The Betrothed

There is a chair at the high table with your name on the card, and it has been waiting. The Betrothed opens in the cold street outside a great warm house lit for a wedding, where every soul who could not bear to be passed over is chosen at last, adored without end, and kept at the center of the loving room. You came in out of the cold because someone, finally, was glad to see you. All you have to do is take the floor, let them love you, say the vow, and never let the smile drop.

The Betrothed is Book Six of ENCORE, a choose-your-path horror. The same Curator keeps the house; the same company of the dead is recast into a new production, this one warm and loving and sure of you. Bring the character you built in The Haunt, The Vigil, The Understudy, The Crossing, and The Gallery, and the wedding remembers what you carried, who you are, and what you have already proven you will and will not do.

You read by deciding. Give your name to the guest book or keep to the edge of the room. Take the first dance or stay a guest passing through. Your choices decide which of the book’s endings the house gives you, and the way out, the true one, asks whether you can walk away unchosen, no ring and no vow and no one left to keep the chair, and go out the service door into the cold street as no one’s beloved, real and alive.

If you like Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure, if you like interactive horror, if you like the cold anthology dread of American Horror Story, this is built for you.

▶ Play it free in your browser, then keep the ebook or paperback. 166 numbered sections, 37 endings. The interactive audiobook follows.