“You stopped him from—” I shiver, not finishing the sentence.
Jude swallows, nodding. “That last performance with Gene. She’d already broken my fourth wall, and she made a big show of telling Sil she’d burn the Playhouse down before shedding her role—as if she could just leave and go live a simple human life. I think it’s all in the world that she was ever after. She just wanted out.”
Something winds tighter in my chest at the thought. That wecan’tgo live normal lives. I’m proof enough of that.
And I want out.
The corners of my eyes burn, and it takes me a moment to understand why. I can barely recall who Gene was to me, but something stirs in my heart—the same deep and irreversible sense of loss that caved into my chest when my brother was taken from me.
I realize I’ve stepped away, put space between us, and Jude notices, too. Is looking through me the same way he did that day in the snow, like he’s desperately trying to pluck the magic combination of words out of the air between us to convince me he isn’t some unfeeling monster.
Slowly, I nod at him.Go on.
Jude’s throat bobs. “When she collapsed, I looked up from the stage and saw Michail rise from his seat. Then he took off for the doors.” Jude shakes his head, as if to shake off the memory. “The curtain fell, and I’ve never run so fast in my life. I cornered him before he reached the lobby. I don’t know what he meant to do, but he had a knife in his hands—thatsameknife you brought in here. For a moment, it was like there was no script. No lines.”
His eyes wander to a far corner of the terrace. “He ran, tried to escape. At some point, we ended up here. And I…” He scrubs a hand over his face, not finishing the sentence. “It was all too late. I’d broken character, badly. That’s whenthisstarted getting worse—” He moves into the last of the torchlight by the ledge, tugs one sleeve up far enough to reveal where nicks of gold mar his skin. “It spread slowly at first, but the damage was done.”
He drops his hands to his sides and looks pointedly down toward the landing, where Michail’s body was discovered.
“The audience was filing out when they found him. It messed everything up. And after Sil made such a big show of thePeacemaker.” His voice wavers. “Fear spread. The North declared marking children not long after that. Sil let me out to check on you—make sure you survived, but I…” Attempted to drag me back to the Playhouse instead. I picture the Player I saw, her voice sweet and conniving, luring me away. “Well, I might have notexactlyfollowed the instructions.” He tries to laugh, but it comes out hollow as I look to his scarred hand and refrain from reaching for it. I draw my shoulders in instead, the guilt weighing them down. I could have hurt him much worse that day.
“Hell,I’dhave gone instead, but Sil, he—” Jude grimaces, and I wonder if I’m imagining the shame coating his expression. “Sil didn’t think any of the rest of us would survive that long out there.”
Judging by how quickly Jude fell apart during our little adventure through Syrene, Sil was probably right about that.
It’s quiet for a moment. A familiar, nice quiet.
“Were they good to you?” Jude clears his throat. “Your—your family.” He sounds nervous about the answer, unsure what sort of hands I’d been left in.
“I don’t…” It hurts to think. It all looks different through this lens. I sigh. “You first.”
“My family never existed, now that I think about it.” He shakes his head. “I’m not actually from Thymele. I have all the memories as if I were, though, becauseJudeis from Thymele. I can’t always tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.”
That’s often the case in the Playhouse.
I collect my memories—real,truememories.
“I was raised by a mother.” In my mind’s carousel of recollections, her eyes darted away from me more and more as I grew, her lips white with worry. “But I think maybe she was scared of me, knew something was wrong.” Part of me knowsnot to blame her, not to be bitter. After all, I grew up looking like Michail. Atbest, I seemed like the evidence of an affair. At worst, the suggestion of an affair with a Player.
I’m neither of those things. And worse.
But none of it dulls the sting of her stiff, one-word answers to me growing up. The way her shoulders tensed when I passed. The flinch in her expression when I spoke. The way she’d only ever peer above my head and never into my eyes.
“She chose not to be a mother to me either way.”
The words settle between us.
I think harder and decide, “That man planted a Player.Inhis own home. All for fame and recognition and the obsessive love of another woman—Gene, acharacterjust like me, who never really existed—”
“You exist,” Jude says firmly. “Iexist. Just…differently from everyone else.” He looks thoughtful for a moment. “Is what he did so unthinkable? Betraying the world for love.”
I watch him back. “No,” I say. “I don’t think it’s unthinkable at all.”
That’s exactly the problem.
I clear my throat. “But I grew up. Normal, I thought, until they took me to be marked.”
A shadow passes over his eyes. “I thought the marking would kill you. But Sil swore the safest thing we could do was let it play out and trust that you were strong enough to make your way home to us. I still snuck out once more after to check on you, and he nearly had my head for that.” Jude watches the moon, full and bright above us. “And then I waited, wondering if it was enough. If you were alive or dead.”
