Chapter 12 · The First Rewrite

The darkness did not feel empty.

It breathed around them.

Maeve stood in the ruined mirror hall with one hand pressed against the cut in her ribs and the other wrapped around Eli’s wrist. His blood was warm beneath her fingers. Somewhere beyond the collapsed walls, something enormous groaned, as if Saint Veyre Theatre had bones and had just discovered they could break.

Then the city answered.

Through the jagged opening where the mirror wall had been, Maeve saw the night outside flicker red. One window. Then another. Then a whole tower of them, every apartment glowing with the same dim, theatrical crimson. The light spread across the city in clusters, igniting hospitals, office blocks, row houses, traffic tunnels. Thousands of red squares stared into the dark.

A stage.

The Curator’s voice drifted from somewhere unseen.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he called, smooth as velvet over a blade, “the house is no longer waiting for you.”

Eli’s grip tightened around Maeve’s hand. “Don’t listen to him.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.” His breath hitched. He leaned harder against the broken frame of a doorway, pale beneath the blood smeared across his cheek. “Your shoulders do that when you’re listening.