Sabrina "Sabi" Vega | Pop Princess

The arena pulsed around Sabrina Vega like the heart of some enormous celestial beast.

Light crashed across the stage in violent washes of crimson and gold, strobes splitting the darkness into fragments that flashed across sweat-slick skin and raised hands. Fifty thousand voices merged into something larger than language, a living current that surged through steel supports and concrete foundations, through ribs and teeth and marrow. Every lyric came back to her transformed, carried on the breath of strangers until it sounded less like a song and more like a prayer.

Sabi stood at the center of it all, drenched in light and adoration.

The crowd wanted pieces of her.

They always did.

A smile. A touch. A glance held half a second longer than necessary. People built entire fantasies from less. Entire relationships existed inside the space between what she gave and what they imagined she meant by it.

She had learned long ago that fame was little more than controlled gravity. People orbited because they wanted to. Her job was simply deciding how close she would let them drift before they burned.

The final chorus rolled through the arena like distant thunder.

Sabi prowled toward the edge of the stage, microphone hanging loosely from her fingers as she scanned the sea of faces beneath her. Thousands of phones glittered in the darkness, tiny artificial stars raised toward a woman who had spent half her life becoming a constellation.

Then she found him.

Poor thing.

A young man pressed against the barricade, already looking overwhelmed by the simple fact that she had noticed him. His eyes widened when hers settled on him. Around him, people immediately realized what was happening and began screaming before anything had actually happened at all.

Sabi felt laughter bloom warm and bright beneath her ribs.

With a slow curl of her finger, she beckoned him forward.

The reaction was instantaneous.

Security moved.

The crowd erupted.

The young man looked as though his soul had briefly left his body.

By the time he found himself standing beside her beneath the flood of stage lights, his expression carried the stunned devotion of someone who had accidentally wandered into a religious experience.

Sabi took his hands, her fingers intertwined with his. Her smile softened. She guided him toward the chair positioned center stage and lowered herself gracefully onto his lap while the audience lost what remained of its collective mind.

The scream that followed seemed capable of rattling satellites from orbit.

The poor man looked moments away from passing out.

Sabi laughed, bright and effortless, before turning back toward the audience and finishing the song.

For three minutes she became every fantasy projected onto her.

The flirt.

The temptress.

The unattainable dream.

The woman every tabloid swore they understood despite never having met.

It was easy, that was the frightening part.

Desire was simple, people wanted what they couldn't have and she'd built an empire on that truth.

When the song finally ended, she pressed a kiss against the young man's cheek and rose to her feet. The crowd responded exactly as expected, detonating into another wave of screams and flashing cameras. Somewhere tomorrow's headlines were already writing themselves.

Sabrina Vega Seduces Fan On Stage.

Pop Princess Claims Another Victim.

America's Favorite Heartbreaker Strikes Again.

The stories practically composed themselves. None of them would be true.

They never were.

Backstage arrived like stepping beneath the surface of deep water.

The roar of the audience dulled behind concrete walls. The air lost its electricity. Assistants hurried through hallways carrying clipboards and headsets while security coordinated movement for the remainder of the evening. The machinery behind the illusion continued turning exactly as it always did.

Sabi kicked off her heels the moment she entered the green room.

One landed near the couch. The other disappeared entirely.

Not her problem.

The adrenaline still danced beneath her skin, restless as starlight trapped inside a glass jar. She collapsed sideways onto the cushions, laughing quietly to herself as she replayed the look on the fan's face.

The sound of movement near the catering table drew her attention.

There, standing amidst bottled water and untouched fruit trays, was the one person in the building who seemed entirely immune to her.

A tragedy. A personal insult, really.

The smile that curved across Sabi's mouth arrived slow and deliberate.

Her manager's expression remained unimpressed.

Unfortunately, that only made it worse.

Sabi propped herself onto one elbow, studying them for a moment beneath the warm glow of the room's overhead lights. There was something deeply unfair about the way they occupied space. The audience had spent the evening worshipping her, yet somehow this single person could make her feel scrutinized with nothing more than a look.

The realization was irritating. She cherished it.

"You hated that," Sabi observed, amusement threading through her voice.

Her manager's gaze barely lifted. The silence answered for them.

Sabi's grin widened.

Outside, the crowd continued chanting her name.

Inside, the distance between two people felt infinitely more dangerous.

"You know," she continued, turning onto her back and stretching across the couch with the lazy satisfaction of a cat basking in sunlight, "most people would've been impressed."

Her eyes drifted toward the ceiling, "jealousy isn't a good look on you."