The first time my voice doesn’t belong to me, I’m standing alone on a darkened stage staring into a sea of empty seats.
The Golden Pulse Arena feels like the inside of a spaceship—miles of polished black floor, cold blue light puddling around metal rigs, a thousand invisible eyes waiting in the dark. In a few hours, every one of those seats will hold someone important. For now, it’s just me, a dead-silent PA system, and the mic I’m supposed to warm up.
“Line check, Callie?” The disembodied voice crackles in my in-ear from Front of House. The sound guy, Garth, sounds bored, which is comforting. Bored means nothing’s going wrong.
I step up to the center mic. It’s heavier than the beat-up ones back at the conservatory; it fits into my palm like something that costs more than my rent for the year. The LED ring at the base glows a soft white.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice bouncing back at me in ghosted echo from the ceiling. “Uh, main vocal. Testing one, two—”
“Give me some real air,” Garth says. “Run the chorus you did earlier.”
Of course. The one no one’s ever supposed to actually hear.
I close my eyes, just for a second. The emptiness swallows me, makes the space feel like a practice room instead of the most-watched stage in the world. I let my shoulders drop, shake out my hands.
Music has always been safest in the dark, when nobody’s looking.
I take a breath—deep, from the places my vocal coach drilled into me—and let the melody slide out.
“\"If we’re burning out the sky,
I’ll be the shadow in your light,
The secret name you never say—\"”
The line hangs there, clean and bright, riding on the arena’s perfect acoustics. My own voice comes back at me from a hundred angles, silk over glass.
“Damn,” Garth mutters in my ear. “Again, with the harmony this time.”
I do it without thinking, slipping into a parallel line, the kind of thing Eli and I used to stack for fun in our tiny apartment. It feels like cheating, doing it here. Like smuggling something intimate into someone else’s cathedral.
I finish the phrase and open my eyes.
The white ring at the base of the mic has gone gold.
Weird. Different channel. Whatever.
“Levels are beautiful,” Garth says. “You’re spoiling us. Alright, I’ll switch you off main, go ahead and run whatever, I’m patching in the track for Sol’s rehearsal.”
My stomach twinges at the name. Riven Sol. The reason half the city is buzzing outside, the reason I’m not allowed to take pictures backstage, the reason I signed twelve NDAs just to be here.
No big deal.
I step back from the mic to give the phantom of his highness some space. The house lights dim further, leaving only a faint halo on center stage. Somewhere far above me, the giant LED screen hums to life, glowing faintly.
I should leave. Go back to the labyrinth of cables and coffee-stained gaffer tape where the other tech students are pretending not to be starstruck. But my sneakers feel stapled to the stage.
There’s a weird thrill in singing words he’ll be singing in front of the whole world tonight. Like borrowing a stranger’s clothes from a distance.
“Hey, Hart?” Garth’s voice cuts back in. “You’re still live on aux, if you wanna mess around against the track while I dial in. Nobody’s on broadcast, it’s dead air. Scout’s honor.”
Heat crawls up my neck. “I thought you—”
“Relax. You’re not gonna suddenly become famous.” He chuckles. “Just sing. Feeds hate silence.”
I snort under my breath. If he knew how those words hit me, he’d choose them more carefully. I’ve spent my whole life trying to be the silence behind everybody else’s sound.
But I am here. And my hours are paid for. And the track he’s about to play is one every infant on earth could hum in their sleep.
“Fine,” I say. “But you’re mixing it so I sound like a goddess.”
“Already do, kid.”
The track rolls in through my in-ears a heartbeat later, all low synth and heartbeat drums, the opening of Riven’s newest single, “Borrowed Light.” I’ve heard it a thousand times on headphones. Never like this, bleeding through a billion-dollar sound system, wrapping around me like weather.
There’s no vocal yet. Just the space where his would be.
“Okay,” I whisper, more to myself than to anyone. “Just… fun. No one’s listening.”
I step back into the circle of the mic and the gold light pulses, like it’s breathing with me.
When I sing this time, I don’t hold back.
My voice slips into the pocket carved in the mix—and fits. Better than it has any right to. The lyric is a little too on the nose for my life to ignore: all about being the invisible echo to someone else’s glory. I ride the melody up, tilt notes the way I would if it were mine, soften the belt on the chorus into something more textured.
“\"You’re the face, I’m just the feeling,
You’re the star, I’m the hidden ceiling—\"”
I laugh under my breath between lines, unable to help it. Somewhere deep in the house, someone’s going to be rolling their eyes at this sacrilege on Riven’s holy track.
“Holy…” Garth’s voice is back, low, awed. “You sure you’re in the right major, Hart?”
I flush. “Don’t start.”
“You sound better than half the acts we’re paying six figures to tonight.”
“Yeah, but I come cheap and don’t want to be seen. Everyone wins.”
He’s about to reply when another voice slices through my feed—sharper, female, carrying the clipped rhythm of someone used to running rooms.
“Who is on main vocal right now?”
The hairs on my arms rise. I glance down at the mic. The gold ring flares a fraction brighter.
“Avery—hey. Just Callie warming up aux, like you asked earlier,” Garth says quickly. His easy tone has vanished. “We’re dark on broadcast, don’t worry.”
Avery. As in Avery Cole, the architect of a hundred spotless careers. I’ve seen her in magazines, always in black, always with sunglasses, always slightly behind her clients like a shadow.
She sounds nothing like a shadow now.
“We are not dark,” she snaps. “Where the hell is Riven?”
My pulse misfires. I tear the in-ear out of one ear, suddenly dizzy. On the far side of the stage, red dots blink to life, scattered along the balcony like watching eyes.
“Garth,” she says, slower. “Kill the external feeds. Now. And someone get her off that mic.”
The word her detonates in my chest.
I fumble away from the stand as if it’s burned me. The moment my mouth leaves the mesh, the music cuts. The arena drops into a ringing silence.
For a second, nothing moves.
Then the doors burst open.
A wave of cold air and perfume and shouted instructions slams into the space. Crew in headsets, clipboard-wielding assistants, camera ops hauling equipment—they all pour in at once like a flood through the wings.
And in the middle of that storm, framed by the harsh hallway light, is Riven Sol.
I’ve seen him a hundred times on screen. They don’t do him justice.
He’s taller in person, all clean lines and deliberate slouch, dark hair falling into eyes that look almost colorless at this distance. His presence hits the room first, heavy and electric, like the moment before a song drops.
He walks straight down the center aisle of seats toward the stage while people orbit him, talking, adjusting, fluttering. He’s in ripped black jeans and an oversized cream sweater that probably costs more than my semester, a single in-ear hanging loose around his neck.
His gaze is fixed on me.
Oh god.
No, not me. On the mic. On the space I just occupied.
I force my feet to move, stepping aside, heart slamming against my ribs so hard it hurts. It’s fine. I was just a blip in his day. A warm-up glitch. Nobody.
“Who authorized that?” he asks, not raising his voice and yet somehow slicing through every other sound. His eyes flick up to the tech booth. “We rehearsed this. I don’t want surprise variables.”
“There was an error on routing,” Avery says, appearing at the edge of the stage like she’s been conjured there. She’s shorter than I imagined, polished in a charcoal blazer with her headset looped around her neck. Her gaze snaps to me, assessing, sharp. “What’s your name?”
I swallow. “Callie. Callie Hart. I’m—”
“She’s a conservatory placement in the tech program,” Garth calls down, like he’s tossing me a rope. “We use her for warm-ups. She’s fine.”
Riven is closer now, close enough that I can see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the tiny silver hoop in his left ear. There’s a tension in the set of his shoulders that doesn’t match the lazy charm I’ve seen on red carpets.
“Fine?” he repeats softly, eyes still not leaving my face now that he’s found it. “Is that what you call broadcasting someone else’s voice over my track?”
My stomach drops through the stage.
“Broadcast—?” The word scrapes out of me. “I—I was told we were dark. It was just a check—”
Avery’s phone is already lit in her hand, notifications streaming like a waterfall. Her mouth compresses into a flat line.
“Trending tag: #SolSyncScandal,” she reads, voice metallic. “Clip of the arena feed. Thirty seconds. Your vocals, Ms. Hart, over Riven’s track. Auto-captioned as ‘Riven Sol rehearsing live at Golden Pulse.’ Congratulations. You’ve just hijacked the internet.”
The world tilts sideways.
I laugh, a raw, high sound that doesn’t feel like mine. “That’s—no. No one even knows who I am.”
“Exactly.” Avery’s eyes are ice. “Which means the narrative will write itself. Unknown girl exposes industry’s golden boy as a lip-syncing fraud—”
“I wasn’t exposing anything,” I cut in, panic sharpening my voice. “I was doing what I was told. I thought—”
“—Or,” she talks over me, “we get ahead of it. Spin it. Control the story before it controls us.”
Her brain is already three moves ahead; I can see it in the way she turns from me to Riven and back as if placing pieces on a board.
Beside her, Riven stands unnervingly still.
People are shouting around us now—PR reps on phones, someone from broadcast swearing that the secondary feed was supposed to be muted, security asking if they need to clear the house. It all blurs at the edges of my vision.
I look at Riven.
If anyone has the right to be furious, it’s him. His reputation is built on those perfect live vocals. The Golden Pulse Awards have a brutal no-lip-sync reputation. A glitch like this could cost him statues, sponsorships, maybe even his entire brand.
He doesn’t look furious.
He looks like someone has knocked the air out of him.
Then the mask slides down—fast, practiced, flawless. His mouth curves into something that could be a smile if it reached his eyes.
“Can she sing like that again?” he asks Avery quietly.
The question lands like a slap.
I bristle despite the chaos shrieking around us. “I’m right here,” I say. “And I’m not a broken faucet you just turn on and off.”
His gaze snaps to mine fully then, as if I’ve surprised him. For a flicker of a second, something almost like amusement sparks in the pale grey.
“There she is,” he murmurs.
Heat wings through me for no good reason. I clamp my jaw.
“We don’t have time for this.” Avery tucks a strand of hair behind her ear with surgical precision. “The clip is already viral. Damage control window is under fifteen minutes. We can either deny, which will invite analysis and blow the story wider, or we can give them a headline that serves us.” She looks at me. “Ms. Hart, do you want to be sued into nonexistence?”
The question is so calm, so matter-of-fact, that it takes a beat to absorb.
“Sued—what?” My voice cracks. “I didn’t do anything on purpose. It was a routing error. Ask Garth.”
Garth raises both hands helplessly from the booth. “It was my bad on the patching, but the contract she signed covers—”
“Exactly,” Avery says. “You signed, Ms. Hart. No recordings, no unsanctioned performances, no use of client materials without express permission. This?” She lifts her phone, where my own voice is spilling tinnily from a viral clip. “Is technically unauthorized use. We could make a case.”
My throat closes.
Student loans. Rent. Eli. My scholarship. My entire stupid, careful life built around not making waves, not drawing attention, not giving anyone leverage.
It all feels suddenly, terrifyingly flimsy.
“You wouldn’t,” I whisper.
Riven hasn’t moved. He watches me like I’m a puzzle someone dropped in his lap.
“Why not?” Avery asks. “Our sponsors are ready to walk if they smell fraud. We need a scapegoat. Or”—her tone softens, false as stage snow—“we need a partner.”
I stare at her. “A what?”
“A collaboration.” The word rolls off her tongue like a press release. “Genius discovery moment. ‘Legendary artist finds raw new talent in a rehearsal glitch. Bold new duet to debut live at Golden Pulse.’ We feed them romance rumors, creative synergy, whatever sells. You become the face of the mistake in a way that flatters him instead of destroying him. Everybody wins.”
My skin goes cold.
“You want me to… pretend?” I manage. “To play at being some Cinderella story so people don’t notice that the emperor isn’t wearing any—”
“Careful,” she cuts in, eyes flashing. “We are not admitting to anything regarding his live capabilities. Ever.”
There’s a beat of silence that buzzes between the three of us.
I look at him again. The golden boy. The voice all other voices want to be.
Up close, there’s a roughness to him the cameras never catch: faint shadows under his eyes, a tightness around his mouth. His hands, exposed where the sleeves of his sweater fall back, flex once at his sides, like they’re holding on to something invisible.
“Why me?” I hear myself say. “You have an entire industry out there. Singers who would kill for this. Why threaten some nobody tech girl into it?”
That amusement flickers again, gone too fast to be real.
“Because they heard you,” he says, voice low. “And now they want more.”
My heart stutters.
“You have a choice,” Avery says briskly. “Sign a short-term duet contract. We manage the narrative, we protect you from the worst of the online blowback, we compensate you very generously. Or we let the story run wild and see what kind of role you get cast in without our help.”
Victim. Thief. Scam artist. The girl who tried to topple a king.
The air tastes like metal. Somewhere beyond the doors, I can hear the muffled roar of the crowd outside the arena, early fans chanting, the hum of generators, the nervous laugh of the MC running lines.
I think of Eli, hunched over his laptop, mixing my demos at two in the morning. Of my mother’s tight smile when she dropped off the rent in cash because I was short again. Of the choir director who once called me his “little gold mine” while he pocketed my performance fees.
I came here to be invisible. I’m standing on the most visible spot in the world.
“I don’t want fame,” I say, the words scraping raw. “I just wanted to sing.”
Riven’s expression shifts, just enough to make me wonder if he understands that more than anyone in this building.
“Sometimes,” he says quietly, “you don’t get to choose those separately.”
The sentence hits harder than the threat of lawsuits. For one strange, suspended second, all the noise fades and it’s just the two of us in the center of the arena, tethered by something that feels disturbingly like recognition.
Then Avery clears her throat, shattering it.
“We go live in six hours,” she says. “If we’re doing this, we need contracts signed and a statement drafted within the hour.” She looks at me, and I can see the calculation settle. “What’s it going to be, Ms. Hart?”
I open my mouth.
The arena lights blaze to full white, blinding, as the stage manager yells from the wings, “Rehearsal reset in three minutes! Clear the floor or commit, people!”
Commit.
Riven takes a step closer, close enough now that I can see the fine scar near his collarbone where his shirt slips, the one the tabloids say came from a fan’s thrown bracelet. He smells faintly like cedar and studio air.
“Say yes,” he says, so softly only I can hear it. “I’ll make sure they don’t eat you alive.”
It’s not a promise. It’s a deal with the devil.
I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of them.
But I also know what happens to girls like me when powerful men decide we’re convenient villains.
My hand is shaking when I hold it out to Avery.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll sign. But I’m not your puppet. If my name’s on this, my voice is mine.”
Avery’s lips curve in something that might be respect, might be amusement. “We’ll see,” she replies smoothly.
Riven’s fingers brush my wrist as someone presses a tablet into my hand. The contact is accidental, a static spark in the dry arena air.
My breath catches anyway.
He looks at me, eyes cool, unreadable. “Welcome to the spotlight, Callie Hart.”
The tablet screen wakes under my thumb, contract text scrolling like a wall of tiny traps.
Somewhere in that jungle of words is the line I’m about to cross.
I glance up one last time, at the vast, gleaming emptiness of the arena that won’t be empty for long, and at the man whose ruined voice I’m about to become.
I sign.
The pen strokes my name across the glass, neat and irrevocable.
Avery exhales like a general who’s just secured a crucial ally. Notifications ping on her phone already, as if the universe was just waiting for my consent to move into its next act.
“Good,” she says. “Now let’s go teach you how to fake a love story.”
My pulse stutters again, for an entirely different reason.
Because as the stage manager calls the reset and the crew swarms in around us, Riven Sol steps closer into my space, close enough that the cameras could already catch us in the same frame—and for the briefest, strangest instant, I’m not sure which part of this is supposed to be pretend.
