The Princess and the Fangirl (Once Upon a Con #2)(68)

I send off the email. “Well, if you meet him tomorrow, I just told management—although I’m sure Ethan already has, too—to tell security to come by so you won’t be alone.”

“Pff, I don’t need backup.” She puts up her arms and flexes them. “I got these deadly weapons.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning. “Do you always resort to jokes during serious conversations?”

She lets her arm flop down and sighs. “Yeah, it’s kinda a natural defense.”

“You must be great at funerals.”

“Oh, I’m dead serious,” she says with a straight face, and for a moment I can’t tell if she’s joking, but then she snorts a laugh and shrugs. “I’m just silly. I can’t help it.” She glances back at the booth where she and Vance were sitting. “Trying to be you was a lot different than I thought it’d be.”

That amuses me. “Because my life is so perfect?”

“As if.” Then she slowly turns her eyes to mine. “Because you’re a real person.”

Oh. I quickly look away.

A group of Starfield cosplayers comes in and sits down at the opposite end of the restaurant. They barely even glance over at us, chattering about the latest Starfield news and the leaking script, discussing rumors about Amara’s return—and lack thereof.

“I don’t think I want her back,” says the Carmindor cosplayer. A genderbent Euci glares at him. “Don’t start again.”

“I think she’s whiny and too perfect. I mean, she can pilot a Starkadia without any training and resist General Sond’s conscription? Come on,” he scoffs, “she’s a Mary Sue. She doesn’t even do anything, and the actress who plays her isn’t even hot.”

“Shut up, Mike,” says a General Sond cosplayer, snapping open his menu, “and stop being a sexist asshole.”

Imogen watches them thoughtfully, and I wonder—what were the odds of running into Imogen in the first place? What were the odds of meeting Harper? Of stumbling on that Princess Amara meet-and-greet? Running out in front of Natalia Ford’s car?

Maybe this is the impossible universe after all.

“You know, I thought I could hashtag Save Amara all by myself,” she says, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I mean, I did everything. I started petitions, I made buttons, I spearheaded the movement, I collected all the signatures. I even thought that if I were you, I could actually change things…” She shakes her head. “But, after everything that’s happened, I realized that I never stopped to wonder why you didn’t want to be Amara anymore. I never realized that the only part of Starfield you ever saw were the bad parts—and I’m sorry. I was looking at my fandom through rose-tinted glasses, and in the end I was kind of more the bad part, wasn’t I? To you, at least.”

I shrug. “Lot of fans want to save their favorite characters or TV shows.”

“Usually the actors also want to, you know? I didn’t even think about why you didn’t. If it’s because of fans like the guy in the meet-and-greet…I can understand why you’d hate Amara.”

“Mo, I don’t hate Amara,” I clarify. I drop the fry into the basket and wipe my hand on my napkin. Then I log into Twitter and turn on my phone to let her read the comments.

Slowly, her mouth falls open.

“I once told Dare that as actors, all we can do is embody a character for a while and play them as best we can. I remember like it was yesterday—we were sitting on set and he was so incredibly nervous to play Carmindor.” I grin at the memory, drawing stars in the condensation on my glass of water. “He looked up to the fictional Federation Prince. I didn’t understand why then, but I do now. Sometimes the best heroes are the ones in your head—but that doesn’t make them any less real. I remember telling him that it didn’t matter whether you were the Val Kilmer Batman or the George Clooney Batman, you were still valid. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that.”

Imogen turns off my phone, and there is a crease between her brow, a little like worry and a little like anger. “Oh Jess…I didn’t know it was this bad. I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too. I’m sorry I lied to you at the beginning. The truth is, I messed up pretty badly too. I was so intent on not being Princess Amara that I didn’t stop and look to see what I had right now. Just because Natalia Ford has a dead-end career doesn’t mean I will.”

Imogen’s eyebrows furrow. “Dead-end? But…she went on to do other things, you know. She’s—Natalia Ford is one of the most prominent TV showrunners in Hollywood. If a network needs a series course-corrected, they bring her in. She’s won three Emmys for her work.”

I blink. “No, she hasn’t.”

“Yeah. She definitely has.”

“Then why haven’t I head of her?”

“Well, she goes by N. A. Porter—”

I give a start. “As in Blades of Valor N. A. Porter? The Sunrise Girl N. A. Porter?”

“Yeah, Jess. You didn’t think she made all of her money from syndication, did you? They got paid peanuts for Starfield,” Imogen scoffs.

This information settles into the soft matter of my brain like pebbles at the bottom of a pond. When I complained about being typecast, about always being a foil, Natalia Ford told me to change things. Like she had as N. A. Porter.