I try to lift my head to stare at what I imagine is a large, gaping hole around my shoulder by the amount of blood on the cloth. But I can’t. Something jerks in my chest, sudden and instinctual. Like a bird fluttering around inside the cage of my ribs, searching frantically for a way out.
Jude must notice something is wrong, because he nods and almost rests a hand on mine before thinking better of it. He sits back, shaking his head. “That’s you—your life is trying to escape to wait out the worst of the physical damage.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
“It wants to escape someplace safe so your body can die,” he clarifies. “Thatis Reality Suspension. To fool death long enough for it to pass over, to suspend your realitybeforeit comes. We’re Players, not healers.”
This isn’t how I’m supposed to die.The thought pounds through my head with a vengeance. I did not make it this far to give up now, injured at the hands of a Player. Dying under the eyes of another.
RIVEN: “Show me—show me how to do it.Now.” My demand ends in another vicious cough. He gives me a pitying look.
JUDE: “You can’t suspend your reality. That mark…it works like a seal. It keeps us out, but—”
RIVEN: “It keeps me in.” I choke on the tinny taste of blood.What’s happening?
Jude sighs—I must have asked out loud. “It pierced you. I think your lungs might be collapsing. I’m not sure.”
It?It. Mattia? I remember her running at me, lifting her blade—
“Mattia?” I cough again, a rage even deeper than the pain filling my head.
“What the—Lie down,” Jude orders as I try to haul myself up, finding it also a very bad idea and collapsing onto what I realize is the chaise in my dressing room. “And no,” he says. “Not Mattia—not exactly. The edge of the chandelier hit you. Mattia took the brunt of it.”
“She’s dead?” I blurt, hopeful.
“For the meantime,” he says with a shrug. “We’re actors. We live a thousand lives, but we still die at the end of each one of them.”
I remember the world flashing, color draining. Jude had called out a strange word.
The bird in my chest makes another breakout attempt, and I gasp. “What did…you do?”
JUDE: “I suspended Mattia’s reality. And did my best to suspend yours, but…” I try to muster the energy to look confused, but truthfully, I just want him to keep talking to distract me. “Think of it as a pause in the show. A moment backstage.” He shrugs. “It’s time that doesn’t exist.”
So, even if Mattia is dead for now, the moment she died doesn’t exist. A moment to fool death. My heart sinks. She’s alive, then. Or will be when the magic wears off.
The bird throws itself against the wall of my chest again, weaker this time. Dying.
I’m dying.
The wrongness is overwhelming.
Then my hand is grasping furiously at my throat, at the high collar of my shirt concealing the mark beneath. “Get rid of it,” I wheeze. “Get rid of the mark.” I amnotdying here. I’ll live out of sheer spite if I have to.
Jude’s eyes fix on mine, uncertain as I reveal the swirls of gold. They seem to squirm, burning hot and ice-cold at once, like they know something bad is coming.
“You’re sure?” he asks, eyes flickering between mine and the mark at my throat.
No, says Galen’s voice in my head. Fainter now.
I nod, startled as the bird in my chest shudders, no longer trying to escape. Then Jude isn’t there anymore. Though I hear him shuffling around somewhere a few feet away.
“One condition,” he says, reappearing and setting something down just beneath my right hand. It feels like paper. He wrestles my palm open and presses a pen into it. “Sign it.”
The contract. Every curse I can think of rolls through my mind.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Come now, Alistaire. You have the only thing an actor really needs anyway.”
