CHAPTER ONE

The Dossier

Malo stood up, several eyes following him as he bent to whisper in my ear.

"Come, I want you to see something."

His tone was low, but it was the look on his face that alarmed me.

I smiled at several members of our opposing troupe as they reclined on soft sofas and rich chaises. They returned the smile, but their eyes tracked us the entire way out of the room.

"What—"

Malo put a finger to his lips and led me into the study. Then he handed me a leather dossier.

Bound between its covers were several papers.

The name on the front page:

Nera.

I looked up, horrified.

"It was here." He shrugged.

"Out in the open?"

"As though someone wanted us to stumble upon it."

I guiltily read the first page. The title caught my eye.

The Soul Mate.

Odd.

I'd written a Revival years earlier called The Twin Souls.

I read on.

The resemblance was slight at first—a turn of phrase, a familiar rhythm. Then the similarities multiplied. The conflict. The longing. Even the emotional progression unfolded exactly as I would have written it.

I turned the pages faster.

By the end, I knew every scene before I reached it.

I stopped reading.

My play had been about a working-class man hopelessly devoted to a woman far beyond his reach. Nera's followed a young man pursuing his own soul as though it were a beloved. The stories were different. The themes were not.

They were the same play wearing different clothes.

I steadied myself before moving to her second piece. My hand raked through my hair. I didn't trust myself to look at Malo.

Then I lifted the pages.

The words of this great artist forced my eyes to eavesdrop on their silence.

Again, her pages reflected mine.

But before I finished, I closed the dossier.

It was as though I had discovered that up was perhaps really down, or that music had always been the spectrum of color and never sound.

I paced madly from one end of the room to the other. First, my mind wrestled with how this could be. Then it turned to how I might re-enter the drawing room without looking as though I had seen a ghost.

Malo placed his hands on my arms and sat me down.

For a long while, he looked at me with the same expression I'm sure I wore.

"How is it that this could be?" he asked in earnest.

"I... I don't understand."

"They don't frequent our Revivals."

"And neither do we theirs."

He shook his head, dumbfounded.

"Yes, I know," I lamented.

"Then how?"

If the foundation of our movement was diversity... then what I had just read should have been impossible.

Historians claimed civilization had come full circle. After a millennium of division and bloodshed, humanity abandoned the old identities that had fractured it. Religion faded. Politics became little more than administration. Art became the language through which we understood ourselves. We were not merely artists. We were entrusted with healing the human spirit.

Wealthy patrons supported us. Children of extraordinary promise were apprenticed to masters while still young. We were celebrated almost as mystics, believed capable of lifting souls beyond grief, prejudice, and despair.

Our greatest works were performed during three-day festivals called Revivals, where theatre, music, poetry, painting, and dance became a single work of art. A Revival was considered successful only if its beauty overwhelmed the audience into what became known as the Rapture.

Every troupe pursued beauty through its own philosophy. Diversity was not encouraged—it was sacred.

The Statesmen worshipped logic.

The Mutineers embraced contradiction.

The Purists sought the soul through detachment.

And we Romanticists lived for the passions of both mind and flesh.

No two philosophies could arrive at beauty in the same way.

Which was why Elias's wager—compelling the four great troupes to collaborate—was impossible.

STILL EDITING--TO BE CONTINUED...