My eye hurt terribly, and my head ached twice as much. My lady-in-waiting, a no-nonsense but strangely comforting woman, kept saying it was just part of the recovery process, she'd seen girls go through it before, here, drink your tea, it'll make you feel better.

It didn't, but I did my best to ignore it. I had a part to play.

I was now Princess Ameliana Decant, long-lost daughter to some king I'd never heard of when I'd still lived in the slums, but that didn't matter. Important people knew who he was, and I might not have been important then, but I was now. And even better than being a long-lost daughter was the deliciously juicy fact that I was betrothed. From birth, apparently. And it wasn't to some nobody either. No.

I was betrothed to the son of the Emperor.

We were supposed to hate each other for a while; rail against the unfairness of not getting to choose, find reasons to dislike each other's inherent nature, you know. But of course we would be irresistibly attracted to each other and fall hopelessly in love...

I swooned onto my fainting couch just thinking about it. Then I burst out laughing. Breaking character was okay, alone in my suite like I was. I'd practiced swooning when I lived in the slums, but I'd never done it for real, for any good reason.

But I wasn't playing pretend anymore. I was Ameliana, or Amory to my friends. That is, after all, what I'd grown thinking my name was.

According to the packet at least.

"Cut!" the Director yelled. I started since they rarely interrupt—they prefer us to be immersed in the scene.

He marched into His Highness' room and took my hand gently. "Ameliana, darling. Darling. That was a beautiful performance, you know we love you, but—you can't slap the Emperor's son."

Said son stood just a foot away, nursing a red cheek. I was worried he'd be mad—I was in deep, and he'd scared me, even if it was just pretend. Instead, mischief lit Dominick's eyes, and he chuckled. "Why ever not, Ericks?" he asked the Director. "The girl's got moxie. And maybe we're moving this too fast. Let her have her way, stand her ground. Play up the audience sympathy for her."

"Too fast?" he exclaimed. "Too fast? It's your third meeting, and you haven't so much as kissed! Where's the heat? Where's the passion?"

"I think the passion was in that blow," the boy laughed.

Ericks tried to compose himself, but he had about as much success as a red-hot tea kettle trying not to let its lid fly off. "Your Highness—"

"We are supposed to hate each other," I said quickly.

"Yes," my betrothed echoed. "Absolutely abhor."

Ericks leaned his head against his hand, muttering something about entitled children. Dominick winked at me, and I offered a shy smile back.

Straightening, Ericks threw his hand into the air, signaling to mostly unseen camera men. "Start it up again. And don't forget to get those eye-cams on!"

As he bustled back to his watching spot, Dominick leaned toward me. "Don't worry," he whispered. "I've been at this a long time. I won't let them hurt you."

A flower of warmth bloomed in my chest that had nothing to do with play-acting, and I struggled to cover my blush.

"Action!" the Director called.

"I want to send money to my mother," I told my lady-in-waiting as she brushed out my hair. I'd been here for months, and an inescapable ickiness clung to my insides every time I remembered that I hadn't reached out yet.

"Dear, your mother is dead."

I looked back at her sharply, and the brush caught in my locks. "What?"

"She died when you were born, and one of her maids stole you from your father. You know that."

Relief surged through me. She was talking about my fake mother, the dead wife of the King Decant. "No, Nina. I mean my real—" I cut off, realizing the cameras might be on. You never knew. Well, they could edit it, surely.

Still, I lowered my voice. "My real mother. From, you know. Outside. The slums."

Gently, she turned my face back to the mirror and untangled the brush from my hair. "Dear, are your headaches back? I think you should get some rest."

"No, Nina, I—" In the mirror, her face was a mask of genuine concern, and I wondered for the first time if anyone ever auditioned and got a job like hers instead of royalty. I took a deep breath. "You know, I think you're right. I should get some rest. Do you mind bringing me some warm milk? And honey."

"Of course, princess."

She left, and I slipped into my silken-sheeted bed of feathers. As I lay there staring at the silver and green gossamer canopy above me, a realization hit me. I'd never asked for warm milk to lull me to sleep at home.

I'd never even tasted honey.

A different night, staring at a canopy of stars instead of a canopy of gossamer. Not alone in a warm bed, but outside on a quilt, head rested in the crook of Dominick's arm. We were past the hating stage and into the irresistibly attracted part. He didn't feel irresistible, though; he felt comfortable. It was hard to fake otherwise. The warm flutters that had once excited me faded as heavier feelings crept in: guilt, loneliness, and something I think Lady Victoria once labeled the dark drag of inevitability.

"The stars remind me of home," I whispered to Dominick.

He turned his head toward me. "Is that a good thing?"

"I don't know," I said softly. "I—" Memories flooded me, and I fought back tears. "When I was a kid, this," I waved my hand vaguely, "was all I wanted. But now—"

"Being the long-lost Princess Decant isn't everything you thought it would be?"

The words struck a sour chord in my heart because it reminded me that we were still just playing parts. He was pretending I was talking about Ameliana, back when she thought she was just Minor Madame Amory. And if I wanted to finish this conversation, then I would have to pretend with him. "No. No, it isn't."

If my mother was seeing this, I could imagine her screaming at the television, demanding to know what I was doing. Of course this was what I wanted, of course this was everything we thought it'd be.

Except if my mother was seeing this, then she was seeing it on the same dinky viewer in a two-room hut that I'd fed all these fantasies on. She was watching with the smell of street sewage outside her door, and she was waiting for me to come back and save her from it, just like Margie waited and Victoria never came back.

Or maybe Mama wasn't waiting. Maybe I was Ameliana to her now. After all, the name of Margie's older sister was never Victoria.

But I couldn't remember anymore what it had been.

"They're going to forget me," I mumbled, and he drew me into his chest as tears leaked down my cheeks. "They're all going to forget me."

He shushed me and stroked my head, warm and sweet and the closest thing to reality I had left. "I won't forget you, love. I won't."

Love was a stretch, just another evidence of this two-faced conversation. I pulled back, staring at him in dim starlight, staring with bleary but demanding eyes. "Are we really going to marry? Truthfully?"

When he looked back at me, though, I swear I saw real fire in his eyes, burning even beneath the façade. "Truthfully. I give you my word, Amory. We will marry."

Even though it wasn't my real name, the use of my 'nickname' settled me some, and I felt in him the weight of that promise. We didn't control anything here. But we would.

Somehow.

They broke us up. For good. I lost track of what yarn they were spinning now. I'm certain they got lots of fantastic tape of me staring deadly—wistfully, I'm sure they said—out the window. Not because Dominick meant all that much to me, but because what he did mean was everything I had left. I'm sure if they put those receptors in my head to pick up and transmit my thoughts through those fancier viewers—which I'm almost certain they did when I had my surgery—then they also got a great mess of beautiful, dreary, lost melancholia.

I stopped eating. They weren't happy about that. I'm not sure when I stopped; days came and went, and I didn't ask how or why. People came in, surely with the cameras off, and cajoled me, demanded of me, threatened me. We'll hook you up to machines, Amory, if that's what it takes to keep you alive!

I didn't respond. No need to. They'd do whatever they wanted with me anyway. They already had.

Someone knocked at the door. I didn't bother rising from my window seat.

Nina answered. "The Princess Decant isn't accepted visitors, Your Highness."

"I think she might make an exception for me."

I wanted to laugh in derision; I'd seen this enough as a child. Star-crossed lovers, joyously and improbably reunited. Oh, my soaring heart! Bring my fainting couch near!

Dominick's steps sounded closer and closer as he made the dramatic trip through my room. I didn't bother watching. That was the audience at home's job.

"Ameliana." He took my hand. "Amory."

In spite of myself, life sparked in me where he touched, like spring rains on parched plants.

I pulled my hand out of his grasp and refocused out the window. For the first time, I wondered if what I was seeing was even real. For all I knew, there was a viewer projecting out there.

"Amory, please. I made you a promise I intend on keeping."

"Why, so they can 'rouse the princess from her stupor'?" The melodrama was affected; the bitterness wasn't.

Dominick drew back. "You think I'm in on their games?"

"I think everyone is," I snapped. But his words niggled in the back of my head. The cameras must not be on. Or if they were, he wasn't worried about them. He wouldn't be talking like this otherwise.

"You might be disillusioned now, but you don't get to play the wounded flower. Look at me, Amory. This isn't all about you. Look at me."

I didn't move, and he grabbed my chin.

"Hey! Let go of me."

"I will when you stop looking out that window like the world has ended! Look, this isn't a fairy-tale; you figured that much out already. But I've been living it my whole life. You just got to know how to game them, and you got them this time, Am. Or at least, we did."

I shook him free but turned to watch him now. Confusion clouded my mind, and he clearly had answers. "What do you mean?"

"They took what you wanted, and you stopped eating. Your ratings are high, Am. Astronomical. That's part of why they're toying with us so much. So, you put them in check. Their move. They want to still be able to play with you, so they can't, say, flip the chessboard into the floor. They need you to cooperate. Which means they were willing to listen to me, and I offered them a way out. A way everyone wins."

"Which is?"

"We do what we said we were going to do. We get married."

He was alight, his eyes genuine, his words untethered. This was what I had wanted, and here he was, offering it to me. And yet—

"I'm done playing their game. I'm going home."

His laugh crashed off the walls. "You're serious? You'd rather go back to abject poverty than live like royalty with a few strings attached? You don't realize how good you have it, do you?"

"How would you know?" I shot back. "You said you'd been here your whole life."

"Which means I know you've got to be one of the luckiest girls in the history of the world. Am, slum kids are scrubbing royal floors right now, and they'd kill you if the Directors told them it'd get them your spot. You think you've got it so bad here, that life's so unfair. Don't you?"

I refused to meet his eye.

"Don't you?" he demanded.

My silence was the only answer he needed.

"I thought you were going to be different, Am. To make it this high, this fast? I thought you must have a bit of backbone in you." He shook his head, disgust—frustration?—etched in his features. "Life's unfair wherever you look, Amory. Circumstance will win every time. If you let it."

He pulled a packet from his pocket and set it on my bedside table. "In case you change your mind."

And he left.

I stared at that packet for a long time before dismissing Nina and picking it up. It was a proposed new Storyline, one that undid all the messy complications of the breakup I really didn't remember. It was romantic and heroic and all the things I would have eaten up as a ten-year-old.

I moved to tear it apart.

But I paused, fingers poised. Dominick had negotiated this, had gone out of his way to fix this. His words echoed in my head. This isn't all about you. This was his life too.

And he was right. There was a reason I had earned my way to royalty—even if I couldn't send my mother money, even if I couldn't get my dad out of the factory, even if my life was this enclosed bejeweled box. This was the best it would get, and going back would change nothing but glitter to gutter.

Welcome to happily ever after, sweetheart.

When Nina came back, I asked her to bring me dinner.

Bliss. Once you pretend it enough, you start to feel it.

Bliss. Happiness. Perfection. Luxury. I could have anything I wanted, I realized. Anything material, at least. When my wedding came, I had the most elegant dress, the most sparkling jewels, the most expensive makeup. I made a beautiful bride, they said. The exact picture of bliss, happiness, perfection, luxury.

Dominick was sweet to me, and he seemed to have this sixth sense about when the cameras were on or off. I didn't dare ask him about it—in case the Directors caught on and changed—but I did take advantage of it. There were moments when I let the mask slip, and then I always felt as though I'd just emerged from a cramped hiding space out into the open world.

Slowly, I acclimated. It was like when the first cold spell hits the slums each year and you think you're going to die, but then you start developing strategies. Wear twice the clothes, even though that means you get more dirty. Do half the washing, so you don't freeze your hands off in the cold water. Remember the heat of summer when you're lying on the frozen floor at night, and let that phantom warmth fill your body. It's still cold, but it's survivable. For a second, you can almost forget it's winter.

And forgetting, at heart, was my goal. Forget the cameramen. Forget the slums. Forget freedom; it's an illusion anyway. No one where I grew up was free, just shackled with different chains. The chains here were prettier and lighter. I could be happy. I had plenty to be pleased with: the best servants, the most companions, the loveliest clothes, the exemplary husband. I was happy.

I had to be.

I glowed in pregnancy. That wasn't just the other courtiers playing sycophant, either. I could see it when I looked in my shining, wall-length mirror or when Nina plaited my hair at the vanity. I was a beautiful fairy queen, shining, perfect, impossible.

My mother had talked about how hard her pregnancy with me had been; then again, her 'doctors' were neighbors whose sole qualification was having been pregnant themselves once. At my command, I had the best trained professionals, all the masseuses and 'comfort experts' I could ask for, and servants to carry out my every whim. I practically floated the whole nine months.

This baby was going to be my new beginning. Forget the politics and the cameras; forget past regrets; forget what was or what could be. My little girl was going to be what is, and that's all that mattered.

I started laughing again—not fake laughing or polite laughing or a chuckle here and there. Sincere, genuine, happy hysteria. I think it startled Dominick at first; I spent an hour convincing him that no, I wasn't going mad. Everything was just... good.

He looked at me strangely, but then swept me up into a kiss. "I'm glad."

It was a simple answer, but I think it cemented an unsurety that had been wavering between us ever since the argument at my window seat. I was here, I was making this fake world real, and I wasn't pining to be anywhere else.

I was good. He was glad. We were together. Happy.

And that... that was that.

That baby's wail was the most beautiful thing I'd ever heard. I lay in the hospital bed, panting, exhausted, in pain, and when they laid that perfect little girl in my arms, I was the happiest I'd ever been. "Oh, there, there. Shh. Shh, shh, shh." She was bundled up in a soft cloth, and I held her close to my chest. "You're alright. I've got you. I've got you."

Behind me, Dominick leaned over my shoulder as though to look at her. His urgent whisper cut into my euphoria. "Quick, love. Name her something, something they'll like. They might just keep it."

A million ideas swirled through my hazy head, until one settled with such clarity, it washed all the others away. If I couldn't have my name, at least my child could. "Emmelyn," I announced. "Her name is Emmelyn." And I'll call her Emmy.

I kissed the top of her head, overcome with a sudden fierce love. If everything I'd done to get to this point in life was wrong, I regretted none of it because she was absolute perfection. Little Emmelyn. My little Emmelyn.

"Cut!" the Director yelled.

I jumped, my gaze darting to Dominick. "They were recording this?"

He looked just as angry as I did, though perhaps not surprised. A nurse came and scooped Emmy from my arms.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"She'll be safe, Your Highness. Don't worry. We'll take good care of her."

"Hold on—" Dominick called, but to no avail. The nurse slipped from the room.

The Director walked up to us—not Ericks this time, but the man I'd met when I first came here. The pervert with my pictures on his wall, the one who introduced me to 'happily ever after.'

"That was some fantastic footage, Ameliana. Great, raw performance. And those thought-pieces?" He kissed his fingers. "Just perfect. There's a reason we keep you around, kiddo—"

"When am I going to see Emmelyn again?" I interrupted. "I want my baby."

"Hey, hey." The Director moved to set a hand on my shoulder, but Dominick beat him to it. The man stood there, fingers hovering awkwardly in the air for a moment before he shoved his hand into his pocket. "You just rest a while, sweetheart. We'll talk all about it when you're recovered."

He started to turn, but my words cut him short. "I. Want. My. Child."

He sighed, as if more annoyed by my stubbornness than cowed by my intensity. "Look, sweetheart. The gals in Storyline have this great idea for a plot—you'll see it, you'll see it, don't worry. Well, you're kid's gonna have to 'die' for it to work, and babies aren't any good for viewers except as plot points anyway. We'll ship her off to a different family, and we can throw you a toddler if you want here in a few months. Best of both worlds, I promise."

Horror dripped through me like poison, and the only antidote was rage. "Bring back my child!" I shouted, trying to shove up. Dominick grabbed my shoulders, and he was lucky I was worn-out because I would have fought anyone in the world right then if it meant getting my little girl back.

"Don't worry about it. The kid's gonna have a great life. We'll take care of her. We'll even name her Emmelyn, sweetie, if it means that much to you."

He started to leave, and I was powerless to stop him, powerless to do anything but scream. "You have no right! She's mine. She's my baby!"

"We have every right, sweetheart," the Director threw over his shoulder. "Didn't you read the contract?"

And then he was out of the room.

I slumped back onto the pillows. Rage gone, the poison of horror paralyzed me. I lay frozen, unable to move, a single memory dominating my mind.

"Contract?" Dominick murmured in my ear. "What contract, Am?"

Lines I'd skimmed from that pages-long document, too excited, too gullible, too dumb to read it through. Now, the words coalesced in my mind to form a single, damning picture.

I, Emmy Parsons, hereby give all ownership rights of my words, my voice, my picture, and anything and everything else that I produce, to the recording studio.

Because anyone could be royalty. You just had to pay for it.