Prologue One Last Swig Of Courage #2
My lips brush his, soft and brief and nothing like the earlier collision—that was reckless, this is deliberate. A period. A bookmark. Something that says I was here, this happened, and deep down, I'm not sorry.
"Thank you," I whisper against his mouth, "for making me feel alive tonight."
I turn.
And I run.
Or—I attempt to run, which immediately becomes a physical altercation between my legs and approximately fifteen pounds of emerald silk that has absolutely no interest in cooperating with emergency egress.
Elowen.
Eloren and her 'cascading underskirt' and her 'you'll look like you've stepped out of a Bridgeton ballroom, Mila, stop making that face.' I look incredible, I am fully aware I look incredible, and this dress is also actively trying to kill me, and both of those things are true simultaneously.
I hike the skirts up with both fists and aim for the back corridor.
The main hall is filling with the shuffling anticipation of the announcement gathering, the Lucky Clover Society doing whatever ceremonial production they do when they're about to change someone's life with a check and a pack introduction—I know, because Elowen made me read the event materials three times, because Elowen is the organized one in this friendship and I am the one who shows up and improvises and prays.
The back passage is stone. Cold, old stone with centuries of winter pressed into the walls and the kind of silence that makes your footsteps sound like announcements.
The decorative lighting doesn't follow me here—just bare utility bulbs near the floor, casting everything in a low amber that turns my emerald skirts dark and makes my shimmer mark—gold and green sparkles, Elowen's addition, applied with a brush and an opinion—glow faintly like something out of the very fairytale I keep telling myself I don't believe in.
Stop glowing. This is not the moment for atmospheric lighting effects.
The back stairs curve downward in old swept stone. I'm negotiating the second step, both hands full of silk, moving at a speed that is aggressive for formal wear and entirely necessary for survival, when I hear it.
A sound. Small and bright and metallic—the particular ring of gold on the ancient floor.
I stop.
Look down.
The coin is sitting on the fourth step, gleaming up at me with the smug self-possession of an object that knows its own significance.
Four-leaf clover pressed into the face, Irish lettering around the rim, the warm gold of it catching the low light.
Elowen's coin. The one she pressed into my palm yesterday morning in Bloom & Brier with both her hands wrapped around mine, and that expression she gets—serious and soft at the same time, the one that means she's not joking, the one that means she really means this:
"It's been in my family for years. Real luck, Mila. The uncomfortable, life-rearranging kind. Take it."
Elowen.
Who believes in things before they happen, who designs floral installations for events she could never afford to attend, who has been my best friend for six years and understands, precisely, how many times I've almost given up on the dream and how many times she's talked me back from the ledge of 'maybe I should just take the steady job and stop hoping. '
Her lucky coin.
Her family's lucky coin.
Oh no.
"Miss." A voice from the top of the stairs. One of the event's security detail, broad-shouldered in a green-sashed jacket, peering down at me with the expression of a man whose evening has taken an unexpected direction. "The mixer hasn't concluded. The announcement—"
"I know!" I wince. "I know, I'm sorry, I have to catch the train—"
"The selection isn't—"
"I checked in. I was present for the required hour. I did my part!"
I did.
I confirmed that rule three times before I agreed to attend, because I had zero plans to stay for the full event. Never had those plans. I walked in with my exit strategy already mapped, because that is the kind of optimism I can actually afford—the kind with contingencies.
A long pause from the top of the stairs.
Bureaucratic conflict, audible.
I look back down at the coin.
Pick it up, Mila. It's Elowen's family heirloom. You bend down, you grab the coin, you put it in your purse—
In the purse. That is now closed, because the clasp came loose somewhere in the skirt situation, and the coin is on step four, and bending over in this architectural nightmare of a gown while a security guard watches from above and the clock reads 12:06—
Leave it.
Don't leave it, it's Elowen's—
Leave it.
Fuck…
I leave it.
Not because I can't manage the logistics, though I can't, and not just because time is actively running out, though it is.
Something else. Something I can't quite put into words standing on a stone staircase in a castle at 12:06 in formal wear, something that feels like the coin having already decided on a different direction.
Elowen said the life-rearranging kind. Maybe it finds its own way there.
Maybe someone in this old building needs it more than a woman who's already made her peace with luck being a concept that applies to other people.
Or you're rationalizing because you have nine minutes and the dress situation is critical. Both things can be true.
"Sorry!" I call up to the security guard. "Appreciate the event! Lovely castle! Incredible floral arrangements!"
I go down the rest of the stairs at full speed.
The east exit deposits me into the night with the efficiency of a building that's done with me, the heavy door swinging shut behind me, and the cold comes in immediately—March refusing, as always, to make peace with the idea of spring.
It's sharp and clean, and it hits the warm flush of too much candlelight and one shot of Jameson and forty-five minutes of extremely questionable decision-making and actually, honestly, it helps.
I can see the town from here. Small and lit and quiet, the kind of quiet that only exists in places where people go to bed at a reasonable hour. And beyond it—there—the iron trestle of the station.
Five minutes away. Elowen confirmed it. Elowen, who planned my exit route with the thoroughness of a woman who has been enabling my chaos for six years and has learned to plan for it.
My phone says 12:08.
Seven minutes. Seven minutes to a five-minute destination. That's fine. That's mathematically fine.
Except that's the departure time and not the boarding time, and this particular line has been running early since November, because whoever manages the Oakhaven schedule believes in surprise as a transit philosophy—
I run.
Both fists full of emerald silk, heels on cobblestone, the kind of running that my father would have recognized immediately and responded to with the ghost of a stopwatch and the particular expression he wore when he was trying not to say I told you so.
'You've got the stride, mija. Real track star stride. You throw it away on that bar dream, that's your business, but I want it on record—'
On record, Dad. Right now, running in formal wear through a sleeping town at midnight, this is absolutely on record.
The gown is a genuine enemy. It wants to trip me.
It wants to slow me, wrap around my ankles, remind me of its considerable structural opinions at every stride.
The emerald and gold catch the streetlights as I move, which would be beautiful if I had any bandwidth available for beauty, which I do not, because the station is coming into view and there is already steam.
Steam.
Actual, visible, the train is running early, I am going to miss this train, steam.
"Oh, absolutely not—"
I run faster.
Past the level of running that's dignified for a person in a ball gown, past the level that's structurally advisable for heels on cobblestone, into the territory of I will catch this train or I will explain the resulting Uber bill to my bank account and those are my only two options.
The platform arrives under my feet with the specific relief of solid ground after too long in the air, and I locate the conductor through sheer spatial desperation—a compact man near the near car, expression professionally neutral in the way of someone who has witnessed every human emergency and developed a policy of measured response to all of them.
"Oakridge Hollow," I manage.
I am slightly out of breath. The gown is doing something ominous near my left ankle.
"Please. One ticket. I have—"
I have exact change. I counted it before the event, in the castle's washroom, with the precise financial energy of someone who has learned that surprise expenses are simply expenses that arrived early.
He takes it. He tears the ticket. He hands me the slip of paper with the calm efficiency of a man who is, in this moment, my favorite human being alive.
I grab it with both hands and turn for the doors.
And then I hear it.
Not my name—no one here knows my name. The masquerade took care of that. But a sound, from behind me and some distance back along the platform, something that carries intention across the gap.
Urgency. Recognition.
Three men.
They're still in their event clothes, formal jackets, and the particular energy of people who've moved quickly and recently.
One has golden-blond hair that catches the station lighting like he was designed for it, slightly messy in a way that is clearly deliberate, bright blue eyes visible even at this distance.
One is utterly still—dark-haired, pale, immaculate in a way that feels intentional even after a full evening, watching me with the focused quiet of a person running calculations.
And the third—
Dark auburn with silver at the temples. Broad shoulders. The shamrock mask hanging from one hand now, displaced, and beneath it those gray-green eyes that I have just been three inches away from for the better part of an hour and have committed to a memory I did not intend to form.
There are three of them.
They're a pack.