Prologue 1
His cock is in your mouth. It tastes like mint. He keeps a miniature bottle of Dr. Bronner’s hemp peppermint in his briefcase and rinses before you blow. He’ll never let you taste pee or primal imperfection, only warm sterile and slightly spicy flesh. It feels sickly good, like drawing blood or eating when you shouldn’t. You shouldn't be eating this, maybe. You blow.
His hands stay at his sides on the green room couch, because every red hair on your head is in the correct place for showtime: two slick and tall braids, the ends tied with glittering blue puffballs. A babydoll look, complete with a silky puff-sleeved nightgown that fails to cover your butt as you kneel. Shaggy carpet prickles your kneecaps through two layers of pale-skin nylon. Your makeup is done too: blue sparkles on your eyes, highlighter bright as the moon on your prettiest bones. At eighteen (as of yesterday), you don’t cry over this ritual anymore, so it happens after the mascara is slick on your artificially enhanced lashes. Bigger cocks have torn the corners of your mouth and nudged the back of your throat to numbness.
You never gag. You’re doing a very good job, bluebird.
Littlefinger comes and you swallow. He zips and rises to rinse again; he rinses often because he doesn’t feel pain like he should, though his cock is cut and a stressful red. Small, mostly. Small enough that he savors the burn. “Tonight—dinner with Walder and Walder,” he says, and he seals you inside, alone.
You count the seconds. Three pass, and then it’s showtime. No pills before showtime except the orange capsule Littlefinger fed you two hours ago after rehearsal: lunch. No, it’s butterfly tummy time. The green room floods with help. They’re excited as ever to put their hands on you, powder you up, tuck in loose ends, fondle your pinkest skin. Merry positions your nipples: bullseyes beneath three inches of push-up padding (you don’t have boobs). She flips up your skirt and mashes your malformed lady parts back into a wisp of a thong. You’re counting the days until Dr. Qyburn slices them clean off. Could he sew you up, too? No general access! VIP only!
You’re smiling because only angels would be allowed inside you. Then you frown because you’d never land another contract; you’d be worthless. Sad.
“Don’t be sad, sweetheart.” Merry again, pinching your cheeks, below . “It’s opening night!”
You baste on a smile and pitch out popstar voice: “I’m so nervous!”
“No need to worry—you’ll knock them dead!”
Dead , you think, and you smile. No shows if the fans are dead, but Sansa Stark loves her fans, because fans give her money. OK, that’s harsh. You love to sing and dance and be hot under lights that flare like a hundred suns. You like shrieks and sobs and declarations of love that have girls limp on sidewalks and men drooling from two distinct orifices. You’re loved, Sansa Stark!
WE LOVE YOU!
You can hear the ghost shouts from the stadium already: a car crash ring, the single screeching note that precedes black-out bliss. Madison Square Garden, opening night, the romance! The dream! Whose dream? A half dozen hands guide you backstage. Merry, Mary, and Molly. Brienne’s mitts are the biggest of all. Brienne the Beauty, they say behind her back, because she’s ugly. She barks into a headset, a miniature on her thick skull. Her palm takes you through the underbelly of the garden, a tangle of exposed iron beams and low-hanging plastic pipes, decorated in skeletal fluorescent flickers. The concrete walk is damp. People talk; you agree.
Monitors in. They lay you down on your special dolly, pat you some more, smile, talk, bark, and smile. “Break a leg, knock them dead, you’ll kill it, we know, you’ll kill.”
And finally, “Three...two...one…she’s on!”
You shoot through the underground, stand, and rise. You’re a Moltres in Barbie’s clothing. You want to spit fire, but polyester burns. Your stomach bubbles—the nerves, the cum, the midday pill. You stand steady in glittery Mary Janes as the platform slinks up its stalk and grinds to stop. Your wings are outstretched. Your smile is pulled tight on amply frosted skin. I am risen.
“Ladies and Gentleman,” booms the voice of God from black boxes at all angles. “The moment you’ve all been waiting for: it’s America’s Bluebird, the princess of pop, our beloved baby girl turned full-grown woman. I present to you—
SANSAAAAAAAAA
STAAAAAAAAARK!”
The lights hit you. For a second, you’re blind. You float in a white sea, you weigh nothing, you are nothing, you have ceased to be.
This is one second of bliss.
Your earbuds roar to life faster than the speakers. Your eyes learn the light; you’re looking out to the night sky, a deep navy filled with camera flash stars. You take your first step, you’ve long outgrown your egg, your lovely limbs carry you into the sky, you’re on fire, you’re the sun, you’re powerful radiant and bright, you’re giving them life, the first note crests your lips like angels from high. Sing, Sansa, sing, Sansa, sing, sing, sing!
Sansa Stark, you’re a star!