Because I feel…better.Like some of the weight has lifted off my shoulders.
But it’s not enough. Notnearly.Not while that familiar ice still seeps into my bones. It hits me with a devastating note of finality: Reality Suspension, a tentative death or not, failed to banish the poison from my veins.
I turn to leave.
“Wait,” he calls, and I pause again. “If you—if you hear anything strange tonight, stay inside, all right? Don’t leave your room.”
I don’t bother asking why. I doubt he’ll tell me. “Good night, Jude,” I say warily.
“We can make it through this, Alistaire,” he says, like we’reallies.This competition may pit me against the other auditionees, but I’m certain we both know who the real battle is between.
My eyes lock on to the quiver of arrows he laid on the floor. Props. Normal arrows. Useless against a Player.
I hide my grin and the plan forming behind it.
That Eleutheraen arrow that was shot at the Playhouse is still here somewhere.
And suddenly, I know exactlyhow I will deliver Jude to the council,andhow I will escape the Playhouse.
Act II: Scene III
The screams begin thirty minutes before curfew, ricocheting through the halls like shattering glass.
Don’t leave your room,Jude said. As if I’d listen.
I’m not sure why I thought the candelabra over the hearth was my best weapon of choice, but there wasn’t much time to think on it. Tearing the door open, I burst out of my dressing room, brandishing the heavy fixture.
And I’m not the only one. Outside, my fellow auditionees—Phileas, Tig, and Linos—peer nervously from their doors that pocket the hall, dressed in expensive silk nightclothes for bed.
Except one of us is missing: Thyone. Phileas’s twin sister.
Barefoot but still fully clothed due to theotherplans I had tonight, I ease into the hall.
Jude flings his door open, hair tousled, jewelry gone, shirt half buttoned, like he’d been readying for bed when the commotion began. I don’t have time to register much else before he catches my elbow. “Alistaire,wait.”His eyes aren’t on me; they’re searching the hall. “You don’t want to see what’s about to—”
Thyone’s door soars open, crashes against the wall. Through it, Player Arius hauls the auditionee’s thrashing body out by the elbows. Behind him, Silenus.
The director pauses, taking in the mixture of curious and terrified faces.
SIL: “Good night, everyone,” he says pleasantly over Thyone’s cries and carries after Arius, who is now pulling the girl toward the common room.
Why is Arius dragging her like that? She’s his contender—
“Wait,wait—”the girl shouts. Her screams shatter into wailing.
At the cry, I break from Jude and bolt down the hall, wishing I had my Eleutheraen knife. But by the time I peer behind me, the other auditionees have vanished to hide in their rooms—except Phileas. He looks after his sister with a sort of anguished indecision, his knuckles gripping the doorframe so hard, they’ve gone white.
Then his gaze flickers to mine, reaching a decision. He shakes his head and shuts the door.
What the hell? What is happening—
The other Players haven’t bothered to leave their rooms at all. Except for Jude, who catches up to me. “Alistaire, don’t watch—”
But I’ve already reached the end of the hall, where Sil is standing casually by the fireplace, cleaning his glasses. Meanwhile, Arius is holding Thyone’s arms down to prevent her from escaping. The Player’s expression tells a different story, though, the panes of his face constricted and grieved, like he can’t bear what he’s doing.
Sil barely takes notice of my presence, or Jude’s, as he pulls that strange book from his pocket. The Script. He flips it open, runs his pen down the page, like he’s looking for something to cross out. “I do apologize for the inconvenience,” he says to Thyone, whose indiscernible cries echo from the amber walls to the marble floors. “My Playhouse only has room for one new actor, and cuts are necessary. You understand.”
Cuts? Gods, no—wait—
