Chapter 142: who do you want in the audience

Chapter 142 — Who Do You Want in the Audience?

Roxanne found Liam in the dining hall the next morning, holding court at the end of a long table with a piece of toast in each hand. She sat down opposite him and slid her phone across the wood.

"You invited me to watch you become a legend?"

"I’m glad you understand the importance of the occasion."

"You could have simply asked me to attend."

"Where’s the drama in that?"

"I was already planning to come. So you haven’t accomplished anything extraordinary."

Liam pressed a piece of toast to his chest. "Crushed. Utterly." Then he lowered it, and his voice settled into something plainer. "I wanted to make sure you’d be there."

"Why?"

"Because you’re my scene partner. It would be strange to perform without you in the audience."

She waited. She suspected there was more tucked behind the answer, folded small. But Liam only bit into his toast and began asking whether anyone had seen his left boot, and the moment passed without being pushed anywhere. Roxanne was left with a small, unfamiliar warmth that she decided, for once, not to examine.

Later that morning, the coordinator caught her in the corridor and reminded her that every performer could invite one person from outside the group. Roxanne thought it over during Strategy. Isla and Tessa were already coming. She could have chosen one of the brothers, but she did not want the invitation to turn into an event of its own, with glances and theories attached.

Then she thought of Jace Rowan.

He had always been lively and easy company, but she had mostly met him in groups, in the margins of other people’s jokes. She liked the idea of someone in the audience who would react honestly, rather than treat the evening like a royal occasion. She sent him a message before she could talk herself out of it.

His reply came within a minute. Will there be snacks?

I regret inviting you, she wrote.

He confirmed that he would come.

That afternoon she met Tessa on the training lawn for a casual session. They traded drills and bruises in the cold light, and between rounds Tessa leaned on her knees and asked how the showcase was going.

"I enjoy rehearsing more than I expected."

"Don’t tell me you’ve discovered a dramatic side."

"I’ve always had one."

"Your dramatic side usually involves threatening people."

"It’s called range."

Tessa snorted and knocked her feet out from under her. Roxanne won the next round and lost the one after, and neither of them made anything of it. When they sat down to catch their breath, Tessa asked, more quietly, whether she was nervous.

"I am," Roxanne said. "But I’m also excited."

"Those two can live in the same body," said Tessa. "Mine does it every tournament."

It was simple, and exactly enough. Roxanne drank her water and felt grateful that she did not have to explain it.

Jace found her near the library an hour later, hands in his pockets, and asked what sort of performance she and Liam were preparing. She told him about the royal siblings, the ceremony neither wanted to attend, the delayed horses. He immediately offered a series of endings, each worse than the last. A volcano. A surprise twin. A tragic goose.

"No," said Roxanne. "No. And no."

"The goose would have been memorable."

"That is the problem with the goose."

But when she had finished rejecting him, he went quiet and looked at the flagstones. "The premise is actually good. The part about expectations. People deciding who you are because of your family." He shrugged, a little too casually. "I know that one."

"Do you?" She hadn’t thought of it. "Do you feel that pressure?"

He started to wave it off, then stopped. "Being friends with the brothers, people expect me to behave a certain way around them. Be a certain kind of person. I like it better when I’m just Jace. Not someone’s long-standing royal companion."

Roxanne looked at him properly, perhaps for the first time. "I understand that more than you’d think."

"I figured you might." He grinned, and the weight lifted. "Still, a goose."

"Go away, Jace."

That evening, Roxanne passed the brothers’ common room on her way back from the library, and the door stood open.

"She invited Jace," Liam was saying, sprawled upside down on the sofa. "To the showcase. It is a great honour to be a guest of a performer of my calibre."

"Does Jace know what it’s about?" Roshan asked, looking up from his book.

Liam explained. Roshan nodded slowly. "He’ll spend the entire evening trying not to heckle you."

"He won’t manage it," Kai said, from the window.

"The performance should be ready before the audience arrives," Lucien said, without looking up from his papers.

"Nobody appreciates my artistic process," Liam complained.

"Your artistic process," said Roxanne, from the doorway, "appears to involve talking until someone gives in."

"See?" Liam said to his brothers, pointing at her. "She understands me."

"No," Roxanne said. "I’ve learned to recognise a warning sign."

They laughed, all four of them, and she smiled and walked on. She did not have to stay, and nobody asked her to. It was a good feeling, being able to pass a door without being drawn through it.

Back in her room, she spread the script on her bed beneath the lamp, with Liam’s latest notes scribbled in the margins in his untidy hand. She found one change she liked, a sharper entrance for her character. She found another she meant to reject, a speech that gave her a great deal too much to explain. She did not worry about whether it would impress anyone. She thought about what she wanted her character to say. She was not trying to prove she belonged on a stage. She was only trying to tell a story well.

Her phone buzzed just before she turned out the light.

I’ve decided what your performance needs, Jace had written.

If you suggest a dramatic explosion, I’m uninviting you.

I was going to suggest a dramatic horse.

She laughed into her pillow, set the phone aside, and finally turned off the lamp.

The next afternoon, Liam arrived at the rehearsal room with a fresh set of pages held carefully in both hands, as though they might spill. He did not wave them or announce them. He stopped in front of her.

"I have an idea for the ending," he said. "It might make the final exchange stronger. But I want you to read it before I change anything."

He was asking first. She noticed it, and was quietly pleased.

Roxanne took the pages. She read through the scene, the stalled procession, the missing horses, the two siblings circling what neither would say. She reached the final line and looked up.

"Liam. What exactly are you trying to make the audience feel?"

He smiled.

"That’s the interesting part. I’m not entirely sure yet."