Mine follows a moment after, and I read the caller ID. GREGORY.
My stepfather.
So, here we are.
Elias gets another call—my mother this time—and sends it to voice mail, too. He stares at his screen for a long moment. The doorbell rings again.
I tighten my grip on the doorknob. “How do they know about Rosie?” I ask, my voice shaking.
“Well…because of this,” he replies, and shows me an article on TMZ. An article with a video attached. It plays automatically, a shaky phone video of a dark house, but as soon as it turns the corner into a dark room, I recognize the bare bones of the library. Rosie’s hand slowly reaching for The Starless Throne, not yet water damaged. The rest I don’t have to see. I know what happens.
She goes onto the back patio. I ask, “What are you doing here?”
And she screams and falls backward into the pool.
I close my eyes, gritting my teeth so hard my jaw begins to ache—
“Vance, you can’t honestly think that she’d do this,” Elias says patiently.
“Didn’t she?” I force out, because the truth is right there on the internet. And then, quieter, “I guess I deserve this.”
For a moment I didn’t hate being Vance, being me, because for once I was a person to someone, and not Vance Reigns. He isn’t a person. He’s a character. He’s a vehicle other people can live vicariously through. For other people to pretend to be close to. To pretend to know. Pretend to love.
I should have known better.
The paparazzi on the front lawn remind me. That even in this house, far away from the life that I knew, I’m still Vance Reigns, and I’m still fodder for everyone else’s lives. A moment, and then discarded. It’s either use or be used, and I was used so bloody badly.
I was a fool.
“Vance, what are you doing?” Elias asks.
What I should’ve done at the beginning. I wrap my fingers around the doorknob and wrench it open, and the bright flashes of camera lights are blinding. They remind me of the flash of paparazzi the night outside the wrap party for Starfield: Resonance. Of the night that my mask slipped for a moment, and I actually decided to care about any of this. If only I’d never agreed to take Elle home, then none of this would’ve happened.
I always knew how to disappoint people.
Why would disappointing myself be any different?
When people assumed that my actions broke Darien and Elle up, I didn’t bat an eye. If the world needed a villain, I’d play it. I was already good at it. I would get even more attention, more press.
I wonder how much TMZ paid her. I wonder how much other tabloids are clamoring for our text messages, our call histories, our stories. I told her so much—too much. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
I should’ve played my part.
The moment I open the front door, the vultures rush toward me like hungry vampires, waiting for me to welcome them inside.
“Vance! Is it true that—”
“Did you really coerce—”
“Is it true that you made a girl—”
“Is this Rosie Thorne working for you?”
And then another voice cuts through the cacophony of questions. “Vance!”
I raise my gaze toward the crowd, the flashing cameras and bulbous lenses, to the girl pushing her way through the crowd. She gets elbowed by a paparazzo and shoves them back with equal vigor.
“Vance!”
She catches my gaze, and her face breaks open with relief. But only for a moment—a breath—before it fills with dread. Because she must see it now, the mask. The one I’ve worn for so long it’s become the face everyone sees.
I’m no one I recognize, and for a few weeks, that was nice.
Her lips move in a question. “Vance?” I can’t hear her anymore over the other questions, the people vying for my attention, and when I blink she’s just another face in the crowd.
That’s all she should’ve been to begin with.
I take one look at them, the briefest glance, before I say, “Piss off,” and slam the door in their faces.
PART FOUR
HERO
Her name is Amara Avanrose, and she is the princess of the Noxian Empire. She has lived through the Starless Wars, the coups to overthrow her father from his throne, the brief tète-à-tètes with Prince Carmindor. She has survived ship scrimmages, assassination plots, imploding stars.
But she isn’t sure she is going to survive this.
He wraps his arms around her legs and presses his face into her middle. “I must not lose you. I cannot. It will tear me asunder, ah’blena.”
“It will not,” she replies, cupping Ambrose’s face in her hands. He turns his gaze up to her, and she memorizes the cut of his cheekbones, the glow of his white-blond hair, the way he looks at her with those eyes, so sky-blue they make her want to fly.
“I have made so many mistakes,” he whispers, closing his eyes. “Oh, Sol curse me, conscript me, make me forget.”
“Then you’ll forget me, too.” She runs her thumb across his cheek. “Sometimes the universe deals us fates that make us happy, but sometimes it simply deals us fates that make us. I love you, Ambrose, but you need to love yourself first.”
Then she lets go of his face and steps out of his embrace, and even though she knows he wants to hold on, he lets her slide out of his arms, and then she turns away from him, and leaves him kneeling in the empty room of the Starless Throne.
I DIDN’T DO IT.
I keep mouthing those words as I stare up at the poster of General Sond on my bedroom ceiling. I didn’t do it. I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter, because he thinks I did leak the video. He thinks I’m that kind of person—the nerve of him! It’s almost enough for me to hate him. Him, and this stupid sleepy town, and Homecoming—I hate all of it. I don’t see why it even matters. Why any of it matters.
I don’t know what I’m hoping for—that Vance appears at my door? That he smiles at me with that kind of smile he keeps tucked away so no one can see, and tells me what the hell happened? That yesterday was just a terrible fever dream and that he knows I didn’t do it, that we’ll figure it out? Or did he close the door because it was the other way around—that now that someone shined a light on his little vacation here in nowhere, he wants nothing to do with me?
Was that all I was—just a vacation? That’s depressing. And sad. And it makes me feel so terribly small.