Lai’s Reviews > A Stage Set for Villains > Status Update

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.”

I will play whatever role I have to if it means holding on to you. Let the gods judge me a villain for it.

I love a villain for everyone but her

“I am applauding your every move, listening for each and every line. And at the end, I’ll be at the stage door to meet you,” he says, and his hands are so warm and familiar, I can’t help but lean into them, wrapped in the scent of hyacinth and not caring that his rings will get twisted in my hair. “Whether in the next life or the one after, I’ll wait there in the wings until it’s time again.”

“I’m never far off, Riven. I’ve never been far off. What is death but a brief intermission? A moment backstage.” He brushes a knuckle to the delicate skin behind my ear, glides it down my jaw, and tilts my chin up to meet his gaze, which seems brighter than the moon that haloes his silhouette.

Not a fan’s handwriting, and not his. Mine. I grin. “If not in this one—” “Then in the next. I do love it when you leave me notes,” he confirms with a smile.

“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.”

“I’d know you with any face and by any name, Riven.”

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

This is the definition of I’ve loved you in every life time

“Riven,” Jude says, breaking me from my stupor. “If you trust anything of me, then let it be that I’m sorry.”

“Heart, I know,” he answers with a laugh and reaches for my chin to angle his gaze back on mine. “But I’m starting to think I may be one of yours.”