Page 25 of The Stars and the Stage
They had fooled these people once already, Diego reminded themself. The hunterswantedwhat the Celestial Club would be offering them; half the battle was figuring out what that audience would most likely engage with, and these self-proclaimedPaladinshad been shouting that loud and clear for months. And Maddox had set them up the rest of the way without even realizing it.
“Ready?” Valentine asked.
“Not at all.”
He held their crown once more. Today, his part was simple, as was every other vampire who’d volunteered to show their fangs.
All they were expected to do was to risk everything.
It still shocked Diego that Valentine had offered to join in the first place, his face pale and his body twitching with nerves. It looked like it was taking everything in him just to keep himself from retracting his fangs now. But when they’d asked why he didn’t go back to the apartment, he’d smiled, soft and sincere despite his fear.“I’m your right hand. You can’t go into battle without me.”
He’d barely left their side for a moment since.
“You don’t have any doubts about Maddox?” He didn’t sound worried, but rather inquisitive. Knowing him, he was probably gauging whether he needed to offer them emotional support.
Diego thought of every cruel smirk Maddy had given, every cutting utterance ofstarlight,and smiled. “I trust him completely.” They had meant to end it at that, but their heart seemed to go on anyway. “Since coming here, this was the only life I’d envisioned. And, fuck, I would have been happy—I would have been so happy just putting on events with you until my hair went grey or my time ran out. But now there’s a version of my future where I don’t have toplaythe lord. I am one, because I’m his.”
They turned toward the warehouse’s front doors, where Maddox had just slipped inside. Three vampires jumped to apply the costuming makeup to his neck. He couldn’t move his head without accidentally dislodging them, but when his gaze met Diego’s with all the intensity of a hurricane, he blinked slow and reverent, his lips twitching up, then turning cheeky as he took in Valentine at their side.
“Andhe’sours,” Diego whispered. “Our Maddy.”
If he was here, then the hunters would be waiting outside for his return, watching at enough of a distance that those in the club would be safe, but well within view of the demonstration Diego and Maddox planned to conduct at the building’s entrance. The final artist finished with Maddox’s neck, and Diego strode toward him, they as the king and him, not the consort but the betrayer prince in his leather biker jacket, his knife at his hip and his pocket full of the chains they’d coated with gleaming jewelry paint to mimic his holy silver set. It was time to put on a show. As he extended a hand toward them, though, the front doors rattled.
They burst open.
Diego’s heart caught in their throat as hunters streamed through it. They looked so much like a group of B-list actors playing the part that they shouldn’t have been so terrifying, but the weapons in their hands were far more deadly than stage props, and the few pieces of holy silver Maddox hadn’t managed to swap with replicas burned Diego’s exposed skin even with the six feet between them and the nearest sliver of the metal. This was meant to take place on the club’s terms—on the club’s terms, andoutside, where no one but Diego would be in immediate danger. They could see their fear echoed in the vampires still preparing around the room. One missed cue and the show was already crashing down.
But Maddox’s expression contorted into a domineering sneer, his fingers edging out of his pocket like he was preparing to reveal his holy silver. He held up his free hand, motioning for the hunters to wait by the building’s door as he stared down the vampires in the room. “This is your only chance to submit quietly.”
The hunters slowed, forming a semi-circle behind Maddox, but their gazes roved over the vampires present and they seemed to waver between fear of the fangs they saw glinting around the room and something almost like hunger. They had all tasted Diego’s venom, and some of them had clearly liked the experience, whether for the intoxicant or the dominance or both. In another life, with attitudes less hideous and minds more open, they might have become the very people the club served. Now though, here, they were monsters. And if Diego could not make them suffer for it, at least they could save the Celestial Club to spite them.
“You pathetic bloodsuckers have been taking from humans for too long. Maybe it’s time for a change,” Maddox said, latching onto Diego’s shoulder. They could hear the smirk in his voice, so opposite of everything they knew him to be. “You might find youenjoybeing put in your place.”
Diego curled away from his touch, sliding themself into his chest like it was an accident. He yanked them backward, into the midst of the hunters’ semi-circle, toward the club’s entrance. Each step brought the blaze of the holy silver closer, rekindling the memory of it wrapped about their throat, the certainty that there was no escape. But they settled it beneath the feeling of Maddox’s hand, tight and sure on them, his acting so perfect even they couldn’t see through it.
“Tell your fanged friends,” he growled. “Tell them how youlikeserving me.”
“The blonde bat’s a pretty little thing,” muttered one of the hunters, his attention catching on Valentine. “And he looks about ready to break.”
The woman of the group smiled wickedly. “You’ll have to catch him before I do.”
A visible tremble ran through Valentine, and it seemed to resound in Diego’s fresh flood of rage and the anxious tightening of Maddox’s grip.
“Tellthem.” He yanked Diego another step back. They were beneath the doorframe now. Almost there. They just needed the hunters to ignore Valentine and follow, if not with their bodies then with their attention.
Diego wheeled on Maddy with a shove that took them both out of the building, pulling everything they had into the motion, emotion and fire and heart-break. Everyone turned to watch, the audience—both those aware and ignorant of the act—drawn naturally to Maddox and Diego’s drama, like every audience always had been, since they’d first made it their business that the world knew they’d laid eyes on each other.
“No.” Diego didn’t shout yet, didn’t make it loud or fierce or strong, just a small, scared protest, a choked twist in their voice. “You said you’d give me blood once I—when I’d proved myself.”
“I will, as soon as you’veearnedit.” Maddox grabbed a fistful of their hair, hard enough that it was barely acting as they whimpered.
They let him push them toward the street, stumbling for the dramatics, and as they faced him once more, they wrapped their arms tight around their stomach, baring their fangs. “When?”
“What.” It didn’t sound like a question the way he said it, but rather a demand to shut up.
Diego flinched instinctively, and they turned their mind to the memory of Maddox’s blood, dripping into cup after cup. “When will I have earned it? When will I be enough for you?” He had always been enough for them, since the moment he knocked on the club’s side door, they simply hadn’t been able to see it. Yet he had done the impossible and kept proving it to them—was still proving it now, standing before them with a sneer so cruel it made him look like an entirely different person.
“When I say so,” he snapped.
