(Rebecca's POV)
The rooftop. Forty people. Fairy lights the interns rigged to a motion controller so they ripple when I walk. I stand in the stairwell in a dress I bought myself with my own money and I am not nervous.
My pulse is slow. My hands are dry. Stages don't frighten people who have survived dinner with the Clarks and a press conference and a knife attack and a mountain blizzard and a man kneeling on pavement. Stages are just platforms with better lighting.
The air is cold up here — razor-cold, biting into lungs and sitting in the joints. The fairy lights form a low canopy around the perimeter, and the sky above them is starless, heavy, pressing down on the concrete like a hand on a chest. Forty chairs packed tight. The city is dark and infinite below.
I don't go out yet. I sta
