Chapter 111: The Worst Seat In The House

Roxanne had been looking forward to this afternoon for nine days. No classes, no training, no assignments, and nobody who needed anything from her. She lay on the grass behind the dormitory with her head on her bag, while Isla braided clover stems into a crown and Tessa held up a book to block the sun.

"This is the best afternoon of the term," Roxanne said.

"Don’t say that aloud," Tessa murmured. "Something always hears."

Something did. It arrived in the form of Liam Moonstone, crossing the lawn at speed with a sheet of paper flapping in one hand and the glow of a man who had just had an idea.

"Roxanne. Perfect. Don’t move."

"I’m moving."

"The drama club has a crisis." He dropped onto the grass beside her. "Their lead has withdrawn from the student comedy this weekend. Nerves, apparently, and a rash. Very sad. I’ve been helping with the production."

"Helping how?"

"I stand onstage and people laugh. It’s a gift."

A tall girl with ink-stained fingers and a clipboard hurried up behind him. "Liam, please tell me you’ve found someone."

Liam turned, and his whole face brightened in a way Roxanne recognised from long experience. "As it happens, I know exactly the person. Roxanne Silver. Sharp tongue, flawless timing, no fear of an audience."

Roxanne sat up. "Tell me you didn’t just volunteer me for something."

Liam looked wounded. "I would never."

"You’re smiling."

"I smile when I’m happy."

"You smile when you’re about to ruin my life."

"See? You do know me."

The coordinator was already writing on her clipboard. "Silver. Wonderful. Rehearsal at four." Roxanne scrambled to stand, but Isla caught her ankle with one hand and refused to let go.

"One look at the script," Isla pleaded. "That’s all."

"I hate all of you."

"Tessa’s coming to watch," Isla added. "Purely to witness your humiliation."

"I wouldn’t miss it," said Tessa, turning a page.

The script was called The Prince Who Wouldn’t Listen, and it had been written by a second-year with a gift for exaggeration. Roxanne read the first three pages in the corridor outside the rehearsal room, and her expression grew steadily more suspicious.

The heroine, a sharp-tongued scholar named Wilhelmina, spent the entire play arguing with a pompous young prince who believed the kingdom revolved around his hair. She told him his speeches were too long. She told him his horse had better judgement. She told him, at one point, that if confidence were edible, he would never go hungry.

"This is me," Roxanne said slowly. "These are things I would say to Liam."

"Aren’t they?" said the coordinator, whose name turned out to be Perpetua. "That’s why he thought of you. We need someone who can deliver these lines naturally. The whole thing is meant to be light."

"I’m not an actress."

"You don’t need to be. You only need to be annoyed convincingly."

"One rehearsal," Roxanne said. "One. This is not a commitment."

"Of course," said Perpetua, in the tone of someone who had heard that before.

Liam, as the prince, wore a paper crown and an expression of tremendous self-regard. They began the scene in which Wilhelmina interrupts the prince’s coronation speech. Roxanne read her first line flatly. It was supposed to be an insult about his posture. Liam responded with his own line, then paused, and added, in a ringing voice, "And furthermore, my hair is a national treasure."

"That isn’t in the script," Roxanne said.

"I am improving it."

She broke character entirely. "Nobody has ever improved anything by saying that."

"Stay in character," Perpetua called.

Roxanne turned back to the page, found her next line, and delivered it with such cold, withering contempt that three students at the side of the room gasped. "Your Highness, I have met furniture with more charm and a better sense of direction."

The room burst into laughter. Someone dropped a prop sword. Liam clutched his chest and staggered theatrically backward onto a chair.

"Stop improvising, both of you," said Perpetua, wiping her eyes. "Although I admit it works. Whatever you two are doing, do more of it, but with the correct words."

"I’m not doing anything special," Roxanne said.

"You have a natural talent for insulting people in front of an audience," Liam said warmly. "It’s moving."

At the edge of the room, Tessa lifted her phone. "May I record this for the group chat?"

Roxanne hesitated, then waved a hand. "Fine."

Tessa filmed the next exchange. When she played it back, Isla laughed so hard that she slid off her chair and had to sit on the floor.

The door opened partway through the third run. Lucien came in first, a folded schedule in his hand, followed by Roshan, and then, after a short delay, Kai. All three had come separately to collect Liam, and all three stopped dead.

"Is that the Hall of Mirrors speech?" Roshan asked quietly.

"It’s a comedy," Perpetua whispered. "Please be silent."

Lucien lowered his voice. "Did Roxanne actually agree to this?"

"One rehearsal," said Tessa, without turning. "She was volunteered."

"Ah," said Lucien, which explained everything.

Roshan sat on a stack of crates and watched with his chin on his hand. Roxanne’s shoulders were loose, her voice carrying easily across the room, and she was laughing between lines. She looked lighter than she had in days. He thought so, and said nothing.

Kai leaned against the back wall with his arms folded, listening without interrupting. His expression gave nothing away, but he didn’t leave.

On stage, Liam reached the climax of the scene. The prince, confronted at last with the heroine’s disapproval, was meant to bluster and retreat. Liam instead dropped to one knee, pressed a hand to his heart, and declared in a trembling voice, "I cannot survive another day without the heroine’s attention. I shall wither. I shall perish. Behold, I am already dying."

Roxanne stared at him.

"Get up before I step on you."

The whole room roared. Perpetua put her face in her hands. Tessa’s phone shook. At the back, Kai laughed aloud, a short, startled sound he plainly hadn’t meant to make, and several heads turned.

When the rehearsal ended, Perpetua caught Roxanne by the sleeve. "Will you take the role? Officially? We open Saturday."

Liam, sitting on the edge of the stage with his crown tilted, folded his arms. He was clearly certain she would refuse, and was already preparing a mournful speech.

Roxanne opened her mouth to say no. Then she thought about it honestly. She had laughed more in an hour than she had in a fortnight. The role was ridiculous, and it was hers to turn down or take. Nobody was making her do it.

"I’ll do it," she said. "On one condition."

"Name it," said Perpetua.

"He stops changing his lines without warning."

Liam placed a hand over his heart. "I swear to behave."

Nobody in the room believed him. Perpetua held out the cast list and a pen, and Roxanne took both, found the empty line beside Wilhelmina, and signed her name herself in plain black ink. It was not because Liam had put her forward. It was because she wanted to.

That evening, she sat cross-legged on her bed with the script spread across her knees. She read through it again quietly, enjoying the sharp, silly dialogue. She turned a page and stopped.

In the third act, an important courtier tells Wilhelmina that she ought to be grateful someone so important has chosen to notice her. Wilhelmina’s reply in the script was a meek one-line thank you.

Roxanne read the line twice. It reminded her, uncomfortably, of the way people had spoken to her after Dorian turned her away, with pity wrapped around something sharper. She sat very still. But she did not let it open into a long memory. Instead she picked up her pen and crossed out the meek reply.

In the margin, she wrote a new one. *I’m grateful for sunshine and soup. Attention I can do without.* It was sharper and steadier, and it sounded exactly like someone who knew her own worth.

She would ask the director in the morning if she could say it that way.

When she opened the script again after breakfast the next day, she found a line of untidy handwriting beside her revision.

*Keep that version. It’s better when you sound like you mean it.*

It was unmistakably Liam’s. For once, his teasing didn’t annoy her. She found her pen, smiled in spite of herself, and wrote beneath it:

*Then stop improvising, Your Highness.*