Lu leaned forward, a towering wall of muscle almost half a meter taller than her petite frame, and dropped into his Iron Barbarian character.

“I could tell you!” He roared, his voice dropping even lower than normal. “But then!” He mimed drawing a sword, slicing off a man’s head, sliding the sword back home, lightning fast, complete with sound effects. “Whish-snick-whish!”

Zhi giggled her trademarked giggle. The reporters burst into laughter. The fans behind them screamed.

“Excellent,” Bo Jintao commented drily on the other side of Lu Song. “Lu Song understands the need for information security.”

She did her best not to show her annoyance at his interruption of their moment.

“What about you, Zhi Li?” another voice yelled out. “What would you think of acting opposite Lu Song again?”

Zhi turned at the question, and found a face she knew. Jin Lien at Shanghai Tomorrow, a fierce, courageous woman, ten years older than Zhi, who’d covered wars in Africa and methane explosions in the Arctic; a woman Zhi hoped to someday emulate; a woman Zhi knew well enough to suspect that she loathed Bo Jintao even more than Zhi herself did. She had asked the question.

A genuine smile spread across Zhi Li’s face then, and the words came out of her mouth, completely unbidden.

“If the studio could land Lu Song for the male lead,” she grinned even wider. “That would be a coup! A complete coup!”

Jin Lien’s eyes widened abruptly. The reporter’s mouth opened. Silence descended on all the rest – the silence of shock.

And Zhi realized what she’d said.

She could hear herself breathing. Could hear her heart beating. There was nothing else. The world was frozen. The array of faces before her were stunned, eyes wide, mouths slack.

Lu Song’s hand somehow slipped into hers. It was trembling. Or she was.

Then one voice cut through the silence, laughing, a deep, slow, unconcerned laugh.

Bo Jintao was laughing, laughing at her.

Zhi Li’s face grew red.

Then the reporters were laughing too. The laughter of nervous relief. And the fans were screaming again.

“That’s all the questions we have time for tonight,” one of Bo Jintao’s aides announced.

Zhi Li’s heart was pounding in her chest. She gave the reporters and the fans a huge smile, waved at them all.

“This way, please,” a different aide said, escorting them all back inside the opera house. Bo Jintao walked in front of her. Bodyguards flanked them. Zhi Li stared at the back of the most powerful man in China, the man who ruled the police, the courts, the man who now ruled everything…

One hand reflexively tugged up the long gown, kept it from tangling in her feet. Her other hand was still in Lu Song’s.

Qi held the door open for her, his face a mask devoid of expression.