The game master couldn’t have been Dorian, she tells herself. It couldn’t be. It’s not possible.
“This is not a nightmare. This is just madness,” she repeats over and over, charging forward.
She runs through the tall trees, trying to keep her sanity. A cacophony of wind howls, while the clouds above morph into terrifying, monstrous faces. Around her are screeches and cries from other slaughters—stags killing kings, kings killing one another. Claudia slows to a quiet tiptoe when she hears laughter and grunting to her left. It sounds like animals fighting until she comes closer and realizes it’s an Agamemnon bent over a tree stump with an Artemis thrusting from behind, both chanting, “More! Harder!”
At least that’s two fewer people who are chasing after her. She backs away slowly until she can’t hear them; then, she’s back to running. Eventually, the woods spit her out to the graveyard, and she is not alone.
Marcherie stands before Odette’s grave, her low cries bristling against the high-pitched wind. There’s a gold ribbon around her neck—a stag. She can’t kill Iphigenia. She’s safe to approach.
“Marcherie?” Claudia calls, and the singer whips around to glare at her.
“Get away from me,” she bites out, her teeth chattering in the cold.
She sighs, still approaching. “March, come on. Talk to me.”
“Stay back.”
Claudia freezes and holds her hands up as if trying to tame a wild animal. “Let me help you through this.”
Marcherie laughs incredulously, crossing her arms. “You wantto help me? You’re the one who hurt me. Everything bad in my life is your fault.” She wipes her tears so harshly—it’s almost like she’s slapping herself.
Calmly, softly, Claudia says, “You just came off the stage after a very emotional piece.” She takes a series of small, slow steps. “Your feelings are in a dangerously heightened state.” Marcherie is almost within her reach. Extending her hand, she says, “You need to go inside and rest before you hurt yourself.”
Marcherie looks down at Claudia’s hand, then back up to her eyes. Her gaze narrows and the corners of her mouth sink in disgust. “You don’t even look human to me, you know. When I see you, I see a monster. I see an evil that needs to be destroyed.” Her words are sloppy and strange, muddled by wine and Dolericym’s magic. The girl is out of her mind.
“I am a good person. I am not evil.” Claudia says it like a prayer, like she wants so desperately for it to be true.
The singer snaps. She releases a pent-up groan and slaps Claudia across the face. “Youreekof it.”
Claudia gasps, clutching her stinging cheek. “Have you gone mad?!” She steps back. Her face feels like it’s on fire. The wind needles into her burning cheek.
Marcherie’s wet, wide eyes glance down to Odette’s grave. She blinks, shaking away her tears. Her nostrils flare. “You made me this way when you killed her.” Looking back up at Claudia, she pulls a dagger from her sleeve—the one Agamemnon used onstage. “I’m glad you found me here.” She raises the blade, its sharp edge slicing through the drips of starlight. “I want you dead, Claudia Jolicoeur. And I want Odette to watch.”
Claudia jumps back, screaming, “Marcherie,pleasedon’t—”
She pounces onto Claudia and takes her to the ground, slicing the dagger across her shoulder. It feels like a burn. Claudia screams, warmed by the spill of her own blood.
Marcherie slaps her again. “I’ve wanted to make you bleed forsooooolong,” she says, half singing. Mounted on top of Claudia,Marcherie squeezes her thighs around Claudia’s waist and pushes her forearm against her throat, restricting Claudia’s breathing until she can do nothing but gasp. Spit bubbles out of Claudia’s mouth, and tears leak from the corners of her eyes. She claws at Marcherie’s throat. At one point, she’s almost certain she can feel her nails scraping directly across Marcherie’s bare bones, but still, the singer doesn’t budge.
“You could never be a performer, you know,” Marcherie says all too casually. “You’re too ugly when you cry.”
Claudia’s vision is down to nothing but tiny pinpricks. She feels the slick wet of her blood rivering down her arm from the gash in her shoulder.
Suddenly, Marcherie stills on top of her. She runs her fingers over Claudia’s wound, scooping up her blood and holding it up to the sky.
It glitters.
“What the fuckareyou, Claudia?”
Claudia can’t breathe. Her vision is all but entirely gone. Marcherie wraps her hands around the hilt of the dagger and raises it above Claudia’s head. Seconds before the blade slices through her heart, Claudia uses all her energy to catch Marcherie’s wrists and hold her there, trembling against the singer’s impressive strength.
She has seconds left before the blade drives through her heart, one breath away from dying her father’s death.
Fuck.Fuck, fuck, fuck. She’s going to have to do it. She’s going to have to call out for him.
“DORIAN,” she cries. The name tastes like shit. “HELP.” She chokes and coughs through her next sentence. “SHE’S. BREAKING. THE. RULES.”
Marcherie barks out a melodic laugh. “No one is coming to help you. Everyone here wants you dead.”
