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“You gave her the ring,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And she believed you.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She stepped closer and ran her hand down my chest. “Then the theater has its witness. Now it needs its seal.”

“What do you mean?”

“The bargain requires proof that you’re willing to give up everything you love for what you want.” Her fingers moved to the buttons of my shirt. “That proof is me. You fuck me, the theater watches, and the contract binds you to this place and everything it’s going to become.”

My stomach turned. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

“Would you have agreed if I had?”

I didn’t answer.

She smiled. “That’s what I thought.” She kissed my neck, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat. “The theater feeds on betrayal, Malachi. It needs her to witness yours. That’s how the cycle starts.”

I should have walked out.

I should have run downstairs, found Zinnia, and told her the truth.

But I didn’t.

Because Evangeline’s hands were already working my belt open, and part of me—the part that had wanted this from the beginning—was already hard.

“Last chance,” she said. “You can leave now and spend the rest of your life wondering what you could have had. Or you can stay and become something more than human.”

I stayed.

She pushed me onto the bed and climbed on top of me, her dress falling open to reveal pale skin and the kind of body that belonged in paintings, not backstage theaters. She didn’t waste time. Her hand wrapped around my cock, stroking slowly, deliberately, while her mouth moved to my ear.

“The theater’s watching,” she whispered. “Every second of this is a contract. Every time you touch me, you’re choosing power over her.”

“I know.”

“Say it.”

“I’m choosing power.:

“Good.” She positioned herself over me and sank down in one smooth motion, taking me inside her. The heat was immediate, overwhelming, and wrong in a way that made my spine arch off the bed.

She rode me slowly at first, her hips rolling in a rhythm that felt rehearsed, ceremonial. Her hands pressed against my chest, holding me down, and I realized the candles around the room were burning brighter. The shadows on the walls had faces. The theater was here watching, and feeding off us.

“Harder,” she said.

I gripped her hips and thrust up into her, matching her rhythm, losing myself in the friction and the heat and the knowledge that I was destroying everything I’d promised Zinnia. Evangeline’s head fell back, her mouth open, her breath coming faster. She wasn’t performing. She was taking what she wanted, and the theater was taking it with her.

“Tell me you’d choose this over her.”

“I’d choose this over her.”

The lie became truth the moment I said it.

She leaned down and bit my shoulder hard enough to draw blood. The pain sharpened everything—the way her body clenched around me, the way the candlelight flickered in time with her movements, the way the room felt smaller and hotter and more alive with every thrust.