Page 47

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” She looked down at me, and her face was cold. “You’re sorry you got caught. You’re sorry I saw what you really are. But you’re not sorry you did it.”

She was right.

I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out.

Zinnia reached into the saddlebag and pulled out a small knife—the kind used to cut leather and trim hooves. She leaned down and pressed the blade against my stomach.

“I hope it was worth it,” she said.

Then she drove the knife in.

The pain was immediate and white-hot, spreading from my gut to my chest to my spine. I staggered back, my hands moving to the wound, and felt blood pouring between my fingers.

And I couldn’t say I didn’t deserve this.

Zinnia pulled the knife free and wiped it on her skirt. “I loved you,” she said. “I would have left everything for you. I would have built a life with you in some shitty town where nobody knew our names, and I would have been happy.”

“Zinnia—”

“But you wanted more than that. You wanted power and money and a place in her new world.” She turned the horse toward the road. “So I hope you get everything you wanted. I hope it keeps you warm at night. I hope it makes you feel like a man.”

She kicked the horse into a gallop and disappeared into the dark.

I tried to follow, but my legs gave out. I collapsed in the stable yard, blood pooling beneath me, and watched the road until the sound of hooves faded into nothing.

I didn’t die.

The theater wouldn’t let me.

Evangeline found me an hour later, still bleeding, still conscious. She crouched beside me and pressed her hand against the wound.

“The bargain is sealed,” she said. “The theater has accepted you. Now it’s going to remake you.”

“Where is she?”

“Gone.” Evangeline stood. “And you’re not going to find her.”

“I have to⁠—”

“You have to survive.” She gestured toward the theater, and the floor shifted beneath me. “The theater needs you, Malachi. It needs someone who understands betrayal. Someone who can bring people in and make them stay. Someone who’ll do whatever it takes.”

The wound in my stomach began to close. Not healing—changing. The pain didn’t stop. It just became part of me.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I made you the Devil.” She smiled. “And now you’re mine.”

I searched for Zinnia for years.

Using false names, bribed railway clerks, and questioned performers who traveled between towns. I followed rumors of a woman with dark hair and a sharp tongue who’d taken work in boarding houses, factories, and charity kitchens. I found fragments—a landlady who remembered her, a coworker who said she’d moved on, a letter addressed to a name that might have been hers.

But I never found her.

Eventually, I learned she’d lived under another name in a town 200 miles west. She’d worked in a hospital during a winter fever outbreak, helping others survive while the disease spread. She’d died in the spring, buried in an unmarked grave with a dozen other victims.

The records were incomplete. The theater had already started corrupting them, erasing names, dates, and details. But I knew it was her.