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First published 2026
001
Text copyright © Beth Reekles, 2026
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For The hivE (née Gobble Gals, née Cactus Updates), my very own D&D crew. Here’s to the Svens! Roll for awesome, stay originaL, love you always.
And once again, for my fellow weird kids who know an escape into fandom is always there for you. So’s this book.
Chapter 1
My heart is pounding and my mouth feels dry.
This is it. It’s happening. I’m actually going to do it.
We’re stood together in the narrow corridor. The lights are low out here and the hum of the party in the next room feels distant, muted. Like it’s just the two of us.
He leans in closer with a smile that’s a borderline smirk on his handsome face, and caresses my jaw with his hand.
My breath catches. I can’t believe it’s finally about to happen, after all this time.
After months of flirting back and forth, going from tentative acquaintances, to friends, to now this . . .
The air is charged, electric, and my whole body is alight with it. If he leans in any closer, he’ll be able to feel me trembling. The nerves, the excitement, the anticipation – it’s all exactly as I imagined it.
He brushes my hair back from my face. It came loose from my braids when I was dancing.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he tells me, his voice low.
A thousand and one responses jumble together on the tip of my tongue, but my throat is too thick for me to speak. Nodding is all I feel capable of right now.
Then, in slow motion, he closes the last scrap of distance between us, his strong hand tilting my chin up. His body is hot against mine and when I press a palm flat against his chest I can feel his heart beating every bit as wildly –
And that’s when I slip a dagger from the folds of my dress and stab him neatly between the ribs.
Hot, sticky blood cascades over my fingers as he stumbles back. ‘What the –!’
As I look into his vivid green eyes they turn entirely to black. His face seems to shimmer and his huge wings flicker out of existence as the mystical façade begins to fall away. He staggers once, twice, drops to his knees and fumbles at his belt for the blades that were confiscated on our way into the ball.
‘Traitor,’ I hiss, as he collapses at my feet.
I lift the skirts of my ball gown to make sure I don’t get blood on my pretty dress, and run deeper into the castle to find the rest of my adventuring party.
There’s a cacophony of noise: shocked exclamations, stunned stammering and cries of outrage from the people at my table. We draw a few looks making such a commotion at a cafe on a Sunday afternoon, but my friends are too riled up to notice.
Jake throws his dice desperately, hoping to save his character from imminent death, but to no avail. He buries his face in his hands with a groan and, next to him, Max pats his shoulder in commiseration.
‘Don’t comfort him!’ shouts Cerys, looking like she’s going to lunge across the table to slap Max’s hand away. She upsets an empty glass and mutters a quick apology before sitting back down. She settles for jabbing a finger towards Jake instead. ‘You’re a traitor! A shifter in our own ranks, a spy! And to think we trusted you! I gave you my scrying opal –’
Jake lifts his head with a sheepish smile and shrugs. ‘I couldn’t have you finding me out, could I?’
‘And to think I was rooting for yours and Anissa’s characters to get together, ugh!’
I’m about to gush about how proud I am of doublebluffing by going along with that subplot, when Max adds, ‘Seriously! I thought you were going to have to actually kiss for a second there.’
Jake snorts and, though the idea of kissing my very platonic friend is genuinely laughable, my stomach
swoops uncomfortably – as if me kissing anyone is so funny to them.
‘HAHAHA !’ I blurt. ‘TOTALLY. CAN YOU IMAGINE ?’
Cerys gives me an odd look but the boys have already moved on, and she falls into the rhythm of their conversation, bickering about all the times that Lord Syxos – Jake’s character in our tabletop roleplaying game – had pulled the wool over their eyes. My own character, Mida, a sorceress and former palace servant turned rebel spy, had clocked him from the start but, since I’m the gamemaster, I decided it was way more fun to wait for the perfect moment to pull the big reveal – for maximum effect.
Which, judging by the reactions around me, was exactly the right decision.
I take a sip of my coffee and find it’s gone cold; I got too caught up in the gameplay, and Mida and Lord Syxos’s fauxmance.
Although to be fair, it’s easy for me to get lost in anything related to Of Wrath and Rune. It’s been my favourite fantasy series for seven years and counting, with more books in the works and the latest season of the TV show about to start filming. It’s even got its own Dungeons and Dragonsesque role-playing game, which Jake and I persuaded the others to play now our
first year of sixth-form college is over and summer’s finally here.
Being gamemaster is basically a dream for me. I get to flex my deep-cut knowledge of OWAR lore, craft exciting adventures for us to embark on, develop new characters to fit seamlessly into this fantasy universe – and I have friends to do it all with.
I’m still getting used to that last part. This is the first time I’ve ever really had friends.
It’s surreal to realize just how drastically being part of the OWAR fandom has changed my life. But it’s amazing, being surrounded by people I probably wouldn’t have ever called friends if not for our mutual love of the books and the show. I’m no longer the weirdo outcast at college, the chronic loner nobody cared to really get to know.
Jake leans back in his seat with a sigh and says, ‘Fair play, Anissa, you really pulled that off. I was dead convinced I’d be able to use Mida as a hostage to blackmail the others.’
‘Now you’re just dead,’ I say, and everyone laughs. A little bubble of warmth rises in my chest at the sound.
‘At least now we don’t have to do all that pretend flirting.’ He chuckles, pulling a face. ‘It was getting kind of weird, right?’
And just like that, the bubble bursts, my heart plummets, and my smile freezes. I think I say something blithe in agreement, but my head is clamouring: Wait, why was it weird? Did I mess it up? Was it that obvious I have no idea how to flirt, did I make a complete idiot of myself?
Max imitates my character in a breathy, exaggerated voice: ‘Oh, but my lord, you already have half my heart, what can I do but pledge you the rest?’ He raises a thick, dark eyebrow at Cerys and says playfully, ‘I think if you spoke to me like that in real life, I’d have to break up with you.’
‘A total ick,’ she agrees, giggling, but she must catch something on my face because she quickly grabs my hand to squeeze. ‘But it totally worked in the gameplay! It felt so on-brand for the world of OWAR !’
I turn my weak smile on her, not so sure I’m convinced.
If it’s this obvious to my closest friends what a complete amateur I am when it comes to romance, how am I ever going to pull it off in the real world, when it matters?
I’m a little relieved I killed off Lord Syxos, if I’m honest. Not just because I had to play a double-bluff in character, or because the fake flirting was making me feel a bit sweaty, but because I find it so easy to get
caught up in sweeping, epic romances when it comes to fiction. In real life? It’s another story. And as much as I love this fandom, it would’ve been really sad if my first kiss had all been part of some fantasy.
Chapter 2
The thing about always having been the weird kid at school, is that as much as you’ve spent years watching everyone else be normal from afar, it’s still difficult to do it IRL .
Like, how many fire emojis are you supposed to react to your friends’ fit checks with before it creeps them out? If you share a story about yourself to try and relate, is it building connection or just annoying them because you’re supposed to be talking about them ? Where is the line between being too much and not enough, and how the hell do they all seem to find it so easy?
How are you supposed to flirt with a boy? I don’t even know what it feels like to fancy one, let alone act on it. For all the romance fanfics and books I bury my head in, the idea of doing it in real life (and probably – okay, DEFINITELY – humiliating myself) makes me shudder.
Especially now I know I can’t even pull it off inside the fantasy world of our tabletop role-play game. Ugh. Roll for romance? Critical fail, Anissa . . .
Determined to not make things any weirder than I apparently already have, I shake all that off and tell Jake, ‘I’m sorry. I know you put a lot of work into Lord Syxos.’
He shrugs it off, as unbothered as ever. ‘Ah, it’s okay – I always knew being a traitor in your midst was a risky choice. I’ve got a backup character ready to go,’ he adds brightly, eyes lighting up. ‘I’m going to be a chaos goblin. Well – the character’s an orc cleric, not an actual goblin, but you know what I mean. I did consider being the real Lord Syxos, imprisoned in the palace due to his divided loyalties, but –’
‘Ooh, I like that idea! I can definitely work it into the story.’ And just like that, my head is already buzzing with ideas for the next part of our campaign. If Lord Syxos has been taken prisoner, we should head to the dungeons to rescue him, and inevitably get caught up in a battle with the prince’s guards . . .
The rush of excitement I get makes me feel giddy. There’s just so much to love when it comes to OWAR : the visceral world building, the immersive story, the layers of lore. But the best part is the characters, and Jake’s suggestion gives me the perfect excuse to add
my favourite into our game; I’ve been dying to find a way to bring him in.
Prince Kai Osterion. A young man born with corrupted magick, he’s quiet, aloof, overlooked by his ruthless family and treated warily by everyone around him, but duty-bound to his position.
I’m fully aware he’s a niche favourite character to have. His chapters in the books mainly serve as a gateway to the rest of the palace and his visions are basically a plot device to show us what’s happening across the realm, or to act as foreshadowing. And with the TV show a few storylines behind the books, he’s only just gotten cast in it as a proper role for the upcoming series. (Rude, I’ve been ROBBED of Kai content for too long.)
But Kai’s pain as an outcast, his conflict between who he is and who he could have – should have – been, his struggle to be accepted and fit in at court . . . I get it. It feels like seeing parts of my soul laid bare in a way I couldn’t explain on my own.
OWAR is important to me – but characters like Kai? He makes me feel a bit less alone. This entire fandom does.
My thought spiral is interrupted by the others packing up their things – I hadn’t even noticed we were ready to go, or how long we’d been here.
This happens sometimes. Loads of my school reports have accused me of ‘daydreaming too much in class’, although my grades were always good enough for me not to get in any real trouble for it.
Since Cerys brought me into her group of friends at college and I met Max and Jake, I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort not to let my head get away from me, but it still catches me off guard no matter how hard I try.
Cerys is busy gathering up the miniature figurines she painstakingly painted for us; Jake stops recording the session on his phone (he keeps saying he wants to turn it into a podcast, but he’s still down a ‘how to’ rabbit hole on that); and Max folds up his map and rule book – he’s the one keeping us all honest during gameplay.
I scramble to grab the character sheets I made, shoving them unceremoniously into my bag. Cerys places a hand on Max’s arm, saying something too soft for me to catch, and he smiles and nods before kissing her cheek. Cerys blushes, smiling.
They’re an unbearably sweet couple. The kind of epic, love-can-overcome-anything stuff like I read about. It’s almost unfair that they exist in real life like this – they’re such couple goals.
Even the story of how they got together is like
something out of a romcom. Love triangles and yearning and a classic mistaken-identity trope . . . Ugh, I want that.
Even if it feels wildly out of reach.
I avert my eyes, feeling like I’m staring too much. Jake, on the other hand, oblivious as ever, leans in to interrupt their moment. ‘You’re giving me a lift home, right?’
‘Yeah, course,’ says Max. Then he adds sharply, ‘But you’re still not coming to the cinema with us. It’s date night, remember?’
‘I wouldn’t dare!’
Cerys coughs to cover her laugh, and I try (and fail) to smother a giggle against my hand. Jake has such golden retriever energy. Sometimes he gets so carried away by his eagerness to hang out with his best friends that he doesn’t notice they’re trying to, you know, leave so they can snog in private.
While Max claps Jake on the shoulder to chivvy him along, Cerys gives me a hug. ‘Are you sure Max can’t give you a lift home, too?’
‘No, that’s alright! Really. I’ve already bought a return bus ticket anyway.’ I live on the other side of town to the boys, and I don’t want to put them out. Like Jake, I’m also not great at understanding social cues – years of being an outcast means I often feel like
I’m overstaying my welcome. Cerys has told me plenty of times that’s not the case, but I’m sure she’s mostly just being polite.
‘Okay. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early? First day of work experience!’ She squeals, giving me one last squeeze, and I force myself to smile back.
Yay, work experience. A big scary new situation where I have to impress people, whoo!
Cerys’s dad knows someone who works for a local TV studio, and he managed to blag us an internship in the art department for the summer. Cerys fell in love with set design when she first watched OWAR and, since we’re both studying art for A level, she roped me into this job, too. She was vague about which show we’d be working on, though I’m kind of hoping it’s Doctor Who – they film tons in Cardiff.
I’d wanted to say no, but it was tricky when she made it sound like such a done deal. Plus, Cerys was so excited about it, and I was clearly supposed to share the sentiment . . .
What would Mida do? Well, no question how my role-play character would tackle this – she’d dive right in, feet first, and forge ahead. She’d be spinning it into something good, relishing a challenge.
So far, the only ‘good’ spin I’ve got is that it means Cerys has to spend time with me this summer, and
won’t forget all about me without college keeping us in each other’s orbit. The rest of the girls are away, so it’s not like there’s even a stacked social calendar of plans they feel obliged to invite me along to.
‘It’s going to be so amazing,’ Cerys gushes. I don’t think she can hear the gears whirring in my head, and I’m obviously doing a great job of masking my insecurities because she just keeps beaming at me. ‘This could be the making of us, Nis! Tomorrow, work experience – next stop, Hollywood!’
‘So cool,’ I manage to say, feeling a bit ill.
I wish I had her self-assurance. I’m not sure what I want to study at uni yet, or even if I want to go, but Cerys has waxed lyrical about how good this placement would be for our futures, and my parents said the same thing. It was hard to argue with that. Besides, it’s only for a couple of weeks until the end of summer.
So I promise to see her bright and early tomorrow, do a last sweep of our table to make sure no dice got left behind, then make my way to the bus stop.
What would Mida do? She’d be planning a killer outfit, forming plans and backup plans. I’d be drafting bits of dialogue for her, feeling her confidence expand my own chest.
But my thoughts turn instead to Prince Kai. His imposter syndrome is feeling a lot more relatable than
Mida’s boldness right now. And just like that, my fingers are itching to write something and I’m opening up a new note on my phone, unable to wait until I’m home at my laptop, and do what I do best: emotional catharsis to numb myself to scary feelings via fanfiction through the eyes of Kai Osterion.
It might be a nerdy escape from real life, but in times like this, it’s my lifeline.
Chapter 3
Red Wings Studios consists of a bunch of huge, offwhite warehouses that seem to spring up out of nowhere. It’s pretty nondescript, except for a dragon emblem and the studio name printed on one building at the front. The car park is tiny, too, with just a couple of men in high-vis vests milling about, not paying Cerys’s blue Vauxhall Corsa much attention.
I smooth my sweaty palms over my trousers. They’re my old school uniform ones and the smartest thing I own to create a professional-looking outfit for my first day; Cerys insisted we had to make a good impression.
Well, what she actually said was, ‘My FUTURE is on the line!’ So, same difference.
I pull down the sun visor to give myself a once-over: without my usual smudge of kohl eyeliner, my hazel eyes look less piercing, less me. Or less the ‘me’ I try
to be these days, anyway . . . My shoulder-length dark hair is straightened to within an inch of its life, but otherwise I still look like me – brown skin, button nose, gap in between my front two teeth. Just a polished, bland version.
I look like the person I tried to be at school so that I might fit in better, so people wouldn’t avoid me and laugh behind my back. (Spoiler alert: it never worked.)
Cerys, also in her old school trousers and with her blonde hair in a slicked-back bun, was unusually nervy on the drive here, her knuckles white around the steering wheel – although, granted, she’s only just got her licence, so that could be a factor, too . . .
But once we’re out of the car, she turns to me with her hands braced against the roof. Her thin face looks paler than usual as she says, ‘Okay, so I may have told you a teensy white lie.’
A knot immediately forms in my stomach. ‘About what?’
‘We haven’t exactly secured the work experience placement . . . yet.’
And then the whole story comes spilling out, so fast I can barely follow it. Her dad’s connection doesn’t even work at this studio anymore. They only mentioned that some TV show was setting up to film here after their original location was forced to close; it was all
very hush-hush but Cerys’s dad thought she would be interested. Thus began her hare-brained scheme to work on some major TV set.
‘But it’s okay! I have a plan,’ she declares, hands grasping my arms to placate me before I can even ask what show it is. It was easy to tell myself to go along with this when Cerys was excited, but now her nerves are only amping up my own and I can’t help it when an incredulous laugh bursts out of me.
‘Cerys! Your last plan was to become the perfect OWAR fangirl and ergo Jake’s dream girlfriend, until you discovered you’d been flirting up a storm on Discord and fallen in love with Max, not Jake.’
Cerys squirms. ‘Yes, but it all worked out in the end, didn’t it? Anyway, this one is way better, I promise! Step one: we look like smart, sensible, creative young women, not crazed fangirls. Check . Step two: we ask them nicely to give us work experience because we are dedicated art students, and not crazed fangirls .’
‘Okay . . . Except you’ve tracked down this show’s new top-secret filming location, which is kind of giving –’
‘We’ll just glaze over that bit.’
‘Shouldn’t we have CV s or something?’
‘Way ahead of you!’ She fishes some papers out
of her bag to brandish at me. ‘If anyone asks, you volunteer to help with rescue dogs. I stretched the truth about Harley just a teensy bit. She might be your pet but she was a rescue, after all. And you do pick up her poo.’
‘I’m really not sure about this, Cer–’
‘It’ll help you figure out if you want to do art at uni!’ Her eyes are wide and round and pleading, now, and I grimace – not because of her attempt to convince me, but because the pressure of uni feels too real.
Then she takes a deep breath and pulls out the big guns, quoting her favourite character from OWAR – Lady Adanna di Silver – when she has a serious heart-to-heart with her devoted bodyguard Devon in season four.
‘You are always by my side. And I know I’m asking a lot from you but, truly, I cannot do this without you. So I must ask you once more, my dearest Dev – er, Anissa. Will you come with me?’
Goddammit. She really knows how to hit a girl in the feels.
I sigh, and Cerys’s face lights up, already knowing she’s won.
I respond with another quote, one of her favourite lines from the series. ‘Until the end.’
The studio’s front doors look so tiny against the massive scale of the building, and the reception inside is . . . disappointingly nondescript. Undeterred, Cerys goes right up to the man at the desk.
‘Hello!’ she chirps. ‘Sorry to disturb you. We’re here to see Danielle Poulter, Lead Set Designer. We’re responding to an open call for assistants?’ While her posture is all cool confidence, Cerys’s voice ticks up slightly at the end as she starts to lose her nerve. I narrow my eyes at her – the name sounds familiar, but I can’t place it . . . A faint blush creeps up Cerys’s cheeks but the receptionist seems too distracted by his screen to notice she is totally bluffing.
‘Hmm . . . I can’t find anything in the schedule about that for today . . . Sorry, ladies, it’s all been a bit chaotic here, lots of stuff falling through the cracks.’ He grabs the landline and dials anyway, and my heart is beating so fast I think I might be sick. ‘Hi, Lisa, is Danielle around? I’ve got a couple of young women here asking about – oh, right, okay. Will do!’
He puts the phone down and tells us, ‘If you can just sign in, Lisa’s going to be over to collect you in a mo.’
A guest book is pushed towards us and then he busies himself untangling lanyards and passes. I pause before following Cerys’s lead, signing myself in, deciding I can’t very well let her do this all on her own.
Mida would never abandon one of her own mid-scheme.
Just then a door bursts open to reveal a frazzledlooking woman with frizzy hair who pins us both with a look. Lisa – I’m assuming – is wearing two pairs of glasses (one on her face, the other up on top of her head), has three headsets draped around her neck and a whole separate earpiece clipped over one heavilypierced ear. Her jeans are ripped and stained, and there’s chalk on her black T-shirt and some bright blue tape stuck to her boot.
In hindsight, our school uniforms were not the vibe.
‘Come on then, you two, no time to waste! We’ve been run off our feet all morning as it is.’
She’s already marching off, and we trip after her down a series of impossibly high-ceilinged corridors that look as bland as the reception area. The flooring becomes laminate instead of carpet, the walls plain greyish-white plaster, and the temperature drops.
Cerys whispers, ‘I’m starting to think this might be a bad idea. Do you think we’ll get in actual trouble?’
I think back to our OWAR role-playing game; I’d have definitely rolled a deception check already. But what would Mida say, a spy in the depths of the enemy’s palace?
‘It’s not our fault they didn’t ask more questions,’ I tell Cerys firmly. ‘They can hardly arrest us for trespassing when they invited us in.’
She squeezes my clammy hand in reply, just as Lisa takes us through a door that opens into a cavernous room that seems to stretch on for ages. It looks part office, part storage room and part . . . tavern?
Wait. What is this?
There are three fake walls against a bright blue backdrop, with real windows, a bar, several round tables scattered with stools and chairs, and a large cardboard box of tankards. One wall of the tavern is still under construction, surrounded by people in hard hats with spirit levels and drills. Miscellaneous pieces of wood and furniture are strewn across the room, and there’s a massive table nearby covered in diagrams. On one stretch of wall, sketches of a tavern are pinned up. There are close-ups, Post-its covered in scribbles, and wider views from different angles, and . . .
I see a distinct antler motif that makes my brain screech to a halt.
WAIT. This can’t be . . .?
Cerys didn’t actually . . .?
I snatch at her arm, my eyes practically falling out of my head. ‘Tell me this isn’t –?’
‘Please,’ she hisses, ‘be cool!’
Holy shit. We’re on the actual set of Of Wrath and Rune.
I gawk at the tavern-in-progress, imagination running wild. Is it run by rebels out near the Gilded Glade, a place for the heroes to gather and plan their next move? It’s surely too rough-and-ready to be anywhere in the Capitol. I can totally imagine the Moonwalker with his long, pale blonde hair and his dark cloak, one hand on a mug of ale and another on the hilt of his dagger, and grizzled Rogdan reclined with his feet on a table, drunk and singing folk songs. I’m already thinking about the number of fanfictions I could write, turning a fleeting moment of eye contact across the bar between the brooding Moonwalker and righteous Lady Adanna di Silver into tens of thousands of words of delicious, slow-burn romance . . .
Probably with a ‘there’s only one bed’ trope and the pillow wall they build between them that inevitably will be crossed in the night. A classic.
I can’t breathe, I’m so excited to see it up close like this. It’s magical. Surreal. Brilliant! Eyes wide, my jaw hits the floor and I don’t bother to pick it up; my whole body is practically vibrating with the need to run over and inspect it all up close. I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet like I might just actually do that. Cerys nudges me, cringing. ‘Please, Nis!’
The unspoken tone it down feels like a gut punch back to reality, where we’ve snuck into a TV studio to get work experience. Where this matters to Cerys – for her love of OWAR , sure, but for her big dreams for the future, too.
And silly, too-in-her-head me, is going to spoil it all.
Lucky for Cerys, I’ve had years of practice at closing off that socially unacceptable part of me, and I bottle it all up just in time for Lisa to finally stop near the table of diagrams and turn to us.
She pushes her glasses on top of her head where they join the other pair in her wild curls. ‘You’re a lot younger than I was expecting . . .’ She blinks a few times, as if only just seeing us properly for the first time. ‘Oh God, I’m all for a little bit of padding on your CV, but come on, girls! This is ridiculous. You can’t be more than eighteen!’
‘Er, we aren’t,’ I say. There’s no point lying now.
Cerys reaches into a smart black leather handbag she’s obviously borrowed from her mum and hands over the CV s she made for us. ‘We’re art students from a local college. We, um, we thought –’
‘That you’d just swan in here and get hired on the spot?’ Lisa scoffs, but takes the CV s anyway. She grabs a pair of glasses and rams them on to her nose. Her eyes dart rapidly back and forth and then settle briefly
on me; I regret not bothering to ask Cerys exactly what she put on my CV.
Is she about to call security to frogmarch us out? Can we get in actual trouble for this?
What if I’m, like, blacklisted from being able to watch OWAR ever again?
Finally, Lisa sighs. ‘Listen, girls, I appreciate your moxie but I really don’t have time for this. We’re already short-staffed: moving production from Leeds to Cardiff meant we lost a lot of local talent and we’re still scrambling to fix that, on top of going ahead with filming as normal. Executives and their damn schedules –’ One of her headsets crackles with noise, and she mutes it.
‘Let me guess – you’re huge fans of the show.’
‘I wouldn’t say we aren’t fans . . .’ Cerys offers.
‘Right. Sure. But we’re already behind, and neither of you have any industry experience –’
‘But –’ Cerys starts.
‘We could –’ I try.
‘Alright, Lise? How’s it looking? Bloody hell, this isn’t too shabby, is it!’ booms a voice out of nowhere. It’s jarringly familiar but even after I turn around to look, it takes me several seconds to process. It’s Daxys! Greater Fae warrior and ex-palace guard who fights with the good guys! Well – I guess, technically, it’s Brayden Brown, the actor who plays him.
He’s perfectly cast: six-and-a-half feet tall, barrelchested with a buzz cut and huge muscles, he pulls off ‘intimidating strongman’ fantastically. But he’s beloved by the fandom for being really cool and nice IRL too, always making time for Q&As and posting funny videos.
Right now he stands about three feet away – three feet away! From us! Actual real-life Daxys! – with his hands on his hips and a broad smile on his face that makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. He’s not in costume, just athletic gear with a towel slung over one shoulder.
I did technically meet him at Comic Con a few weeks ago. Me, Jake, Cerys, Max and our college friend Chloe all went. Chloe was there for her Twitch channel but the rest of us all had OWAR cosplay on, and we got a group photo with Daxys. The whole interaction cost us fifty quid and only lasted a few minutes. It’s a blur, now I think back to it. I vaguely remember him greeting Max by name, having met him before at previous cons, and then stumbling out afterwards with Jake clinging to me and gushing about how brilliant he is.
A muscle twitches in Lisa’s cheek, but then she softens. ‘Brayden, hi. Hasn’t Danielle been clear enough about you not making a nuisance of yourself?’
‘Just thought I’d see if you needed any help . . .’
Lisa shakes her head. ‘She’s not here, so you can
take that little schoolboy crush elsewhere. I’m up to my eyeballs in it as it is, without babysitting you as well.’
‘Oh yeah? More newbies to onboard?’ He turns to us, then, smile at the ready, does a small double-take. ‘Hang on, don’t I –? ’
‘Work experience chancers,’ Lisa says quickly, trying to step between us. She looks back at us warily, like we’re going to throw ourselves at Brayden’s feet begging for a selfie or an autograph. To be fair, I am close. ‘I’m dealing with it.’
‘No, I know you guys, don’t I?’ He frowns, and my mouth is dry and all I can think is a single, screaming thought: THERE IS NO WAY DAXYS REMEMBERS US FROM COMIC CON OMG OMG OMG !!!! Jake is literally never going to recover when I tell him.
Cerys, luckily, is coherent enough for the both of us. ‘Er, yeah. Comic Con in London, and the Cardiff one last October. My boyfriend is Max, the guy with the great Moonwalker cosplay?’
‘Moonwalker Max! Yes!’ Brayden snaps his fingers, grinning, and then turns to me. ‘You were wearing those sick antlers for a Téiglin cosplay! And you guys have that friend, the tall fella with the glasses and cool poster collection.’
‘That’s him! I mean, us! I mean, yes!’ I blurt.
Jake is officially going to die.
‘You’re here for work experience, then?’ he asks, causing Lisa to groan.
‘C’mon Brayden, you know we don’t do work experience placements.’ She glances at us briefly. ‘It’s not personal. Someone stole props for resale when we filmed season four, and someone else leaked storylines. Speaking of which, someone’s clearly leaked our new filming location . . .’
‘Aw, go on, Lise. I can vouch for these two. Plus, you should see the Téiglin antlers they made. Like they came right off set!’
Cerys flushes with pride; she made them as part of our art coursework. I only borrowed them for my costume. With a sudden burst of confidence, suddenly wanting this – for Cerys’s sake more than mine – I say, ‘It’d just be for a few weeks for the summer holidays, until we go back to college. Please? I promise, we’re hard workers and really reliable. And we already know so much about the show . . .’
All three of Lisa’s headsets start going off at once and she caves, throwing up her hands. ‘Fine! Fine. We need all the help we can get seeing as those girls from Doctor Who haven’t shown up. I’ll have someone take you both to HR to fill out the paperwork. If this backfires, Brayden, it’s on your head, d’you hear
me? And I’ll make sure all of production knows that. Including Danielle.’
He crosses his heart, then stage whispers to us, ‘Don’t let me down then, girls, eh? You heard the boss.’
While Brayden wanders over to the tavern set to get a better look, Lisa beckons someone over to ferry us down another set of corridors. Cerys and I link our arms together as we’re told in a bored, rapid-fire monotone about protocol and NDA s.
‘The boys are never going to believe this,’ Cerys breathes.
‘If anybody could pull this off, it’d be you,’ I reply.
‘No – it’d be us.’
Chapter 4
The first couple of days on set are a whirlwind of instructions and trying hard not to get lost. People talk about things like call sheets and night shoots, choreography practice, meetings with executive producers and the writers’ room. It feels like something straight out of a movie.
I guess it practically is.
Lisa had us email her a portfolio of our artwork so she could decide where best to place us. Cerys has the edge over me: her passion really shines through her OWAR fanart, so she gets placed with the design team, handed some sketches and put to work painting scenery.
I’m helping with set dressing, which turns out to involve unpacking the cardboard box of tankards. They’re lightweight and cheap but cleverly painted to look authentically aged, and they need to be
placed very precisely around the tavern to give it a lived- in feel.
Cerys gives me a sympathetic grimace when we’re both sent on an afternoon tea run. ‘I’m sorry, Nis. I feel like I dragged you into this and they’ve got you organizing the kitchen cupboards.’
‘Are you kidding? I LOVE it!’
I do – apparently the tavern is going to be a pivotal new location in series six for the heroes, just like I’d imagined. Obviously it’s cool to feel like I’m getting an inside scoop – but more than that, it makes me feel like a real, genuine part of this world. It’s as if I’m bringing my fanfictions or our TTRPG campaign to life.
It’s so easy to immerse myself in the feeling of the scenes to come, to picture the characters I know so well in this space – bickering, bantering, healing wounds and building relationships . . .
I’m already obsessed, and dreading September when this all has to end.
The tavern set is like a living, breathing thing and it’s a thrill to take it from concept to reality. I’m so overwhelmed that I get to be part of it, so grateful to Cerys for pushing me into this, that I know for a fact: this job is going to be the best thing to ever happen to me.
Jake, as predicted, is in absolute anguish.
‘I’m in literal anguish, Anissa,’ he tells me over FaceTime as I try and fail to tidy up my room. Mostly, I’m just rearranging stuff into different piles I’ll put away properly later. ‘I can’t believe you wouldn’t think to ask me, your best friend, the biggest OWAR fan you know, to do work experience with you.’
I point out the flaws in that statement in order. ‘One, that’s mighty bold of you to assume you’re my best friend, when I know for a fact I’m not yours.’
‘You are!’ he insists. Then he adds, ‘You’re solidly in my top three best friends, and I love you all equally.’
‘Mm-hmm. Two, I think you’ll find that I’m the biggest OWAR fan you know . . . And three: explain how you were going to work in set design or the art department when you can’t draw to save your life?’
He grumbles melodramatically, but soon enough ends up talking about his celebrity crush Brayden Brown again, because of course he does. Jake’s still moony-eyed about the fact Brayden remembered him, and called him ‘tall’.
‘We probably won’t even see much of him,’ I interject, giving up on the concept of tidying my room to flop down on my bed. ‘Or any of the actors, really. It’s all behind-the-scenes stuff so far. We’re probably not even allowed to talk to them.’
‘Dream with me, Anissa! Go on, who’d be top of your list? To meet, I mean.’
I open my mouth but pause – because I know the name on my lips is not one Jake is going to expect.
Kai, obviously.
So far, we’ve only got scraps of scenes in the season five trailer to go off, but the guy playing him, Callum Denver, seems promising so far, and my online fandom friends seem to agree he’s well cast. I’d be more excited to see him performing the role than hanging out with the actor himself, but I can’t wait to see if he does live up to the hype I’ve built around the character.
I don’t think I could bear it if he ruins Kai for me.
‘Top three, then,’ Jake suggests, mistaking my hesitation.
‘Um, I guess Lady Adanna and the Moonwalker. It’d be cool to see if they have as much chemistry off-screen.’
Luckily for me, Jake gets too distracted fantasizing about what he’d do in my shoes to ever ask for my third. He’s too busy joking, ‘The neurospicy curse of decision paralysis!’ before listing his dreams of meeting basically the entire cast.
By the time we say goodnight and hang up, I draw my curtains against the summer sunset, bathing my
room in a peachy glow that feels like being wrapped in cotton wool. Then I drag my laptop towards me to click idly around all the tabs I’ve got open.
Cerys and I agreed not to tell anyone that we got the work experience on set. Well, we agreed not to tell anyone except for the boys. And our families, obviously, since we’ve had to bring home some documents for them to co-sign as we’re legally minors . . . And then Cerys told the girls from college, because she said they’re not in the fandom anyway so they wouldn’t really care.
But from now on we’re going to have to be so careful not to do anything that’ll get us removed from set. Lisa reminded us we can’t sneak selfies with cast members in the background, and they’re on high alert for any storyline leaks. Plus, if we get fired, it might damage Cerys’ chances of working in the industry in the future. I don’t want to be responsible for that. Anyway, we’re not telling anyone else. Especially not our online OWAR friends.
Speaking of, I haven’t checked Discord lately . . .
The group Cerys initially introduced me to is just for local OWAR fans. There are dozens of other ones out there, though, and I even found a server dedicated to my favourite character. He has his own subreddit, too. There’s not always a lot going on in there since
there’s limited new content about Kai and not a lot of dedicated fans like me – but tonight, the tab is alive with notifications.
I dive in greedily, and lose myself in my online community.
OWAR Discord Kai-rry On My Wayward Son
General
@therunestar
I’m SOBBING , the studio they film OWAR at has officially gone under? Like, weeks ago, and we’re only just finding out? What does this MEAN ? They’re supposed to start filming s6 any day now!!!
@rubytherapscallion source?
@osterionprincess1
I saw some rumours on TikTok they’re moving filming to Scotland
@osterionprincess2
I HOPE SO !!
@rubytherapscallion
OP 2, you live in Manchester.
@osterionprincess2 EXACTLY
@therunestar
Guys seriously I’m really worried, what if OWAR is shutting down filming altogether?! Like they’ve only JUST cast Callum Denver to play Kai and now he’s already talking about auditioning for other roles . . . It was all in his Reddit AMA the other day
@wrathfulqueen93
sure there’s a good explanation?! plus they’ve basically ignored Kai’s existence so far in the show so maybe his role’s still really minor