouse.” Then a tapping sound, like a small finger scraping at a window. “My sister says you’re from here. So I was wondering if you could let me come see it? I won’t tell anyone.”
She’s from North of the Cut, I realize with a start.
My first instinct is to frighten her. Scare her away from the Playhouse forever. Warn that she should run as far from this place as she can.
But when my hand drifts to the glass, I call a portal through instead. A small child crouches on the other side of the mirror, a thick garment cast across the glass where she’s clearly pulled it to the side. She sits in a drab and dark room, bare of decoration or beauty.
She looks like I did, once.
The child jumps when I materialize on the other side, though I wager she can see little more than the glow of my eyes in the darkness. Which is for the best. I must be a frightening sight.
My tongue moves to warn her of the dangers of Craft, of the Playhouse, of all of it, but the tips of my fingers reach for the mirror instead. I close my eyes and call on the Craft thrumming in my blood. Like that day in the Archives with Jude, I cast a quiet hum from my throat.
I hear a tiny gasp, followed by a delighted laugh, and open my eyes.
On the other side of the glass, flecks of gold fall from the ceiling like new snow, showering her room in light. The mirror echoes my song, swelling and doubling the melody.
She bursts into giggles, her bare feet spinning in circles as the golden blizzard falls over her.
Something inside me smiles.That,I think.Maybe that’s what I’m for.
I catch one last glimpse of the little girl, twirling beneath the stardust, before banishing the portal and covering the mirror once more.
Then I shut my eyes against the third day of the Great Dionysia and make peace with the sunrise rapidly approaching on day four. And do my best not to think about the fifth.
