The theatre wasn't new. But if you squinted—if you wanted to believe—it might pass for reborn. Behind the golden trim and velvet curtains, the walls remembered screams. The chandelier overhead trembled not from wind, but from memory. A forgotten opera house, half-restored, wholly haunted.
Tonight, it was full.
Not with rats or dust, but with laughter.
They came in pearls and fox fur. Elites of the city who whispered in salons and drank scandal like wine. They came for the girl they called "The Lunatic Magician."
She took the stage without fanfare. No music. No announcement.
Her shadow came first—long, impossible, stretching across red velvet like a stain. Then the grin.
Livia.
Draped in mourning black, corset pulled tight, gloves glistening with red ink that might've once been something else. Her eyes gleamed with a mad confidence that made even the cynics sit up straighter.
"Good evening," she purred—voice like silk woven through static. "Have you ever wondered how much of your mind belongs to you?"
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
Then gasps.
Then silence.
She raised a mirror to a nobleman in the front row. His reflection blinked before he did. It whispered something only he could hear.
He began to cry.
The audience applauded.
High above, in the balcony shadows, someone did not clap.
Ezra Vayne.
A tall figure in a dark coat, his silhouette angular, precise. Eyes like ice—pale blue, dissecting. A gaze that didn't merely see, but exposed. Silver streaked his once-chestnut hair, though age had done nothing to dull the scalpel-sharp intensity of his face. He looked like a man who'd learned to carve out truth with nothing but words.
Ezra didn't just read minds.
He undressed them.
A mentalist of international fame, feared and revered. Whispers of his name curled through the drawing rooms of London and the underworlds beneath. His performances weren't shows. They were violations.
He had predicted assassinations before they were attempted. He could name your childhood trauma before you remembered it yourself. He'd seen every trick, every illusion, every sleight of thought and tongue.
And yet—
Here he was.
Watching her.
A girl in black.
A stranger who grinned too wide and asked the wrong kind of questions.
She shouldn't have interested him.
And yet... there was no sleight of hand. No wires. No planted assistants. Just her. And them. A roomful of people willingly surrendering their sense of reality.
Mentalism?
No.
Something rawer. Something without artifice.
Something monstrous.
As her final act spiraled into a crescendo of light and laughter and distant, echoing voices—Ezra remained seated. Unmoving. Eyes locked on the spot where she had vanished.
His pride? Unshaken.
But his curiosity? That was another matter.
Ezra had learned long ago: curiosity is dangerous. It doesn't scratch—it burrows. It pulls threads you didn't know were connected. And when the tapestry comes undone, you realize it was never cloth at all—it was skin.
Still. The way she bent the crowd—so effortlessly, so intimately—he needed to understand.
"I'll admit," Ezra muttered, just loud enough for his ego to hear, "you're good. Too good."
He rose from his chair, smooth as a blade sliding from its sheath. The cuffs of his tailored coat snapped into place. His mind was already cutting through the noise, constructing a path, a strategy, a dissection.
He didn't need a ticket to return.
He needed answers.
He would find her.
And when he did, he would peel her illusions apart, piece by piece, until only truth remained.
That was the plan.
Then—
She looked at him.
From across the theatre, through a hundred other bodies, she found him.
Her eyes locked on his.
Not startled.
Not curious.
Knowing.
Ezra's breath stalled. Just for a second.
She'd known he was there the entire time.
He wasn't the hunter anymore.
He was part of the act.
The air in the theatre shifted. Not colder. Not warmer.
Just closer.
The control slipped, the way a blade slips in bloodied hands.
Ezra swallowed hard, but the taste of pride was already turning bitter.
The game had changed.
And for the first time in years, Ezra Vayne did not know the rules.