In an instant, I’m across the room and out the door, skidding into the vacant hall, buttoning my jacket up to the neck like hiding my ruined mark will somehow undo what I’ve done. There’s a surge of applause somewhere in the distance. A performance tonight. Jude will be onstage, away from his dressing room.
Which is next to mine and unlocked, apparently. Awfully trusting of him.
Or at least, that’s what I think until I swing open the door and a thin slip of parchment lodged behind theplayer judenameplate floats to the ground.Suspicious, I pick it up and read:
I said go back to bed, Alistaire. You won’t find it. Nosy.
Chaining the door shut behind me, I quickly discover he’s right.
My knife isn’t in any of his suits or the sleeves I rip off them. It isn’t underneath the floorboards I pull up and toss into the fireplace. It certainly isn’t in any of the little makeup bottles I spill all over his vanity.
I’m writing a few choice words in eyeliner over his mirror when my eye catches an old playbill hanging on the wall behind me.
There, beside it, I see something—framed by fan letters signed with crimson lips. Jude is overly sentimental, I decide, examining the wall of memorabilia. But between a tattered playbill and a dated call sheet, a tour schedule is nailed to the wall. It’s old and out of date by years. But if he has this one, hewouldhave the current one, right?
I dive for his dresser and then the vanity drawers, rifling through them as I replay Titus’s comment this morning:Our schedule isn’t public, and their armies will never move fast enough.
But if the Northdidhavetheir tour schedule…
My hands grip a newer page printed delicately with cities and tour dates forthisseason. This is it. With a little “aha!”I pull it from the drawer, and my attention snags on the newspaper clipping hiding beneath.
Ishouldrun. I have the tour schedule.
But something about the angry way the newspaper clipping has been frayed at the corners, with several words viciously underlined, piques my curiosity.
council rules:children not exemptfrom markings in the north,extends to district walls
It’s dated ten years ago, when marks widely took root in the North, a preventative measure as the expiration of the treaty grew closer. The article includes comments from key council members, talk of extinguishing deception in the North and protecting our youngest members of society from trained liars—and preventing them from being lured in by the temptations of the Playhouse.
Thunderous applause echoes from the auditorium again. Curtain call.
A thought occurs to me, and I shove away the newspaper clipping. My eyes flicker to the mirror, only long enough to press my palm to it and whisper, “Galen Hesper.”
Please, Haris,I think, desperate as my palm meets the cool glass. What are the odds he actually delivered my message?
It happens faster this time, the glass swirling. “Galen?” I ask the glass limply as it darkens.
While I wait, my eyes flicker to the top of the mirror—to a message written in a line of crusted brown lipstick that I didn’t notice before.
If not in this one, then in the next, it reads. A prickle walks down my spine as I compare it to Jude’s message on my bandage—a sharp and vicious cursive. Then I glance back at the writing on the mirror. I’ll bet a fan wrote it. Maybe one of the “dalliances”he mentioned.
The thought of a fan being in this room sends a pinch of annoyance between my shoulders.Jealousy?No, definitely not. I have no reason to—
“Cassia!”my brother’s voice hollers in the distance, hard and frantic and pulling me from the distraction. “Cassia, it’s her!”
The darkness on the other side gives way to dim, flickering light as what looks like a curtain is pulled away from the other side. Wisely, they kept the mirror partially covered.
My brother’s quicksilver eyes peer back at mine through the glass as the curtain falls.
Thank you, Haris,I think, relief blanketing my panic for just a moment.
Galen doesn’t look himself. Dark rings line his normally bright eyes. He’s wearing the same pressed shirt as yesterday—only now, it’s wrinkled and battered. He looks like he hasn’t slept since I last saw him. Which feels like ages ago now.
“Galen,” I say in a whisper, throwing a look over my shoulder. “It’s me—”
“Prove it.”
I startle. His voice is colder than steel. He doesn’t sound like my brother at all. Behind him, Cassia materializes in what I recognize as the old study in her home. I can tell by the carved shelves lining the walls, thick with books I begged to borrow growing up.I look to Cassia, shocked.
