Jude joins me on the platform and takes his bow, gesturing to me again and then clapping himself. A strange feeling flutters, birdlike, near my heart.
This almost feels…good? No, that’s not the word.
Right. It feels right. For a moment, I feel like a puzzle piece, one that’s been sitting in the wrong box for years, too jagged for other pictures.
Until now.
Disgust surfaces at the thought, and I shove the feeling away just as quickly.
I turn my eyes coldly to Jude and hope he enjoys his final curtain call.
…
Sil orders everyone to change and be at the stage door in twenty minutes.
“Be ready to talk. Smiles, my Players, all of you! Paraskenia’s journalists will flood the media with smears by morning.” He turns to me. “And, Alistaire, let us see your face once more. Perhaps stop by the Greenroom first and take off this costume?”
Anticipating this, I nod. And shortly thereafter, burst into the Greenroom while the Players return to their dressing rooms to change.
It’s empty. The destruction from Jude teaching me Mimicry earlier today is nowhere to be seen. The mirrors are perfectly restored on all four walls.
I guess Jude was right. The setdoesn’tlike to be messed with.
It’s getting darker, which means I’m not supposed to be in here. I’m supposed to follow the lights back up to the dressing rooms and then to the stage door.
Of course, I will be doing neither of these things.
After extracting the pack and crossbow I stashed behind the costume rack, I stalk up to the mirror and stare into my—well,Jude’s—reflection. I recall the sound of my own voice, the curve of my jaw, the slightly crooked raise of my left eyebrow. The healing scars beneath my collar. The white birthmark across the right side of my neck.
An intense pressure releases from my skin, the air suddenly cooler. When I blink again, it’s my own set of gold-and-ochre eyes staring back, widening as I take in my reflection.
I’malmostme. Except new cords of muscle have begun to swell at my legs, my arms. My frame looks fuller, stronger. If my reflection is to be believed, my hair has grown, reaching my shoulders. Hesitantly, I touch a hand to my jaw, longer and sharper now.
Backing away from the mirror, I yank my collar, expecting the wound of my mark to be irritated from the pressure of the Jude costume I wore all day.
But there’s no damage there at all. It’s healing.
The lights flicker off, and I curse at the dark—
Only, itisn’tentirely dark. I spin, frantically searching for wherever that soft golden light pressing around me is coming from.
When I realize: It’s me. The light is coming fromme, a flicker of gold radiating just above my skin. That same golden glow that hovers around the Players. It pulses painfully over the place where my Eleutheraen mark once was.
The Craft binding. This is Jude’s. His Craft has already sunk into my skin, my veins. My mark isn’t there to deter it anymore.
It’s time to get out of here. I tighten the strap of my pack back to my own form, but not before checking that my Eleutheraen knife and Marigold’s chain are secured inside.
Gripping the crossbow and my single Eleutheraen arrow, I conjure a gateway within the Playhouse like Jude taught me to and plunge through the mirror.
Right into Jude’s dressing room. I point my arrow high, right at his heart.
“Hello, Jude,” I say.
Act II: Scene XVI
Jude’s eyes never leave the point of my arrow. “Alistaire,” he says politely. “You know, I’ve thought it over, and maybe we should institute a knocking-before-entering rule.”
“Put a shirt on,” I order, praying my face hasn’t turned the same shade as the stage curtain at the sight of him half-dressed. His arms are webbed with glimmering veins that thread corded muscle down to the bracelets at his wrists. Intricate gold symbols swirl across his shoulders.
