It’s worse.
My lungs cinch, recognition cutting into me.
Galen steps forward into the snow, blinking with confusion. Moonlight shadows half his face. Normal. Relaxed. Kind. His head drifts lazily to one side. “You should really be getting home, Riv. What are you doing out here?”
The calm timbre of his voice unglues my anger, my resolve collapsing like my illusions a moment ago. It’s enough to make me wonder if, after a long, terrible nightmare, I’ve woken up. All I want in the world is for him to be real.
“Galen,” I breathe, though I know it isn’t possible. Even if every detail down to the small scar above his cheek is intact and—
My eyes lower to the crimson stain that blooms from his chest. Small at first, until it spreads. A startled sound pushes from my throat, followed by the sort of unfettered rage that sends my feet rushing forward.
Galen catches hold of me, his hands firmly gripping my elbows.“This,”he whispers harshly, inches from my face. But that crackle of hostility doesn’t fit his voice. He never sounds angry. “Thisis what humans do. To you. To me. To everything good and everything we love.”
The words tug at my heartstrings. Galen wasn’t killed by my kind. He was killed by an ordinary human.
“They don’t know right from wrong. They have to betaught,” he presses.
The scent of blood stings my nose. I shut my eyes, begging my ears for silence, when all I hear is my brother’s voice.
“This is what they take when given thechance, Riven.”
There are a million things I would tell Galen if I could. But none of them surface. And this is not Galen. Bitterness festers in my chest, grows. The air around me hums, alive and thunderous.
I want the illusion to go away, tostop. But I can’t focus. It’s too convincing. Part of me isn’t sure itisn’tmy brother, that he hasn’t somehow emerged from the dead to rescue me—
“Don’t let all this death be for nothing,” he says.
My eyes snap open, meet his gaze.
Gold slices across his eye like a live ember—and it’s enough. Jude.
I’m in the arena with Jude.
This isn’t real. He’s trying to provoke me with every vile thing the world has done to me until I break.
I grip him closer to me. “Trust me,” I say. “I won’t.”
Then I take a sharp step back, off the cliff, casting us both into the icy waters gnashing below.
Act III: Scene XXXI
The ground is dry, but I am soaked, shivering from the cold—though I’m faintly aware of the feeling of warmth gushing from the gash in my side. It’s so dark, I can’t see. My whole body aches, my memory burning with confusion. The finale wasn’t supposed to go on this long.
I’m far off script, and I just want it to be over.
I want to be home.
That word shudders through me, warms the ice in my veins. Bleeds out from my fingertips as I lie here, staring at a blank, dark sky.
Home.
One by one, lights—stars—flower across it, illuminating a brilliant white moon.Home.
The hard ground beneath my back softens. Silky moss blooms from the dirt, emerald green and spreading like paint on a canvas from where I lie.Home.
My back begs for rest as I roll onto my side and push shakily to my feet. Under my sandals, a path of white glitters like seafoam, pouring over the hill and then up to the top of a mountain.Home.
An eruption in the earth tingles beneath my step as I climb uphill. Cracks break across the mountain, trenches that fill with gold and trickle from the top like intricate lines on a map.
