Chapter 12
Showtime.
After the chill of the green room, the stage felt scorching. They were only minutes in, and Emma’s neck was already damp beneath her hair.
At least the spotlights partially blinded her to the crowd. The room was far smaller than Hall H, but still packed—row after row of faces blending together into a single entity. A creature with mass and body and a thousand eyes: The Audience.
Everything had blurred together in those last chaotic backstage minutes. A stressed staffer ushered them through a side door, straight into the narrow space behind the curtain.
Karen jumped between her and Darren to introduce herself, pink-cheeked and overeager. A sound guy materialized to wire Darren up, running off again just as the countdown clock at the foot of the stage hit zero. Karen leapt out in front of the crowd.
Then just a few shared, silent breaths behind the curtain, Darren so close she felt the heat of his body. Their names were called and she followed Jenna up on stage, Darren just behind her.
A sudden camera flash jerked her back into the present.
The four of them sat in the armchairs she’d seen on the screens backstage: Karen on the far left, Emma on the far right, Darren next to her, with Jenna on his other side.
Darren.
Beside her. On a stage.
His presence tugged at her as if it had its own gravity, making it an effort not to constantly glance his way. He looked maddeningly at ease—one ankle resting on his knee, his expression almost sly, as if he knew something the rest of them didn’t.
Emma smoothed her blouse down and swallowed, maybe for the seventh time.
Karen wrapped up her intro—none of which Emma had managed to absorb—and tapped her cue cards against her knee.
“So, guys, just to get us started,” she said, her voice booming through the room. “Favorite antihero of all time, first name that pops into your head. Jenna?”
Jenna removed her sunglasses, dangling them from her fingers. She moved as if every gesture was choreographed. “That’s not even a question. It’s Spike, obviously.”
A few scattered cheers answered her. Apparently, Buffy hadn’t kept quite the chokehold Jenna thought.
“Right?” Jenna pressed, despite the feeble response. “I mean, that British accent . . . I’m always hungry for more of that.”
She threw a sideways look at Darren, dark lips curled into a pout. His expression barely shifted—just the slightest lift of his brows. “Warning received.”
Emma swallowed a laugh, hiding it behind a cough.
“Well,” Darren filled in, “I’ll go with Jay Gatsby.”
“That’s an unorthodox choice,” Karen said. “Care to elaborate?”
Darren shrugged, unbothered—as if he were hanging out at a friend’s place, not sitting in front of hundreds of strangers. Then again, he was an actor. Unlike her, the stage was his natural element.
“Not the obvious pick, maybe,” he said. “But he builds an entire world out of a dream he chases so hard it destroys him. There’s something about that. About someone who loves so deeply that it corrupts everything.”
Karen gave an impressed nod, then dropped her voice to the crowd like a co-conspirator. “Wow. Literary too? Take notes, ladies.” Then, “Emma? How about you?”
“Sherlock Holmes,” Emma said without hesitation.
The approving roar startled her. Right. There were movies now, TV shows.
But her version of Sherlock was always the original, the one she read curled under a blanket in her old armchair, with a glass of red wine beside her and her aptly named cats curled up by her feet. Just thinking about it made her shoulders relax a fraction. “He’s brilliant, but broken.”
It was unnerving at first, hearing her own voice echo from the speakers, as if someone else was talking. But it sounded right—steady, sure. The waiting had been worse than the doing.
Her breathing came easier as she went on. “He distances himself from people, and yet he’s hopelessly lost without someone to pull him back—to keep him grounded. It’s kind of beautiful. That even someone so extraordinary needs connection to survive.”
She clasped her hands in her lap. Even as she looked at Karen, she sensed Darren’s eyes on her. Something alive and almost defiant stirred under her skin. She could do this.
“Alright then,” Karen said. “So let’s get into the real stuff. Why is it that we love antiheroes so much? What makes them so irresistible?”
Jenna jumped in immediately.
“That’s obvious.” Her red hair caught the light as she tossed it over her shoulder.
“Because they’re never boring. Good is dull.
Evil is predictable. But someone in the middle?
Someone who breaks the rules and your heart?
That’s sexy.” She put her sunglasses back on with performative flair, wiggled a little, and peeked at the crowd over the rims.
A few laughs rippled through the crowd.
Darren’s gaze slid toward Emma almost imperceptibly. She felt the subtle tilt of his attention and ducked her head, hiding a smile. As if sharing a private joke, right there in front of everyone.
“And what about you, Darren?” Karen asked. “You’ve played your fair share of beloved villains. What’s the appeal?”
It was nearly the same question as from the Darkreach panel. Maybe that was why his answer had sounded off—he could just be tired of getting the same questions over and over.
Still, his answer had been good. She sat back and waited for him to deliver something similar.
Darren didn’t answer right away. Just looked out at the crowd. Then—strangely—straight back to her. She blinked, caught off guard. Something seemed to settle behind his eyes.
“You know, I recently read a book that made me think about this.”
Emma’s heart gave a violent kick.
The faintest curve touched his lips.
He couldn’t mean . . .
Could he?
Oh no.
Oh no no no—
Darren turned to Karen.
“It had a character who, well, he’s not exactly a hero. He binds someone’s soul to his own. He manipulates her. Threatens her. Saves her, hurts her, loves her, betrays her. And still, you can’t help but root for him.”
There was a murmur rising from the audience. A low hum, swelling steadily. Emma’s mind slammed shut, screaming denial. She must have been imagining. Some kind of stress-induced hallucination.
But the crowd was thinking the same thing, weren’t they? The whole room seemed to lean in, like they might catch the next words just a fraction sooner.
Darren went on, as if oblivious to the tension. “I finished it in two days. Couldn’t stop. The writing was sharp, the relationships complex, and the villain . . .” He paused, just long enough.
The bastard. He knew exactly what he was doing. Emma held her breath, bracing.
“Well, let’s just say—he was the love story.”
A surge of screams rose from the back of the room.
Emma felt flushed and frozen at once, like someone had freaked out in the control room of her brain and slammed every lever.
No way he had chosen those words by accident. That was Lucen’s tagline—coined not by her, but by the fans.
Darren looked at her now—really looked.
“The Bonds of Light by Emma Whitehart,” he said, as if offering it to the room. “Highly recommended.”
The crowd erupted.
There were no other words for it. The roar hit Emma like a shockwave. Chaos first—shouts, whistling, an army of phones lifted high. Then a chant began on one side of the room.
“Lucen. Lucen. Lucen.”
More voices joined, finding the rhythm, until the whole room pounded with it. A living drumbeat, rattling Emma’s ribs. Beside her, she felt Darren watching her through the mayhem, steady and unflinching.
“Lucen, Lucen, Lucen, Lucen.”
She gave a helpless laugh, melting completely inside. “You drop that on me on stage?” she blurted to Darren, too overwhelmed to keep any kind of facade up.
He grinned, unapologetic. “Yep.”
Karen tried to restore order, but she was drowned out by the noise. After a few failed attempts, she resorted to barking for silence like an angry PE teacher.
“Wow,” she said as she finally reclaimed control of the room. She pretended to mop her forehead. “They told me this would be an easy job. Clearly, they lied.”
Emma’s pulse was still skittering as Karen turned to her.
Nowhere to run.
“Well Emma,” Karen went on, eyes gleaming. “I think we all know where this is going. Tell us about writing Lucen—and the stubborn theory that you based him on the handsome gentleman sitting right next to you.”
A small, unhelpful sound caught in her throat. Darren’s presence pressed against her skin, like a physical touch. She had sidestepped this question so many times it should’ve been effortless. But never with him sitting right there.
“I think we all see our own Lucen,” she managed, the words smooth from repetition. “As for his appeal—for any morally grey character—I think we’re drawn to them because they reflect the parts of ourselves we don’t always admit to. The anger. The obsession. The loneliness.”
The room had gone still. She felt them hanging on her words. Felt the connection, like they were all joined in the moment. It was the same reverent sensation she got after a particularly good reading.
“Writing them is like pulling your own dark thoughts into the light. And hoping someone else says, yeah . . . I’ve felt that too.”
Darren sat silent beside her. Emma didn’t dare look at him.
Karen leaned in with a wolfish grin, clearly loving the turn this had taken.
“Okay, but real talk—Catlyn sells her soul to Lucen. What about you, Emma? Would you trust Lucen with your soul?”
Emma hesitated. The audience seemed to hold their breath.
“Trust? No.” She let the pause stretch. The words took shape in her head, just like when she was writing. Her lips curved by the tiniest fraction. “But I would still give it to him.”
The crowd erupted again, shrill with delight.
Beside her, Darren gave a low chuckle. “Dangerous answer.”
Emma finally risked a glance sideways. “It’s the questions that are dangerous. You never know where they lead.”
Their eyes caught and held. Just for a second, but it was enough. The world fell away.
Emma forgot she was on a stage. Forgot about the audience. In that moment, the way he looked at her pulled her into a space that felt theirs entirely.
She drew a shaky breath and watched Darren Cole smile at her—the world feeling both upside down and entirely right at the same time.