I don’t answer, keeping one eye just to her right, to the blood now trickling down Galen’s neck. I wonder if he can feel it. The Player pulls the pages from my hands, the startling warmth of her touch loosening my grip like melting ice. She raises them between our faces, then, in one beautiful, violent motion, tears them to shreds. They fall around us like new snow, landing gently in the quiet.
“You aren’t getting marked, Riven,” the Player murmurs, and it’s then that I notice how white and pointed her teeth look up close. “Youare coming with me.”
I don’t even hear myself scream. The will, thedesireto follow her overwhelms my every thought as the Player reaches for my hand and summons me forward. I watch her golden eyes.
Compelled, my hand reaches for hers. I’m not marked yet. I can’t help it.
Maybethisis how it feels to watch a Playhouse performance. Galen says Players pluck the heartstrings of thousands in the audience every night like delicate threads on a quilt, wiping away and rearranging their spectators’ thoughts, ideas, and beliefs with little more than a pretty word.
Players can make you believe anything.
But there is at least one thought she has no hold on:She’s going to kill me. She’s going to force me to follow her, an eternal audience, until my legs give out. Until I die from exhaustion or starvation.
An audience, wholly and solely devoted. This is what all Players crave.
As my mind blurs, I grip the edge of my brother’s coat, cling to it, certain I’ll be gone forever if I let go. My arm stretches and stretches as the Player drags me away, the gap between Galen and me widening.
Then I see it—a glint of gold in Galen’s pocket. Father’s knife. Galen carries it everywhere.
The third rule for surviving a Player flashes through my mind:A Player can only be slain with Eleutheraen gold. I squeeze my eyes tight and reach for the handle. My fingers scrape at the wood—
“Riven,”the Player chimes sweetly. It sounds a little forced now.
I stretch my fingers, clawing at the knife.
“Riven, darling, there’s no reason to make this difficult—”
It all seems to happen in a blink. One second my fingers are wrapping around the knife’s hilt and the next, I’m bringing the blade down as hard as I can.
The Player’s words shatter into the most terrible scream I have ever heard. She falls onto her knees, wailing and clutching her hand. A puddle of gold gathers beneath it, dripping onto the stone floor like drops of sun.Player blood.Brimming with power, withCraft.
She looks at me with eyes full of hellfire, rising from the ground with a lethal sort of calm. I scramble away, bracing myself, waiting for her to rip my eyes from their sockets. To break my legs and drag me to the Playhouse—
But a gold chain loops around the Player’s throat, and a man holding it wrenches her backward. He screams something I barely register, his face white with terror. Almost instantly, a dozen more sentries are upon the Player.
All around me, everything starts to move again, free from her charm.Iam free from her charm. That desire to follow the Player unclenches from my heart, lifts off my shoulders like a bird.
It occurs to me it was never real to begin with.
But before I can realize what’s happened, before I can so much asthinkto move, the Player wrenches free and is on me again, gripping my coat collar and holding me too close, like she’s about to bite my neck.
She whispers into my ear, and I freeze.
And then it’s over. Guards rip her away.
Weight crushes around my arms as Galen whirls me to face him. Relief fills me to see him moving again,breathingagain. He’s blinking, too—wincingas he dabs a hand over the open cut on his cheek, bewildered.
Behind him, the Player thrashes, stretching those long fingers toward me.“Riven!”she screams, her anger shifting into hysteria.“Riven!”
“How does she know your name?” Galen asks, panicked. The Player’s screams ring out all the way down the hall, my name echoing off the stone. Did no one else notice the world go still?
Galen’s gaze drops to the knife in my hand, slick with golden blood. The Player’s blood. Before I can release the knife, droplets of it drip down the handle and sink into my skin, warm—toowarm, like I’m holding my hands over an open flame. I cry out and drop the blade.
But inside, my chest feels like it cracks open. Something sharp and hungry rushes in to fill the space.
“Riven, what did you do?” my brother asks, and I think the answer is that I have made a very dangerous enemy. I do not say this out loud to Galen.
And I mostcertainlydon’t tell him what the Player whispered in my ear.
