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“Hello, Mrs. Smith,” he said. “You invited me over to your house to ask me a question, did you not?”

The play material flooded back to me in an instant. I puffed out my stomach as much as I could and nodded, clasping my hands across my pretend belly. “Yes, Mr. Devillier. I wanted to tell you that I am pregnant. My husband was away when the baby was conceived, so it must be yours.”

“Mine?”

I nodded vigorously. “Yes. We can be together now. I will leave my husband for you. I did not choose him, anyway. He was chosen for me by the Elders, which I have always resented.”

Mason let out a loud chuckle and stepped over to me. He pulled a large gleaming knife from his pocket. “Did you not realize who sent me to you all those months ago?” he asked in a mocking tone. “Think of my name.”

My hand flew to my mouth. “Devillier… Devil!”

The children in the audience let out another loud collective gasp.

Mason nodded and held the knife high in the air. “That’s right. I was sent to test you, and you failed. You committed terrible acts of lust. The consequences of that are clear. You and the abomination growing inside you must be wiped from the face of this Earth.”

He pulled me close to him again. With his right arm, he pretended to stab me on the side facing away from the stage.

Despite the horrifying message of the play, the same pleasurable thoughts and feelings from earlier immediately returned to me. Mason’s body next to mine was enough to make that happen.

In the back of my mind, I heard my father telling me that I was a nasty, dirty, sinful girl who would bring hellfire and doom upon this planet. Somehow, I didn’t care anymore. Those threats and insults seemed distant. Irrelevant. The Jolie who would have run from this situation and tried her best to be good had vanished, and instead, all I felt was power and heat. Passion and need. Mason made me want to break all my vows, even if it wound up damning us all. He made me want to throw away everything I knew and sin, sin, sin…

The performance ended with me crumpled on the floor, playing dead. Then I got up and bowed with Mason. I tried to ignore Martha Chase’s pursed lips as she watched us leave the stage.

I felt as if I were walking on air the rest of the night. I kept stealing glances at Mason as we sat and watched the rest of the plays, and every so often, I caught him looking at me too.

When it was all over, I returned to my room and crossed over to the small table where my vitamins were held. I was supposed to take one every night before bed and another one every morning before breakfast. One of the men came around once a week to replenish the supply and ensure all the other pills had been taken.

Usually I put the little beige tablet straight in my mouth and swallowed it right away, but tonight, I held it in my palm, hesitating as I stared over at the dull gray wall. I was thinking of the scratched message I found on Elena’s bedroom wall earlier.

Please help me.

When I first saw it, I’d come to the conclusion that she wrote it while under possession by the Devil. At the same time, I hadn’t felt entirely satisfied with that answer. Deep down, I knew there had to be something more to it.

So maybe she hadn’t written it while possessed at all. Maybe she’d actually felt the same stirrings and cravings that I was feeling now, and she’d really believed there was more to the world. Maybe she wanted to leave New Eden so that she could experience these things without any fear or judgment from the others here. Maybe, after feeling this way for so long, she’d written the message in the hope that a man would eventually love her enough to find it and help her leave this place. Or maybe it was simply a message for her eyes only, a way of dealing with the fear that sprang from these new feelings. Not a yearning to be heard by anyone inside or outside the commune. More like the venting of a thought too petrifying to keep inside.

Did that really make her insane? Possessed? I felt all those things right now, and I knew I wasn’t insane or possessed.

Or was I?

I hoped not, but right now, I couldn’t be sure. The only thing I could be sure of was that Elena was smart, and she’d always encouraged me to think as hard as I could about things. If she were here right now, I knew she would tell me to think of ways to spend more time with Mason so that I could explore whatever was happening in my mind and body. If our God had thrown us together all these times, it had to be for a reason, and she would want me to find out what that reason was. She would want me to think hard about everything.

I looked at the vitamin pill again. Then I threw it to the ground, crushed it with my feet, and swept the remains under the bed.

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