Page 10 of The Opening Act is Death
Instead…
I’m dreaming about him.
Earlier, I stood on the main stage and danced alone, with no audience and no judgment. Just the sound of old music boxes spinning beneath my ribs. I traced every step like it was the first time. A child’s routine, but rewritten in pain. Blades at my feet as I pirouetted on a stage that remembers every soul I’ve sent screaming. But today… my balance faltered. I missed the beat, my ankle nearly gave out. And for the first time since I buried that broken girl beneath the floorboards; I panicked. Not because I might fall. But because I knew exactlywhyI faltered.
Corvan.
The way he watched me. The way he didn’t look away, the way hesawme.
* * *
After the rehearsal, I found one of my roses had bloomed again, only one, but it was enough. It bloomed from the wood of the stage like a secret forced into bloom by emotion I swore I’d buried. Its petals were the color of bloodstains faded by time worn, bruised, still pulsing. I plucked it, trembling. And I didn’tknow if I wanted to burn it or press it into my chest and let it root inside me. That’s when I heard him.
Corvan.
His voice, low and broken, floating just past the curtain, he wasn’t speaking to me, but The Carnival made sure I heard.
“I don’t want to be a ghost anymore,” he whispered.
The sentence lanced through me like a violin string pulled too tight. Not because of what he said, but because I realized I didn’t want him to vanish either.
I wanted him to stay.
I wanted…
I wanted to reach out. Just once, and the part of me I thought I’d amputated stirred. A phantom limb of feeling, aching to touch back.
Later that night, I return to my dressing tent and undress slowly. The tulle slips down my arms like a breath, I peel away the satin, the corset laced in bone, and the gloves I wear to hide the inked sigils. Piece by piece, I unravel myself, layer by layer, until only skin and scars remain. The mirror catches me anyway, and for a second, I seeher.
Not Madame Noire. Not the Warden of the Damned.
Visha.
The girl before the knives, before the deal, before the darkness. Her eyes are hollow, mouth bruised, ribs still marked from cane strikes, ballet slippers pink and soft and bloodied at the toe. I tear my gaze away. My throat is tight, I grab the closest thing and hurl it. A jar of pigment shatters against the floor, staining the velvet with smears of ink and rage.
Why does he make her return?
Why does he make me remember?
I step outside to breathe. The moon is veiled behind mist, the air soaked in iron. The Carnival glows low and red, like embers refusing to die. Then I see it.
Anote.
Tucked beneath one of my blades, left so carefully it had to be him. I unfold it with hands that are too steady.
“You dance like you’re trying to forget. But your eyes remember everything.”
No name. No signature. No promise. I know it’s him.
Corvan.
And the girl beneath my skin; that fragile, furious girl, I feel her trying to crawl out. I press the paper to my lips, and then I set it on fire. I watch it curl and vanish. Ash in the wind, because if I answer, I’m not Madame Noire anymore.
If I answer, I amVisha. And Visha is not allowed to live.
And yet… that night, when I dream…
He’s holding my hand.
