I wrote every word of the song Tyler is singing tonight.

For two years, I recorded the guide vocals he mimed to in rehearsal, waiting for my promised spot on stage.

When the chorus drops at the national qualifiers, I step up to my microphone.

Nothing comes out.

Tyler waves his hand to cut the band.

He tells the live audience my stage fright is back.

Then his ex-girlfriend, Lacey, walks out wearing my custom tour jacket.

Tyler announces she is the band’s new lead singer.

Lacey sings my lyrics while I stand in the dark.

He even looks into the camera and says he wrote the song for her.

I don't cry or run out the back door.

I walk off the stage, straight to his fiercest rival, Jude Mercer.

Jude tosses me a silver microphone.

I take it.

***

The red tally light on camera one burned into my retinas.

Four million viewers were watching the live broadcast of the National Breakthrough Showcase, and our band, Glass Echo, was six bars away from the chorus that was supposed to change our lives.

My cue came.

I leaned into the stand, drew the air deep into my diaphragm, and hit the opening belt of "Hollow Crown."

Silence.

Not a tremor from the monitor. Not a hum from the mains.

My breath hit the grille, but nothing traveled through the house speakers.

I tapped the casing. I checked the toggle on the handle. The switch was flipped to *on*, but the indicator light on the base was dead. Someone had pulled the feed at the board.

Before I could wave down the stage tech, the rhythm section stumbled.

My boyfriend, Tyler, killed his rhythm guitar with a palm mute, letting out a sharp squeal of feedback that cut the music dead. He stepped out to center stage, raising a hand toward the ceiling as if calling for calm in the middle of a tragedy.

"Cut the track!" Tyler shouted into his headset. "Cut the track, please!"

The stage fell dead silent. The live audience murmured in confusion, heads turning across the floor.

Tyler turned toward the main broadcast crane, his jaw set in a display of practiced sympathy. He pressed a hand to his chest, looking straight into the lens.

"I am so sorry, everyone," Tyler said, his voice dropping into that tender, intimate tone he used when working the press. "We promised ourselves we wouldn't let this happen on national television, but Willa's stage fright has taken over again. Her throat closed up. The panic is just... it's too much for her tonight."

A wave of embarrassed whispers rippled through the front row.

I stared at him, my pulse pounding in my ears. "Tyler, the board muted me," I said, but without amplification, my voice died three feet out into the glare of the floodlights. "My mic is dead."

He didn't look at me. He didn't even glance toward the sound booth.

"We love her," Tyler continued to the cameras, shaking his head with heavy, patronizing sorrow. "We've tried to carry her through these episodes all tour. But the music can't stop. The show has to go on."

He extended his left arm toward the stage left entrance.

"Help me welcome Lacey!"

The wings parted. Lacey, Tyler’s ex-girlfriend, walked out under the spotlight, already holding a wireless Sennheiser that glowed with a steady green transmission light.

She wasn't just ready. She was already in position.

And she was wearing my black leather tour jacket—the one with the silver starburst pattern I had spent three weeks hand-stitching with metallic thread at my kitchen table while Tyler told me he loved my dedication.

The backing track kicked in instantly, perfectly cued from the exact measure of the chorus.

Lacey brought the mic to her lips and began to sing.

It was my song. Every note, every modulation, every hook down to the syncopated breath before the high C—the phrasing I had bled into my notebook over five months in an unheated basement apartment.

She hit the notes smoothly, flashing a dazzling smile at the judges' table.

Tyler crossed the stage in two strides, slid an arm around Lacey’s waist, and pulled her flush against his side. He leaned into her mic, adding a low harmony, before stepping back to address the arena.

"I wrote this for someone who truly has the courage to live it," Tyler shouted over the roar of the monitors. "For Lacey!"

The crowd cheered. The cameras swooped low, catching Lacey resting her cheek against Tyler’s shoulder while hitting the final crescendo.

Down in the pit, two tech assistants glanced up at me, smirking behind their clipboards.

My hands didn't shake. My eyes didn't water.

In an instant, the fog cleared. The skipped soundchecks, the missing lyrics notebook from my bag two weeks ago, Tyler insisting I stay backstage until the downbeat—none of it had been an accident.

I was never his partner. I was just the engine he used to build the car, discarded the second he found a prettier hood ornament.

I reached down to the base of the monitor wedge.

My fingers wrapped around the heavy XLR cable locked into the floor box. I pressed the metal release tab and yanked it out with a violent, satisfying *crack* through the stage subwoofers.

The pop startled the sound engineer, but I didn't wait around to watch him scramble.

I left the dead mic standing in the spotlight, turned my back on the broadcast cameras, and walked straight off the platform into the shadows of the backstage tunnel.

The roar of the applause faded behind heavy fire doors, replaced by the low hum of ventilation shafts and the distant thud of bass from the arena.

The corridor was dark, lit only by emergency exit signs casting green rectangles across stacks of black road cases.

I took two steps toward the green room before a silhouette shifted away from the concrete wall ahead.

"Tragic," a voice murmured from the dark. "Truly heartbreaking. I almost thought he was going to squeeze out a real tear for the broadcast."

Jude Mercer stepped into the green wash of the exit sign.

He wore a battered black leather vest over bare shoulders, his silver chain catching the faint light. His band, Dead Reckoning, was currently leading the competition leaderboard, and he had spent the last two years actively sneering at Tyler’s glossy, studio-doctored pop-rock.

Jude's dark eyes were sharp, scanning my face for tears and finding none.

"Save the commentary, Mercer," I said, walking past him. "I'm not in the mood."

"I watched the monitor in the green room," he said, keeping pace with me in two long, unbothered strides. "The sound tech didn't even pretend. He pulled your fader all the way down on the pre-count. Tyler gave him fifty bucks behind the catering tent before call time."

My steps hitched, but I didn't stop. "Then you know I don't give a damn about what Tyler has to say."

"Good," Jude said.

A flash of chrome cut through the dim light.

He tossed something through the air. My reflexes kicked in before my brain did; my hands came up, and cold, heavy metal smacked hard against my palms.

A brand-new, custom silver stage mic. Weighted perfectly. Unmarked. Uncompromised.

I stared down at it, then up at him. "What is this?"

Jude stopped, leaning his hip against a road case stenciled with *DEAD RECKONING* in jagged white spray paint. He crossed his arms, his mouth curving into an arrogant, dangerous line.

"If you're done letting him steal your oxygen, I need a lead singer by midnight."

"Willa!"

The heavy steel door slammed open at the end of the hall. Tyler rushed into the corridor, his face flushed under his stage makeup, the collar of his shirt damp with sweat. He held his acoustic guitar by the neck, annoyance written into every line of his forehead.

"Willa, what the hell was that pull?" Tyler snapped, storming toward me. "The producer saw you yank the line! You need to get back out there for the post-song interview. We have to tell the judges you had a panic attack so we don't lose the sympathy vote—"

He stopped dead three feet away.

His eyes dropped from my face to the heavy silver mic locked in my hands, then slid sideways to Jude Mercer leaning against the flight case with a look of cold amusement.

"What is he doing here?" Tyler's voice went tight, the stage charm peeling away like cheap paint. "Willa, give him that back and come to the green room. Now."

I didn't answer.

I wrapped my fingers around the textured silver grip, feeling the chill of the steel sink into my skin.

I took one step forward, looked straight through Tyler’s panicked expression as if he were nothing more than empty air, and took my place at Jude's shoulder.

The iron gates of Jude Mercer’s property groaned as they swung shut behind us.

From the outside, the place looked abandoned. The three-story brick villa sat tucked behind overgrown pines on the northern ridge, its slate roof weathered and edges frayed. Weeds pushed through the cracks in the stone driveway, and half the shutters on the top floor were bolted shut against the damp night air.

Inside was an entirely different universe.

The moment Jude kicked the front door open, the scent of cedar, warm vacuum tubes, and stale black coffee hit me.

There was almost no furniture in the great room. No couches, no rugs, no television. Instead, acoustic diffusers lined the exposed brick walls, and heavy rubber snake cables snaked across the hardwood floor like dormant pythons. At the center of the room sat a vintage forty-channel Neve console, flanked by two towering custom monitors that cost more than my entire four-year college tuition.

I set my battered black guitar case down against the wall.

It was the only thing I owned that Tyler hadn't bought, branded, or signed his name across.

"Guest room is upstairs, third door on the left," Jude said, tossing his leather vest onto an empty flight case. "Bathroom works. Hot water takes two minutes. Don't touch the rack gear in the hall."

He didn't wait for a thank-you. He walked straight to the console, slid into the rolling leather chair, and flipped a bank of power switches.

The studio hummed to life. Amber lights glowed across the preamps, and the dual monitors flickered on, displaying a complex multitrack waveform. Jude pulled a pair of heavy studio headphones down around his neck, cracked his knuckles, and reached for the faders.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

I pulled it out, expecting a call from the network or our tour manager.

It was a text from Tyler.

*Willa, stop acting like a child. You made a scene in front of four million people, but I managed to smooth things over with the executive producer. I told them you had a severe anxiety relapse and that we’re supporting you through it.*

A second message landed immediately after.

*We need the raw stem files for the next round. All five tracks. Upload the vocal stems, the sub-mixes, and especially your harmony guides to the shared drive by midnight. Lacey needs to practice the modulation on song three before morning rehearsal.*

I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the glass.

A third text popped up.

*Do this right now, and I’ll convince the label to keep you on payroll as our road assistant. You’ll still get your tour per diem, and you won’t destroy your reputation in this town. Don't be stupid, Willa. You need this band.*

A low, dry sound escaped my throat—not a laugh, just the final, brittle snap of whatever pity I had left for him.

A road assistant.

He wanted me to carry Lacey’s garment bags, tune his guitars, and hand him water bottles while she sang my arrangements to the backing tracks I had engineered note by note in our basement.

I walked over to the wooden work table near the console and pulled my laptop from the front pouch of my guitar case. I flipped the lid open and connected to the high-speed studio network.

Across the room, Jude was deep in the zone. His fingers danced across the EQ knobs, cutting a high-frequency whistle from a snare track, his head nodding to a brutal, syncopated rhythm playing through his monitors. He was building something raw, dirty, and heavy—the exact opposite of the sterile, quantized pop Tyler choked on.

I logged into the cloud server.

There it was. The master folder labeled *GLASS ECHO – SHOWCASE ROUND 2*.

Inside sat five subfolders. Every single instrument track, every MIDI map, every vocal guide, and every three-part harmony layer I had recorded at two in the morning while Tyler slept on the studio couch.

Without those tracks, Tyler had a rhythm guitar that barely stayed in tune and a singer who couldn't find middle C without a pitch-corrected backing track feeding into her in-ear monitor.

I clicked the master folder.

I selected all five projects.

Then I dragged them directly into the trash bin.

I didn't stop there. I clicked into the trash directory, highlighted the entire contents, and moved the cursor to the red button in the upper right corner.

*Permanently delete 48.2 gigabytes of data? This action cannot be undone.*

A shadow fell over my screen.

I looked up. Jude had wheeled his chair around from the console. He was leaning back, arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes locked on the dialogue box glowing blue against my face.

"You know what that is?" I asked, my voice completely steady.

"The next round's arrangements," Jude said, his tone flat and observant. "The ones he told the press he spent six months writing in Nashville."

"I spent six months writing them," I said. "In an apartment where the radiator clanked all night."

I clicked *Confirm*.

The progress bar flashed for three seconds. Then the window emptied.

*Zero files.*

"You just wiped out his entire setlist," Jude said.

One of his dark eyebrows drifted upward, a slow, razor-sharp smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

I shut the laptop with a solid, echoing click.

"He wants to sing for her," I said coldly. "He can write for her."

For two seconds, the studio was quiet except for the low whir of the cooling fans inside the amplifiers.

Then Jude let out a short, rough bark of laughter. He pushed off the desk, rolling back toward his board. "Remind me never to leave my hard drives near your bag."

"You don't steal other people's songs," I said, leaning against the table. "You don't have anything to worry about."

"Fair point," he murmured, his hands already back on the faders.

Before the echo of his voice faded, my phone shrieked.

The screen didn't just light up; it practically vibrated off the wooden table.

*Tyler Calling.*

I picked it up and tapped the speaker button, setting it face-up between us.

"Willa!"

Tyler’s voice tore through the phone, ragged and breathless with panic. The slick, television-ready polish was completely gone, replaced by the shrill hysteria of a cornered animal.

"What did you do to the drive?!" he roared. "The folders are gone! The server says the files were purged from your IP address! Where are the stems?!"

I let the silence hang for a beat, letting him listen to the steady hum of my breathing.

"They're gone, Tyler."

"Are you insane?!" The sound of something crashing on his end leaked through the speaker—probably a music stand kicked across the green room floor. "The tech check is at eight in the morning! Lacey can't sing 'Vapor' without the guide track! She doesn't have the bridge memorized, and the band doesn't have the click-track cues! Restore the backup right now!"

"There is no backup," I said evenly. "Those tracks belonged to me. You fired me on national television. Remember?"

"Willa, listen to me," Tyler pleaded, his tone shifting frantically, trying to slip back into that manipulative softness he had used on me for two years. "You're angry. I get it. I handled the stage handoff badly. But we built this together. You can't just burn down everything we worked for because your feelings are hurt. Restore the files, and we’ll renegotiate your split. Forty percent of the publishing. I swear to God, Willa, forty percent—"

"You gave my song to Lacey," I said. "You gave her my jacket. Give her the stems."

"Willa, please—"

I pressed the red circle on the screen.

Tyler's voice cut off mid-sentence.

I didn't pause. I opened his contact card, scrolled straight past his name, his email, and his tour schedule, and tapped the red text at the very bottom.

*Block this Caller.*

*Block Contact.*

Done.

I set the phone face-down on the table. The screen went dark, reflecting nothing but the dim yellow ceiling light above.

Across the room, Jude didn't look up from the console, but his fingers paused on a master fader.

"He's going to drown out there tomorrow," Jude said quietly.

"I know," I answered, picking up my guitar case and turning toward the stairs. "I hope the cameras are rolling."

The next afternoon, the rehearsal room at The Foundry smelled like ozone, ancient carpeting, and burnt coffee.

I held the microphone Jude had given me, trying to lock into the rhythm, but the downbeat was a mess.

Before we even made it past the second verse, a harsh, buzzing scrape tore through the room.

Sam, the band's bassist, clamped his palm flat over the four thick strings of his Fender, killing the sound instantly. He was a wiry guy with bleached hair cut down to the scalp, grease under his fingernails, and arms covered in faded stick-and-poke tattoos.

He didn't look at Jude. He looked straight at me, his lip curled.

"I can't play to this," Sam said flatly.

The drummer, a quiet guy named Felix, let his sticks drop onto the snare with a muffled tap.

"What's the problem, Sam?" Jude asked from behind his black Les Paul. He hadn't lowered his hands from the fretboard. His voice was dangerously calm.

"The problem is standing in the middle of our rug," Sam replied, pointing the headstock of his bass right at my chest. "She’s singing like she’s trying to sell soda to twelve-year-olds in a shopping mall. It’s too neat. It’s sterile. You can smell the cheap Glass Echo bubblegum all over her."

A hot prickle ran up the back of my neck, but I kept my grip firm on the silver mic. "I sang the chart exactly as it was written on your board."

"That’s the damn point," Sam snapped, shaking his head. "You sing like someone who's spent three years begging a commercial producer for approval. We don't do polished pop fluff here. You’re holding back, Willa, or maybe you just don’t have anything real to give."

"Sam," Jude warned, his tone dropping an octave.

"No, I’m being honest, Jude," Sam pushed back, stepping toward the center of the room. "We’ve got forty-eight hours until the elimination showcase. If we go out there with a singer who sounds like an audition for a daytime teen drama, we're done. Dead Reckoning is about grit, not glossy studio garbage."

I opened my mouth to answer, but a burst of obnoxious laughter cut through the heavy rubber seals of the rehearsal room door.

The walls of The Foundry were soundproofed with industrial foam, but the hallway was concrete and tile. Sound bounced down the corridor like bullets.

"I told the network executives we wouldn't settle for the basement spaces," a familiar, smug voice echoed outside. "Lacey needs natural light in her warm-up room. The voice is an investment."

Tyler.

Beside him, Lacey’s high, melodic giggle floated through the crack beneath the door.

"You're spoiled, Tyler," she cooed. "Though I have to admit, having the showcase headliner suite feels incredible. Did you see the flowers Capitol Records sent over?"

"That’s just the beginning, babe," Tyler replied, his voice projecting deliberately, loud enough to pierce right through our door. "When you write hits, people roll out the red carpet. They don't shove you into a rented closet."

He paused right outside our studio number. His shadow blocked the thin strip of yellow light under the frame.

"Speaking of rented closets," Tyler said, raising his voice even higher for the benefit of whoever was listening in the hall, "can you believe Mercer actually booked room four? Man must be losing his mind."

Lacey made a soft, amused sound. "Is he really trying to salvage her?"

"Desperation makes people do pathetic things," Tyler mocked, his laughter sharp and venomous. "Jude Mercer spent two years acting like he was too good for mainstream radio, and now he’s sifting through my discarded trash right off the curb. He actually thinks he can polish my leftovers into a frontwoman."

Inside the room, the silence was suffocating.

Sam looked over at me, crossing his arms with a bitter smirk that clearly said: *See? He made you, and he threw you away.*

Felix stared down at his drum pedal, uncomfortable.

Jude didn't move. His dark eyes were fixed entirely on my face, waiting to see if I was going to crack, cry, or run.

I didn't do any of those things.

A cold, electric calm settled into my ribs, pushing out every drop of hesitation.

I set the wireless microphone gently on the top of the monitor wedge.

Without saying a single word to Sam or Jude, I walked across the room to the spare guitar stand sitting by the back wall. Resting in the cradle was a battered, matte-black Gibson SG with heavy gauge strings and dual humbuckers.

I grabbed a thick braided instrument cable from the floor.

*Click.*

The jack went into the guitar with a solid metal punch.

I followed the lead to an old Marshall JCM800 half-stack resting against the brick. I reached for the power toggle and flipped the standby switch on.

The tubes glowed an angry, luminous orange behind the metal grille.

I didn't touch the clean channel. I dialed the master gain straight to ten, cranked the presence, and swept the treble until the amplifier let out a low, predatory hiss of static that filled every corner of the room.

Sam frowned, uncrossing his arms. "What is she doing?"

Jude slowly lowered his Les Paul, his eyes narrowing in fierce curiosity. "Shut up, Sam."

I stepped up to the vocal boom stand in the center of the room, dragging the mic down until it aligned with my mouth.

I slung the heavy strap of the SG over my shoulder. The weight dug into my collarbone, familiar and grounding.

I didn't play an intro.

I struck a savage, open D-minor power chord with everything in my right arm.

The Marshall roared like an uncaged engine.

Before the initial wall of distortion could even decay, my fingers shifted. I didn't play Tyler’s delicate, acoustic strumming pattern. I drove my pick into the strings with a brutal, relentless punk downstroke, accelerating the tempo until the rhythm sounded like a runaway freight train crashing into a concrete wall.

It was "Hollow Crown."

The exact song Tyler had claimed as his own. The exact melody he had dedicated to Lacey under the national television lights while calling me broken.

Felix caught the beat instantly. Without waiting for a cue, his boot slammed into the double kick pedal, and his snare cracked like gunfire, locking directly into my furious tempo.

I dragged the microphone close against my lips until the cold steel grille grazed my skin.

Then I let go.

The voice that came out of my throat wasn't sweet. It wasn't polite. It didn't have the breathy, timid phrasing Tyler had spent two years forcing me into so I wouldn't overpower his weak harmonies.

It was raw iron and fire.

*"You wore the jewel like you forged the ring,"* I sang, my chest vibrating with sheer, explosive force. *"A hollow crown for an empty king!"*

The volume was deafening. The sheer velocity of the chords shook the plaster above the ceiling tiles, sending a shower of fine dust drifting through the studio lights.

Out in the hallway, the loud, arrogant chatter vanished as if severed by a blade.

I didn't stop to give them air.

I leaned over the neck of the SG, tearing through a jagged, feedback-drenched progression, and pulled the entire room up into the bridge.

The original arrangement called for a soft falsetto lift, a pretty, fragile transition meant to make Lacey sound delicate.

I didn't sing falsetto.

I dropped my weight into my boots, drew air from the very bottom of my lungs, and pushed the melody up an entire octave into a blistering, razor-sharp belt.

*"Take your bow in the ashes!"*

The high F soared through the monitors, pure and terrifyingly powerful. It wasn't just loud; it possessed a suffocating, arena-filling resonance that rattled the double-paned glass of the sound booth.

The note didn't waver. It cut through the heavy distortion of the Marshall, piercing, ferocious, and utterly pitch-perfect.

I sustained the high belt for four full measures, pouring every ounce of Tyler’s condescension, every lie about my panic attacks, and every stolen lyric into the steel grille.

The sound was undeniable. It was violence set to music.

On the final measure, I choked the strings with the heel of my palm and killed the sustain with a violent, concussive snap.

The feedback whined once and died.

The studio went dead silent, broken only by the rapid, shallow hiss of my breath and the cooling hum of the amplifier tubes.

Felix was staring at me from behind his kit, both sticks raised in midair, his mouth hanging completely open.

Across the rug, Sam stood frozen. His fingers were still hooked over his bass strings, his face totally pale, the cynical sneer wiped clean off his features. He swallowed hard, unable to look me in the eye.

The hallway outside had gone completely, utterly lifeless. Not a footstep. Not a laugh. Not a whisper.

Then, Jude moved.

He didn't say a word to me. He unslung his guitar, set it into its stand, and crossed the room in three long, heavy strides.

He reached the thick studio door and didn't bother using the handle.

Jude brought the heavy sole of his leather boot up and kicked the door wide open.

*BANG!*

The heavy wood slammed hard against the interior drywall, rebounding with a shudder.

Tyler was standing three feet out in the hallway, entirely frozen.

His face was completely drained of color, his jaw slack, his hands hanging limp at his sides. Next to him, Lacey looked like she had just been slapped across the face, her glossy lips parted in mute shock, clutching her designer handbag against her stomach like a shield.

Jude stepped over the threshold, his broad frame completely blocking the doorway.

He looked down at Tyler, towering over him, his dark eyes brimming with cold, mocking fury.

"Next time you try to claim her lyrics," Jude said, his voice cutting through the dead hallway like a switchblade, "make sure you can actually hit her high notes."