Chapter 1 (Sera)

Seven hours later, I am absolutely, comprehensively, no cap, shitfaced.

Olympus is the kind of club that other clubs aspire to become. It lives in the heart of Manhattan, belongs to my family, and is large and loud and beautiful and the champagne is always cold and the music always hits different. Tonight it is draped in deep burgundy and gold for my birthday, and the whole room smells like expensive perfume and the particular quality of a night going very well.

Amara, it turns out, is a full-blown savage on the dance floor with zero inhibitions and a bottomless tolerance for tequila shots. She has matched me drink for drink since she arrived, which is bussin behaviour in the best possible way. She goes off on the dance floor like she was born to it, and every thirsty man in this club has clocked her within the first ten minutes and has been lurking near the floor like a saucy NPC ever since. She understood the assignment and earned extra credit without being asked.

Across the room, Leander and Caspian are watching us with the expressions of men who are unhappy about what they are seeing but have been told by my father not to interfere with my enjoyment tonight. Leander has his arms crossed. Caspian has his jaw set. They communicate whole conversations through eye contact and muscle tension alone, and I find it both touching and very funny.

But underneath the dancing and the gold-lit room and Amara's infectious energy and the tequila doing dependable work on every sharp edge of my awareness, something else is sitting. Something quiet and heavy that I am working very hard to drown before it surfaces properly.

Tomorrow I turn twenty-five. And my father begins the process of arranging my marriage.

I have known this my entire life. I understood from the time I was old enough to understand anything that this was the shape of the life I was born into. Leander will take over the Sorano Syndicate when my father steps back. And I will be married into another crime organisation, an alliance sealed with a woman the way empires have always been sealed with women. I know it. I have always known it.

Tonight I just want to be a regular girl who is wasted at her own birthday party with a new friend she made at a Prada store. Tomorrow, the weight lands. Tonight it stays outside.

Leander materialises beside me with a glass of water.

He does not hand it to me like a question. He hands it to me like a statement, and then positions himself between me and the path back to the dance floor, because he knows me and he knows I will try to escape without drinking it.

"Leander," I say, looking at the water. "I love you. Move."

"Drink the water, Sera."

"I'll drink it," I say, holding up one finger, "if you do an impression of someone right now at this party. Anyone. Commit to the bit."

Leander stares at me. "You want me to perform an impression at your birthday."

"I want you to show range."

"Or," he says, "I could just not do that."

"Leander." I point at him with the full gravity the moment deserves. "Your girlfriend slapped you last month over a pair of jeans. And I don't mean slapped in the fun slang way where something is great. I mean she physically slapped you across your face. You have no moral high ground anywhere near this conversation."

His expression rearranges itself. "That is not what."

"She slapped you," I say, and the volume I am producing is perhaps not perfectly calibrated for a party, "because you told her you liked the jeans and she hated the jeans and you didn't understand that complimenting something someone is insecure about is not a compliment at all. That's the tea. You got caught in 4K not listening to your own girlfriend and the universe ratio'd you with a hand. That's facts, not me being salty."

The bartender turns. Two women nearby turn. A man I have never met in my life turns.

Leander takes one deliberate step backward. "Please lower your voice."

"I'm just stating facts," I say, at a marginally lower volume. "It's not petty if it's accurate."

"Go outside," he says. "Get some air. You need it."

I consider this. The consideration requires more effort than it normally would. "That's probably smart," I agree. "Although, note for the record, I could get stabbed outside."

Leander looks at me with the patience of a man who has managed my specific energy for twenty-five years. "You'd laugh in their face."

"Deadass I would," I agree, and I laugh at my own agreement, and I take the water glass and drink three sips and hand it back and I am already walking.

The bathroom is my destination. I am going to the bathroom with purpose and direction.

Somewhere between the bar and the side corridor, my brain takes a detour.

Scotland.

The thought arrives fully formed and with the urgency of a genuine crisis. Do people in Scotland have access to designer fashion? Do they have Prada? What if people in Scotland are living their whole lives without a classic black Prada dress? What if no one has told them what they are missing? This feels, in my current state, like a massive cultural failure I personally have an obligation to correct. My true era might not be publishing. It might be getting Prada to Scotland. I might have been misaligning my purpose this whole time.

I need to book a flight. Or a boat. I will take the boat, I decide, walking directly past the bathroom and through a side corridor and somehow out a door onto the street.

The night air hits me cold and immediate. Manhattan breathes around me in its usual way, restless and lit up even at this hour, and I am still working through the Scotland logistics when I walk directly into someone.