Days later, Blake and Lucius return to the Globe, cloaks pulled tight against the cold, trudging through moonlit silence like two men walking back into a crime scene.
They breathe in the familiar wooden beams, the chill, the ghosts of every disaster they’ve ever performed.
Lucius calls the new play one of the Bard’s better ones. Blake doubts all of them. They reminisce about killing Romeo and Juliet. They admit they were a brilliant disaster.
Then comes the casting.
Blake groans — the King of Death forced to play the King of the Fairies.
Lucius huffs — forever doomed to be a woman.
They reach the rehearsal room door. Blake sighs. Lucius rolls his eyes.
Inside, Shakespeare beams far too brightly for the hour, the cold, or their mood.
“Oberon and Titania, ready for rehearsal?”
Blake and Lucius exchange the look of two men who have survived catastrophe together and are about to walk willingly into another.
Lucius mutters he hates everything.
Blake mutters he’s not wearing wings.
The candles flicker. The cold settles. The stage waits.
And the chaos begins again.
","author_name":"Rachel Lawson"}