Prologue

"Sera."

Silence.

"Seri."

I do not look up.

"Seraphina."

I turn a length of silk between my fingers.

"Serafina."

I move along the rack.

"Serpentina."

"Seraphew."

That last one does it. I snap my head up from the blouses and turn the full force of my glare on Caspian, who is leaning against the clothing display with his arms crossed and an expression belonging on a man enduring slow torture rather than a man standing inside the most beautiful store in Manhattan on a perfectly functional Tuesday.

"What," I say. Not a question. A warning.

He gestures broadly at the store around us, the pristine shelves, the spotlit shoes, the saleswomen moving between clients like unhurried swans. "I'm dying," he announces. "I need ice cream. Can we please just go get ice cream?"

The attendant nearest to him, a woman in a sharply pressed blazer, gives him a look that begins at his shoes and ends somewhere around his hairline, slow and measured and full of quiet professional judgment.

Caspian is six foot three, arms like structural timber, armed on his left side, a man who has made grown men weep just by entering the same room they were in. Under the blazer woman's gaze, he straightens his spine like a scolded schoolboy. Highkey the funniest thing I have witnessed all month. A man who is supposed to be terrifying, playing simp to a saleswoman who does not even know his name. The absolute flop era.

I press my lips together to keep from laughing. "You are," I say under my breath, angling just away from the attendant, "such a pussy."

Caspian fires back in Greek, fast and quiet. "Ilíthia. Why am I even here with you?"

"Because," I say sweetly, pulling a black dress from the rack and holding it up to the light, "it is my birthday party tonight and you have exactly zero say in the matter. Naí?"

He opens his mouth. Closes it. The attendant is watching. He closes it again.

I turn back to the dress. Classic black Prada, fitted at the waist, with a neckline that is elegant and genuinely interesting without trying. I am entering my mid-twenties and I have decided this is my glow-up era. The era of knowing what I want and taking it without apology. Classic black Prada is always the correct answer. That is not an opinion. That is a fact.

"This one," I say, mostly to myself, because myself is the only one whose taste I fully trust here.

I turn and shove the dress into Caspian's arms.

He looks down at it. Up at me. Back down.

I deploy the glare. The one I have been developing since I was seven. Chin slightly lowered, eyes slightly narrowed, the expression that suggests I am three seconds from becoming someone's most significant problem. Deadass a complete waste of facial energy on my part every time. But I deploy it on principle.

"Pay for it," I say.

"No." He shoves the dress back harder. "Get your own damn dress, Serpentina."

"Maláka."

"Cagna," he fires back. Italian, not Greek, but certain words migrate across these worlds and stay permanently. He is calling me a bitch in two languages by proxy and I respect the commitment even while I reject the sentiment.

I smile at him with all my teeth, mouth something in Greek that I will not repeat in polite or impolite company, and turn toward the sales counter. I am not going to stand here trading insults in a Prada store. That would be cringe. I have standards.

The saleswoman at the counter does not look up.

I stand with the dress over my arm and my card in hand. In ninety percent of stores I enter, someone materialises at my elbow before I fully clear the entrance. The Sorano name carries what polite people call significant clout. What it actually carries is the kind of weight that makes people nervous and extra in their attention, and I find it exhausting every single time.

But this woman is folding a cashmere sweater with the focus of someone defusing a delicate situation, and she does not look up. I find this genuinely refreshing. Lowkey one of the best things to happen to me all week. Not an NPC response. Not fangirling the moment she registers my last name. Just a person doing her actual job.

I wait. And while I wait, I look at her properly.

She is, without exaggeration, absolutely snatched. Gyat, honestly. Her bone structure alone could stop a room. Clothing too fine for any retail floor, jewellery the kind you inherit, and on her left hand a diamond engagement ring that is not small. That ring is serving an entire speech. The drip on it announces to everyone within fifty feet that someone is very much whipped for this woman. Sus. Why is someone this boujee working a cash register? Intriguing in the very best way.

She finishes folding, places the sweater precisely on its shelf, turns to me, scans the dress without ceremony, and waits. She does not begin wrapping until my card actually clears. Only when the receipt prints does she begin, and only then.

I grin. Wide and probably slightly unhinged, because this interaction is so normal it almost hurts.

"I love your ring," I say.

She glances up. Eyes sharp and warm at once. "Thank you."

"What's your name?"

"Amara." She folds the dress in tissue paper. "Yours?"

"Sera." I lean one elbow on the counter. "I want to say, genuinely and not in a weird way, that you are an absolute baddie and I am completely obsessed with you. You slay just standing there."

She stops folding. One perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifts. "Are you rizzing me up right now?"

I burst out laughing. Real, slightly too loud. "No. Just admiring. Not flirting."

She resumes folding, but the corner of her mouth pulls upward. "Sure."

"Why are you working here? That ring costs more than this entire section."

Amara slides the bag across the counter with the expression of someone who has a very good story and a specific reason for sharing it. "My fiancé does not want me to work."

"Okay."

"So I work here."

"That," I say, "is the most based thing I have ever heard."

"He comes to check on me at least twice a day. Stands outside the window for ten minutes and pretends he was just passing." The satisfaction in her voice belongs to someone who has won every round of an ongoing argument.

Something moves through my chest. The overprotective, completely whipped, lowkey down bad for his woman combination is the biggest green flag I have ever had described to me. Zero red flag energy anywhere in that story. I want a man who would stand outside a store window for ten minutes just to know I am safe. I also need him to tolerate my personality, which is, iykyk, a considerably more complicated ask.

"Come to my party tonight. It's my birthday. Bring your fiancé. You can spill all the tea about him later."

She takes my phone, types her number in, hands it back.

"It's my birthday," I add at the exit, because it bears repeating. "A gift is technically required."

Amara tilts her head. She ate with that look before she even spoke. "My fiancé will handle that."

I point at her. "You are my dream best friend. You understood the assignment before it was even issued. That rizz is rare and I respect it completely."

Caspian is waiting by the door. He takes the bag from my hand without comment, drapes an arm around my shoulders as we push into the afternoon, and our security team closes around us immediately.

"You were flirting with her," Caspian says.

"When you flirt, Caspian, establishments ask us to leave." I tilt my head up at him. "When I flirt, I make new friends. These are very different outcomes and you know it."

He says nothing. He keeps his arm around me and steers us toward the car, and the afternoon light falls gold and long across the pavement, and for one moment I let myself simply exist inside it.