Page 36 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Thirty Eight

Torn Page — Visha

I remember dying, but it wasn’t flames. Not really. It was when he ran. When he left me behind in that burning city, a girl with ash in her lungs and knives in her hands, and no one left to use them on but herself. Elena died there.

And The Carnival offered me something new. Power, silence, control a stage carved from everything I lost. But it asked one thing in return:

Don’t feel.

So I didn’t, not when I killed for applause. Not when I carved beauty from bone.

Not even when I saw him again, older, colder, wearing a mask made of guilt and silk. I wanted to hurt him. I built this Carnival to hurt him. Every act, every illusion, every scream in the dark, all for him. A curse wearing fishnet gloves and ballet slippers.

But he surprised me. He bled, not for show.

Not for escape. But because he wanted me to see the raw thing underneath, and I hate him for it.

Because that’s the part I fell in love with.

The ugly truth. The broken boy who never stopped looking for me, even when I’d become someone else.

I am not Elena anymore. But she still lives inside me, the part that wanted love to be enough.

The part that still wants to forgive him, and that part is going to get me killed.