Act II: Scene XII
What feels like an arrowhead slamming into my chest tears me from my surroundings and whisks me into darkness.
I stay there, in the dark, feeling far away, tearing deeper and deeper through layers of nothing until—
A woman’s eyes, kind and thoughtful and promising.This is for the best,I hear as a cup is forced to my lips. I can’t feel my hands, bound tight. But I feel the burn of Eleutheraen gold in my throat.
The world blurs again. This time, I shrink inward, like a child. I’m in a brick alley, filled so thick with smoke that I worry it may suffocate the stars above. Rolling over, I shake the shoulder of the figure sleeping beside me.
“Wake up,” I say. The voice isn’t mine. It belongs to Jude, but younger, naive. “Lukas!” I try again with Jude’s childlike voice.
The boy sits up, dazed. “What, Jude?” His eyes widen as he takes in the blanket of smoke around us. His voice trembles. “What’s happening?”
Horns blare in the distance, followed by shouts of alarm and confusion. Someone zips into the alley like a shadow, slight and frantic and somehow familiar.
“Get up!” orders the shadow, a girl. Juliet. Her clothes and hands are damp with ash. My chest tightens as I reach for the tattered pack at my other side.
“Leave your things,” she urges, pulling Lukas to his feet. “We need to hide.”
A chorus of clashing metal resounds in the distance. Juliet tugs at her dirty braid, leading us out of the alley, into the street. “One of the North’s armies, someone said,” she explains hurriedly as we run. “From Syrene.”
Smoke stings my eyes. “Why haven’t they called in the Players to help?” I ask.
My boldness shrivels as the ground shakes beneath our feet, what feels like an explosion nearby. A city I know well, suddenly utterly unfamiliar in the red light of slaughter.
“Theydid!” she shouts over the panic.
The streets burn hot, chaotic with disorder and fear. As we run, I look over my shoulder, squeezing Juliet’s hand when I spot the army, like an endless colony of ants rushing down the hill in the distance. They spill out from the caravans that arrived yesterday. Caravans that rolled in last night, gifted from Syrene, filled with costumes and food to celebrate the Great Dionysia.
Or so we were told.
“Dionysus,” Lukas swears, halting to a sharp stop.“Look!”
I do, and the Playhouse is gone, vanished. Fled.
The air still hums where it stood. Then I see what’s taken its place, and the breath tears from my lungs.
Juliet’s scream cuts through the smoke.
Several stakes blaze ahead, each crowned with a figure writhing in Eleutheraen fire—Players, their skin burning gold, their screams piercing the night.
Something shifts in me as I watch their bodies still, their Craft burning away, given to the sky. The fear around my heart shrivels, collapses in my chest. It hardens into something else entirely.
I mouth a silent vow to the dead Players. Then my feet are moving.
The world blurs again, and everything speeds up. Suddenly, I’m in the Playhouse, Gene leaning so close that I can feel her breath in my ear. “Help me stop this, Jude,” she whispers, her eyes wide.
Then I hear a hushed, sharp argument between myself and Sil that ends in a swift decision.
The scene shifts. Gene, running downstage, her voice fierce.“It’s not real!”she roars at them. “Noneof this! It’s not real!”
A tightness in my chest releases when she, at last, collapses on the platform. I hold her under a stage light while she chokes up spots of gold that foam at her lips. The audience watches in awe. They don’t remember this part of the show.
Her eyes lock on mine, full of hate. She’s fighting to suspend her reality.
I won’t let her. I can’t.
The world shifts, and Sil stands in front of me now. “Do you see what you’ve done, Jude?” He’s upset. On the verge of tears.
