Chapter 36 · Before the Curtain Falls

The last emergency siren died somewhere beyond the theater walls, leaving behind a silence too large for the city.

Maeve stood in the wreckage of the stage with her hand still raised.

A black line cut across her palm where the old contract had kissed her skin. Her name glimmered inside it, each letter burning a dull red beneath the flesh.

MAEVE KELLAN.

The theater inhaled.

Every dead bulb above the stage swung on its wire. Glass fragments glittered in the darkness like suspended ice. Beyond the footlights, the audience seats had filled without anyone walking into them. Rows of faceless figures leaned forward, their heads tilted in identical anticipation.

Then the theater spoke.

The voice came from the walls, the floorboards, the velvet curtains, and the hollow space beneath Maeve's ribs.

The female lead has entered.

Maeve clenched her fingers. Pain flashed up her arm. She welcomed it. Pain was honest. Pain belonged to a body. It did not pretend to be a rule or a prophecy or a dead man's line written by someone who had never met him.

"Give him back."

Her voice scraped across the stage.

Nothing answered.

She turned in a slow circle.