What is happening. What ishappening.Someone would have had towatchme. Really watch me, for a long time, to know these things. And why would anyone do that? Why would anyone care enough aboutmeto put me in a book?
I'm no one. I'm nobody. I'm a photography assistant at a bridal studio who can't afford her own apartment and spends her lunch breaks listening to audiobooks so she doesn't have to think about her life.
I'm not the kind of person who ends up in stories.
And yet.
A shadow falls across the page.
I jerk my head up, but there's no one there. Just the empty shop, the glowing lanterns, the bookshelves that seem closer than they were before.
Except...
On the small table beside me, there's a cup.
A delicate porcelain cup, hand-painted with tiny roses, steam curling up from its rim.
It wasn't there before. I'm absolutely certain it wasn't there before.
I stare at it. The steam keeps rising, and the way it catches the light is beautiful. Soft and diffuse, like the fog from a smokemachine on a photo set. It carries a scent that makes something in my chest ache. Sweet and floral, roses and honey and something underneath I can't name.
Don't drink it,the sensible part of my brain says.Don't drink the mysterious tea that appeared out of nowhere in the creepy magical bookshop. That's literally how every fairy tale goes wrong.
But my stomach is louder than my brain right now.
It always is, when I'm like this. When I'm tired and sad and just sodonewith being careful. With being safe. With doing the smart thing and the right thing and the thing that won't get me in trouble.
Once in a pink moon, I just want to do what feels good.
Even if it's not safe.
Especially if it's not safe.
I pick up the cup.
Take a sip.
Oh.
Oh.
It's...it's really good. It'sunfairlygood. Warm and sweet and layered in a way that makes me want to close my eyes and justtasteit. There's honey, definitely. And roses, but not the cloying kind. Something deeper, more complex. The tea equivalent of a perfectly balanced dessert, where every element is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
I take another sip, and then another, and somewhere between the third sip and the fourth, I realize I've stopped panicking.
The fear is still there. The confusion. The absolute certainty that none of this makes sense.
But it's muffled now. Distant. Like it's happening to someone else.
That should probably worry me more than it does.
I settle deeper into the armchair I don't remember sitting down in and turn back to the book.
FOUR HEROES. FOUR ROUTES. Four ways the story can go.
The book lays them out for me like a tasting menu, each one illustrated with the same gorgeous, impossible detail as everything else.
Quinn Haydraugh. Mafia King of the North. His territory spans Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. White-blond hair, blue eyes, icy demeanor. Cold but fiercely loyal once you earn his trust.
