Page 24 of The Opening Act is Death
Shewrote the letter.
Hedidn’t read it.
But the act was enough. The silence, the weight, the way her pulse quickened when she bled onto the page…
The stage remembers.
Across the tents, the lights flicker not from wind, but fromreverence. The tightrope snaps taut without touch. The calliope groans out a minor key.
They forget who she is.
She is not just the Ringmaster. Not just Madame Noire. Not just the girl who danced on broken feet until gods and ghosts wept.
She is theQueen of Knives.
And mercy? She was never built with that word in her mouth. The Carnival feels the shift, the ache in the floorboards when she hesitates. The rupture in Corvan’s chest when he realizes she knew his sins before he did.
It drinks it in. Some of the Carnies murmur behind curtains. Some wonder if she’s softening. Some whisper that love is weakening her crown. But The Carnival knows better.
It does not break its rulers.
Itteststhem.
She is still the one who built this place from grief and rot and velvet ash. Still the one who decides who stays—and who bleeds.
And the others? Let them try. Let them come for her throne. Let them think she’s distracted, unarmed, unguarded.
She is none of those things.
She is sharpening.
She is watching.
They will learn.
Thirty Two
Visha -The Queen of Knives
They try to dethrone me. They learn what mercy never meant.
The Carnival shifts beneath my feet, not trembles. Not recoils. No, sheleans. As if waiting to see what I’ll do when the blood hits the velvet. As if she’s eager for it, someone left the wrong flowers in my dressing tent.
White roses. Fresh. Unwilted.
Not mine.
I haven’t seen white roses since the garden where I died. Their meaning is obvious.
Innocence.
Forgiveness.
Peace.
A threat, in lace, someone is calling me soft. Someone thinks I’ve forgotten what I am.
“You make us bleed for a ghost?”
