Chapter 23 · Beyond the Light

The knife stopped an inch from Maeve’s heart.

Not because Eli had chosen to stop it.

His arm trembled so violently that the blade chattered in the air. The point hovered over the black iron key pressed against his sternum, and every shiver ran through the metal into Maeve’s fist. She could feel his pulse through the knife’s handle. Fast. Ragged. Human.

The theater smelled of hot dust and old rain. Beneath the floorboards, something knocked once.

Then again.

“Elias,” Mara called from below the stairs. Her voice slipped between the boards like cold water. “You promised me another door.”

Eli’s jaw clenched. A pale line appeared beside his mouth.

“I know,” he whispered.

Maeve did not look away from him. “Eli.”

His eyes flicked to hers. For one breath, they were his eyes—the gray, exhausted eyes that had watched her stitch a stranger in a basement, that had gone soft when Jonah’s name came up, that had looked at her as if she were not a role but a person.

Then the theater lights brightened.

The audience inhaled as one.

Hundreds of faces turned toward them from the velvet seats. Some belonged to people Maeve had never seen.