Page 120 of A Stage Set for Villains
All I can hear is the beat of my heart quickening when he drags me onto the bed with him and flips me onto my back, the low laugh he lets out when I snap at him not to hurt the stitches I worked very hard on, thank you very much.
He thinks I don’t catch the wince of pain on his face when he moves over me, though he just mutters something about a scratch on his leg and that it isn’t anything to worry about. I don’t believe him for a minute but am all too distracted by the way he busies his mouth trailing kisses down my neck instead, which magically erases whatever thoughts were circling my mind a moment ago, savoring the weight of him, the warmth.
Something about the dark makes it easier to ignore how we got here. What both of us have done. Makes me forget all about what Jude is and think only about who he is, who he is to me.
I’m still trying to figure that out—if it’s a friend whose tousled hair I run my fingers through. A rival who laces my fingers with his. An enemy whose waist I wrap my legs around and cling to. Maybe someone else entirely who murmurs a question into my ear before working at the buttons there at my collar.
Whatever he is, they all seem to weave into Jude, whose heart beats a steady rhythm I feel like I’ve known all my life. A laugh I would recognize in a crowd. A touch that consumes me and starts to simmer, to burn, to demand more.
Until my fingers brush along his shoulder, accidentally over that strange gash that—
Jude gasps and rears back, blinking like he’s confused. “I’m sorry.” He blinks some more, looking around, one hand clutched to the gash at his shoulder.
A gash that has just spread farther down his chest.
I sit up, concerned. “Jude?”
“I’m not supposed to—” He winces, but the moment I try to move for him, he raises a hand between us. “Just stay—please, stay over there.”
I don’t know if I’m more concerned about the injury or about the fact that he’s looking at me like he doesn’t recognize me or where we are. I swallow, finding my throat dry. “Is something wrong—”
Muffled voices from a passing exchange in the hall startle us both into silence.
Gods.Right. There’s a manhunt with Jude’s name on it in Syrene. For all we know, we could be sharing a hall with more hunters. Reality seems to cut between us, all the warmth gone. My face heats as I fold my arms in, unsure what’s just happened and whether or not it was my fault, if the confusion on his face is just masked regret.
“I’ll take first watch,” I say abruptly, on my feet and scurrying for the space by the window when the voices vanish down the hall.Anythingto fill the silence.
Jude clears his throat. “If you insist.” He wanders across the room, whatever startled trance he was in breaking.
We step back into our roles like nothing has changed.
“Let me know if anything exciting happens,” he says, sauntering to the bed and trying to hide that he has, in fact, torn a stitch.
“Exciting?” I curl myself onto the windowsill, Jude’s dagger (or someone’s, I don’t know where he got it) clutched between my fingers. “There’s a bounty on your head large enough to fund a small city.”
Jude scoffs as he collapses back onto the mattress. “I do think I’m worth at least amedium-sizecity.”
I roll my eyes and do my best to forget whatever happened a moment ago. Through the window, stars are growing visible beyond the thin clouds over Syrene, marking the second night of our absence from the Playhouse.
The moon shines through our window like a spotlight, like it can sense a Player out of his bed and far away from home. The blue-white beam reaches across the tattered white blankets Jude is strewn over, sparkling where it meets gold at his fingertips.
The cut on his arm will heal. But that other injury—whatever it is—that spreads along his skin and leaves sharp lines of gold in its wake…I’m not so sure about that one. I’m reminded of Gene again, her skin peeling away from her flesh. “Gene Hunt wasn’t a ghost, was she,” I say.
It’s silent. For a moment, I think he’s already asleep.
Then he answers. “No. She wasn’t.”
“She didn’t take her life onstage, either, did she?”
Another moment passes. “That’s the way of the theatre,” he says, quiet. “You give your life, your blood, your morals to the stage. And after that, it demands more.”
Apparently, we’re done with blunt honesty for the night and have reverted back to theatrically dodging questions with riddles.
Then he asks, “How did you do it?”
I raise an eyebrow. “What?”
Jude shifts, pulls a blanket over his shoulders, though it does little to conceal the light humming around his skin. “The cold. It’s cold out here all the time.”
