Chapter 112: The Show Must Go Wrong

Backstage smelled of dust, hairspray, and panic. Roxanne pushed through the curtain at half past six and found the whole cast in motion, like an anthill someone had kicked.

"I can’t find my left sleeve!" a boy in a green doublet wailed, turning in circles.

"I’ve forgotten everything," said another, clutching his script to his chest. "Every single line. It’s gone. I’m a blank page."

Perpetua stood on an overturned crate with her clipboard held like a shield. "If one more thing goes wrong, I am cancelling the opening and moving to the mountains."

In the middle of it all, perfectly calm, stood Liam. He wore a crimson coat with gold braiding, a collar so stiff it held his chin at a lordly angle, and the smile of a man watching a very entertaining fire.

"You look far too pleased," Roxanne said.

"I am a prince. Chaos is my natural habitat."

"Are you planning to help?"

He adjusted the ridiculous collar. "I’m the prince. My job is to look important while everyone else suffers."

"If you ruin my first performance," Roxanne said, "I will personally make sure your character dies in the first scene."

Liam grinned. "You say the sweetest things to me."

Somebody found the missing sleeve inside a helmet. The forgetful boy was fed a biscuit and a prompt sheet. By the time the five-minute bell rang, the panic had settled into a kind of trembling readiness, and Roxanne stood in the wings with her heart pounding in her ears.

The auditorium had filled completely. She peeked through a gap in the curtain and saw rows and rows of students, some on the floor in the aisles. Isla and Tessa sat near the front, Isla waving with both arms, Tessa pretending not to know her.

Roxanne’s stomach dropped. Then the lights dimmed, the audience hushed, and the narrator began to speak.

She stepped onto the stage when her cue came, and the heat of the lamps struck her face. For one long second she saw nothing but the dark shape of the crowd. Then Liam swept in from the opposite wing, cape swirling, and the scene began.

He bowed so deeply that his paper crown nearly fell off. "You should consider yourself fortunate. I have chosen you above every other girl in this kingdom."

Roxanne lifted her chin. "Have you? Then I suggest you choose someone who asked to be chosen."

The audience burst into laughter. It rolled across the room like a wave, and Liam’s composure cracked for a moment, his mouth twitching, before he recovered with a magnificent sniff.

"Impertinent," he declared.

"Accurate," said Roxanne.

More laughter. Something in her chest unclenched. They moved through the scene exactly as rehearsed, and she felt the timing click between them, each pause landing, each look drawing a ripple from the crowd. By the end of the exchange she was no longer afraid. She was enjoying herself, which was much more alarming.

The trouble came during the scene change.

The next actor was meant to enter carrying a ceremonial staff and announce the arrival of the royal advisor, which would lead directly into the prince’s next speech. Instead there was a loud crack from the wings, followed by a clatter. The staff had snapped in two. The actor stood frozen in the shadows, holding half in each hand, his mouth open and no sound coming out.

The stage fell silent. Seconds stretched. In the front row, Roxanne saw Tessa sit up straight.

Liam heard it too. He did not so much as glance toward the wings. He simply turned to Roxanne with his chin high and his arms spread, and said, in his most royal voice, "My lady, surely you have prepared a speech thanking me for this extraordinary honour."

Roxanne almost laughed. It was her revised line, the one she had written in the margin, only moved earlier and stolen without warning.

She felt panic rise and, just as quickly, fall away. She folded her hands neatly in front of her.

"I did," she said. "Unfortunately, the speech was lost when I discovered your personality."

The audience roared. Somebody whooped. Liam pressed a hand to his heart and swayed. "You wound me, madam."

"I would, if I could find anything vital."

"I am a very vital prince."

"You are a very loud one."

"Loudness is a form of leadership."

"So is silence. I recommend you try it."

The crowd was howling now. Liam tried to wrest back control with a stately speech about the dignity of the crown, and Roxanne interrupted him three times, each with a better line than the last. He answered every one. Neither of them looked at the script. It was no longer anyone’s rescue. They were each making it up as they went, and the audience had no idea which parts were planned.

By the time the broken-staff actor had stumbled on with a replacement broom handle, to enormous cheers, Roxanne was breathless. She caught Liam’s eye across the stage. He winked.

Then came the scene she had been dreading.

The prince stood at the centre of the stage and gave her a long, assessing look. Liam had gone quiet. He stepped back half a pace, giving her the space, and said in a more measured voice than before, "You should be grateful. I chose you."

The line hung there. Roxanne looked at him. She let the silence stretch while the audience settled, until she could hear a single cough somewhere in the back.

"Being chosen isn’t the same as being wanted," she said. "And being wanted isn’t the same as being owned."

The words fell very clearly into the quiet. For a moment they carried a weight she had not expected. A brief image of Dorian rose in her mind, and she let it pass through her without stopping, the way a cloud passes over a field. She was not on that stage for him. She lifted her head, finished the speech, and turned her back on the prince.

She walked off with her head high.

The audience applauded. It began as a patter and swelled until it filled the whole auditorium. Roxanne stood in the wings with her hand over her mouth, her pulse thundering. Out on the stage, Liam waited for the noise to ease, then sighed deeply and said with enormous wounded dignity, "I see. She has left me for a better offer. A very large door."

The laughter came back, bigger than before.

The rest of the play flew. By the final scene, the prince was forced to apologise to the heroine, who refused to accept until he learned to speak to her as an equal. Liam delivered the apology with such exaggerated misery, wringing his crown in both hands, sobbing into his sleeve, that the student director, watching from the side, doubled over and had to grip the curtain.

Roxanne gave him a regal little nod, accepting nothing, and exited first.

The curtain fell. The audience stood. In the wings, Perpetua flung an arm around Roxanne’s neck. "That broken staff nearly killed me, and you two just carried on! You were one of the strongest performers on the stage tonight. I mean it."

Isla burst through the curtain next and flung herself at her. "You were *amazing*. I cried laughing. I think I damaged something."

"You were frighteningly good at insulting a prince," Tessa said, arriving at a more dignified pace. "You looked very comfortable."

"I had a good teacher," Roxanne said. She was laughing, her hands trembling slightly with leftover energy. It felt as though she had been lit from the inside.

Later, while the cast crowded around a table of leftover biscuits, she slipped toward the backstage exit for some air. Liam was already there, leaning against the wall with his collar undone and his crown dangling from one finger.

"It was better than I expected," he said. "Especially when you stopped following the script and started answering me for real."

"You improvised first."

"And you rescued my scene."

"I rescued the audience from your acting."

Liam put a hand over his heart. "Cruel. After everything we’ve shared."

"We’ve shared one terrible play."

"And yet, somehow, it’s become one of my favourite memories."

Roxanne waited for the punchline. It did not come. He simply looked at her, and for once there was no joke laid over the words to hide them. She felt her smile soften.

"You weren’t completely unbearable onstage," she said.

His face lit. "I’m putting that in writing."

She rolled her eyes and went back to Isla and Tessa, still smiling.

On her way out of the auditorium, a sheet pinned beside the door caught her eye. It was the sign-up list for the club’s next production. Her name was already printed under the performers, and beside it, a blank space asked whether she would like to help write the next play.

She picked up the pen and wrote *yes*.

For once, she had found something she wanted to do again simply because it made her happy.