A Stage Set for Villains

I'd know you with any face and by any name, Riven. His golden eyes meet mine, and his words wrap around me like a familiar blanket. "Any voice no matter how cutting. Through any gaze no matter how loathing. I would know your touch through a closed curtain and the sound of your step when the last spotlight has gone out. I have known you at the beginning of each performance, and I will bow with you at the brink of every finale.

Love provokes the hero as violently as it does the villain, and it's merely who tells the story that determines which is which.

Fate guides the feet of the willing and drags the heels of the defiant.

You can be a great many things, dear heart. But you can not be fewer.

All that stands between a hero and villainy is proper motivation, "he says. "Love provokes the hero as violently as it does the villain, and it's merely who tells the story that determines which is which.

Yes. You two have a most inconvenient tendency to find each other

I will not apologize for loving you, dear heart," he says. "But I hope you'll forgive me for having done it so dreadfully.

The third thing," I demand, my voice hoarse. Jude shuts his eyes, resigned, and I press on. "The third thing you would have me know before the end of this. Tell me what it is." Jude's eyes flutter open, bright with determination. "That I have loved you." He raises his head, voice steady, certain. "Unreasonably. Entirely. Unfairly and, gods know, selfishly. In every life that I have lived.

Life is a game of playing the cards you’re dealt and then justifying them so you can sleep at night.

What will it take to get some silence?" "Well, for one, I'm starving." I pull open the pack of gifts he stole from that family and throw a piece of stale bread at him, praying it shuts him up. "Players don't need good much, Alistaire." My head is pounding now. "Fine. What do you need?" I ask, exasperated. "Attention." He pouts at me. I groan and drop my face into my hands.

I've never cared for Tragedies.

I just want to yell at someone. A statue will do.

Fear does not make you a coward. Yielding to it does.

Why are you so angry? Really." Defensiveness rises in my shoulder, this time, I catch it and coax the sharp words back down my throat. I've been asking myself the same question. "I don't fit properly anywhere." The words take a moment to find. "And it doesn't feel fair. Like I'm this badly cut piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit with the others." Jude considers my words, leans his head back into the wall. His chest rises and falls for several beats, the timbre of his voice lowering. "If you have to saw all your edges to fit, you're probably in the wrong puzzle.

Dear heart, I think you'll ruin me." Whatever words he has left are lost to the wind as Jude storms furiously forward- And crashes his mouth into mine, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I count that four costume changes in one rehearsal," I mutter at him as the lights go down. "Oh? Do you have a favorite?" he asks, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket. "Do any of them come with a gag?" "Didn't know you were into that.

That I have loved you.” He raises his head

Pain is protection, too. Pain will blame everything outside itself and never once check if something is broken within.

JUDE: "Good! I'm Jude, by the way." As if I don't know exactly who he is. I mouth nasty insults at his statue each time I pass it in the District.

I said go back to bed, Alistaire. You won’t find it. Nosy.

You know, I find myself asking," begins Jude, leaning in my doorway. His hands are closed around an ornate silver box. "My, doesn't she have a lovely profile from all the way outside? And I can see it so well because - oh yes, of course. She's torn the curtains to shreds!

Jude. I know him better than the rest. I've loved him, his every song, every story, more than any.

What does that mean?" His hands are warm, but his tone ices over. "It means if it comes down to losing your character now, or losing you forever, I will skin that costume off you myself.

I breathe quietly, assuring myself I am no eavesdropper. Jude's voice just has a way of carrying. Particularly when my ear is pressed against his dressing room door.

Life is a performance." Our cue is called, and he moves for the platform, whispering over his shoulder, "You might as well be applauded for it.

Breathe in and picture what you're frightened of." I breathe in and picture him. After holding his breath, he adds, "Now breathe out and picture what you want." I breathe out and picture that dawned Script. And maybe a gag to shut him up. This is not helping.

Compliments. Three compliments. Pay a Player three compliments and they'll leave you alone. The rule comes back to me with ease. It was drilled into my head around the same time I learned how to read. That said, it doesn't matter, because I have nothing nice to say. Even if he is admittedly the most staggeringly beautiful person I have ever seen. Jude Stepharros. Lead Player of the Playhouse.

ARIUS: "You're terrible. May Hades give you no rest." TITUS: "If he's half so handsome as they say, may I give Hades no rest." ARIUS: "Fine. Then a long life in hell, I pray you.