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“Stop! Please!” My voice cracked. “Please, just stop⁠—”

She twisted her wrist. The invisible blade carved deeper—slicing through the backs of his thighs, opening his forearms, peeling skin from his spine. Blood poured in thick rivulets, pooling on the stage in widening circles. His body convulsed, seizing as the iron bit into bone.

And then the memory hit me.

Not gentle. Not a recollection. A violent insertion of images and sensations that didn’t belong to my present consciousness.

Before.

I was eighteen when I first saw him perform.

Malachi stood shirtless on a wooden platform in the center of the main tent, covered in tattoos that looked like they’d been inked by hand. His body was lean and brutal, all sharp angles and hard muscle, and he moved through the performance with the kind of arrogance that made people either worship him or want to see him fail.

The act was simple: the audience chose how he’d be restrained—chains, ropes, locked boxes—and he escaped within a set time. If he failed, he owed the House a favor. If he succeeded, the House owed him.

He never failed.

Malachi slipped free of a straitjacket and three sets of chains while the crowd screamed and placed bets. When he finally stood, breathing hard and grinning at the audience, his gaze swept across the tent and landed on me.

He stared.

I stared back.

Evangeline leaned over and whispered, “That’s the Devil. Don’t get too close.”

“Why do they call him that?”

“Because he’ll take everything you offer and make you think it was your idea.”

I didn’t look away.

The memory compressed months into minutes. I saw myself returning to the show night after night. I saw Malachi catching me in the restricted backstage area, his hand gripping my wrist as he warned me to stay away. I saw us meeting in secret—behind the tents, in his quarters, in the dark spaces where guests weren’t allowed.

I saw the night he kissed me for the first time, his mouth hard and desperate against mine.

I saw the night I went to his tent and he took my virginity, his hands rough and possessive, his voice low in my ear as he told me I was his.

Weeks followed—stolen hours, whispered promises, plans to escape together.

He told me he loved me.

And I believed him.

The memory slowed, focusing on a single night two weeks later.

I went to his tent expecting to find him packing. We’d spent the last fourteen days planning our escape—routes, timing, the exact moment we’d slip away before Evangeline could stop us. Malachi had promised me freedom. He’d promised me a life outside the freak show, outside the Vale legacy, outside everything I’d been raised to inherit.

The tent flap was open when I arrived. I heard voices inside—low, intimate, and deliberate. I should have turned around. Should have walked away.

I didn't.

Instead, I stepped inside and that’s when I saw them.

Malachi was on the bed, naked and slick with sweat, his body arched and tense. Evangeline straddled him, her dress bunched around her waist, her hips rolling in a slow, grinding rhythm. She wasn’t just fucking him. She was performing something—a ritual, a claim, a witnessed transaction that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with power.

“Say it again,” Evangeline said. “Say it so she can hear.”

Malachi’s gaze snapped to the doorway and found me.