I am, too. I’m terrified.
Another blur. This time, I see the halls of the Playhouse. My feet slow when I notice someone stealing quietly behind a curtain.
Alistaire.
And once again, I feel certain I have seen her face before. And, with even more certainty, that I will never let her leave this Playhouse.
Somewhere, someone is screaming in the muffled way you hear things underwater.
“The damn mirrors are broken—try that one!” Titus’s voice, I think.
“Get them out—now.” Sil’s voice.
“She attacked him, didn’t she? Itoldyou there’s something off…” Definitely Mattia.
My muscles feel rigid. Bits of broken glass bite into my skin where I’ve fallen. I recall strange dreams of a burning city, of an army hidden in caravans disguised as gifts. Players burning upon golden stakes.
Finally, I remember the woman—Gene. The ghost in the mirror and the way she lunged at Jude. She didn’t look very dead to me. I remember him barely making out the word“Éxodos”before she reached him.
Jude suspended his reality, gave it over to me, casting me deep into his mind, his memories.
Heknewthe woman in the mirror meant to kill him.
Gene Hunt is not dead. But she wants Jude to be.
Carrying two lives instead of one is much heavier. With what feels like the effort of moving a mountain, I turn my head, broken glass sliding beneath my hair. Jude’s eyes are open, empty. Blotchy shades of sickly yellow and purple paint his throat.
A large piece of broken glass protrudes from his neck. Gold gushes from it.
Titus’s heavy steps approach, and I think I see him point a long finger down at Jude’s lifeless eyes. “Tell methat one isn’t ours.”
It occurs to me in a distant, amusing way how easy it would be to end Jude’s life right now. This monster who’s destroyed cities and lives and trapped me. To catch hold of that little light full of memory and life fluttering somewhere in my mind and crush it—
Are you frightened because you hate me or frightened because you don’t?
The thought crashes into my anger, violently derails it.
“Alistaire!” Sil. The director is on his knees, leaning over me. I don’t have the energy to look as disgusted as I feel when he lifts my head from the broken glass with the gentleness of a concerned parent. “Alistaire, let him go.” Like he knows what I’m considering. “Please—let Jude go.”
For some strange reason, his plea resonates with a part of me I don’t recognize. My eyes flutter open, finding Sil’s wide with worry. I let my head roll to the side, where Arius is frantically checking over Jude, extracting the glass from his neck. Parrish sobs just behind him.
I tell myself that Jude is lucky he’s no use to me dead. That I need my bargaining chip alive.
I’m so convincing, I nearly believe that’s the reason I meet Jude’s open, glassy eyes and mutter,“Éxodos.”
Act II: Scene XIII
Taking Jude’s place onstage tonight was not part of the plan.
But then, neither was Gene Hunt coming back from the dead to try and kill him.
My memory swears by the nervous look she gave him, then me, before lunging at Jude with ungodly rage. Gene had been deciding something in that moment. She was confused.
She’d been unsure.She didn’t know who was who.
I catch a glimpse of the face I’m wearing in the mirror now—Jude’s face still. He hasn’t woken up, and Sil doesn’t seem to think that he will any time soon. Apparently, I am not very good at Reality Suspension.
If I’m not mistaken, the auditorium tripled in size around the time the lobby doors opened. Or at least that’s what it looks like through the slit in the curtain: an endless array of winding seats and balconies stacked in rich reds like a layered cake. I glance over Jude’s lines one final time.
