Chapter Text
*Chapter One — We Only Came For The Food*
*POV: Sera*
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Let me be clear about something.
This was not my idea.
I want that stated, documented, and submitted as formal record before anything else is said about how three perfectly reasonable women ended up inside a castle in Volterra on a Tuesday afternoon when we were supposed to be eating carbonara.
This was not my idea.
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Italy had been Vera's suggestion originally, which meant it had arrived the way all of Vera's suggestions did — fully researched, quietly delivered, completely impossible to argue with.
She had sent exactly one message to the group chat.
A link. A screenshot. No caption.
The screenshot was of a restaurant in Tuscany with a carbonara rating that made Amara audibly gasp from across the room.
Twenty minutes later we had flights booked.
That's how it works with us. It has always worked like that. Vera finds the thing, sends the evidence, and Amara and I arrive at the conclusion she already reached without her having to say another word. Efficient. Economical. Slightly terrifying in retrospect.
We had been in Italy for four days when everything went wrong.
And I mean that loosely. *Wrong.* I'm using the word wrong because I don't have a better word yet for what Volterra turned out to be. I'm a writer. I will find the word eventually. I just haven't found it yet.
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The morning had been perfect.
That's the thing I keep coming back to. The morning had been genuinely, completely perfect — the kind of perfect that only exists in places that have been beautiful for so long they've stopped trying. Cobblestone streets still cool from the night before. Coffee that made Amara close her eyes and go quiet, which is the highest possible compliment she is capable of giving anything. Vera had found a bakery that didn't appear on any list she'd consulted and had been privately smug about it for two hours.
We were not supposed to end up anywhere near Volterra.
We were supposed to eat, walk slowly, take photos of everything, eat again, and then go back to the hotel and sleep until dinner.
That was the plan.
Amara derailed the plan at approximately 2:47pm.
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**AMARA [2:47pm]:** besties
**VERA [2:47pm]:** no
**AMARA [2:47pm]:** you don't even know what I'm going to say
**VERA [2:47pm]:** I know your besties tone and that is your about to make a decision tone
**AMARA [2:47pm]:** okay but
**AMARA [2:47pm]:** [screenshot]
I looked up from my notebook.
Amara was standing two steps behind me on the street, phone raised, wearing the expression she gets when she has already made a decision and is now simply notifying us of it.
I looked at the screenshot.
It was a girl.
Short. Blonde. Moving through the crowd ahead of us with the kind of focus that suggested she had somewhere to be and no patience for anyone who got in her way. She was wearing a dark cloak which should have been the first sign of something but Volterra was old and people wore strange things and I was distracted by the afternoon light on the buildings.
She was, objectively, very pretty.
**SERA [2:48pm]:** Amara
**AMARA [2:48pm]:** she's SO pretty
**VERA [2:48pm]:** we don't know her
**AMARA [2:48pm]:** I just want her NUMBER
**SERA [2:48pm]:** you want a stranger's number
**AMARA [2:48pm]:** a very pretty stranger's number yes
**VERA [2:48pm]:** Amara we are in a foreign country
**AMARA [2:48pm]:** which is why I need to act fast she's getting away
**SERA [2:49pm]:** Amara don't you dare
She dared.
She was already walking.
Vera and I exchanged one look — the specific look that has existed between us since the beginning of this friendship, the look that means *she's already gone and you know we can't leave her unattended* — and followed.
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The girl was fast.
Faster than made sense, actually, which I noted and then didn't think about because Amara was speed walking through Volterra's streets with the focused energy of someone who had a mission and we were trying to keep up.
She turned a corner.
We turned the corner.
She went through a gate.
We went through the gate.
She walked through a very large, very old door —
**VERA [2:53pm]:** Amara
**VERA [2:53pm]:** why are we inside a building
**AMARA [2:53pm]:** she went in here
**SERA [2:53pm]:** that's a CASTLE
**AMARA [2:53pm]:** it's more of a palazzo
**VERA [2:53pm]:** screenshot
**SERA [2:53pm]:** [screenshot of the interior]
It was, I will admit, a beautiful interior. High ceilings. Stone walls. Torchlight doing things that torchlight has no business doing in the twenty first century. The kind of place that made the architecture part of my brain go completely still and just —
*look.*
**AMARA [2:54pm]:** okay yes fine it's a castle
**AMARA [2:54pm]:** still
**SERA [2:54pm]:** still WHAT
**AMARA [2:54pm]:** she's really pretty Sera
The girl had stopped.
She had turned around in the corridor with the slow precision of someone who had just realized she had an audience and was deciding what to do about it.
Up close she was even prettier. Young looking in the way that felt slightly wrong without me being able to explain why. Dark eyes. A stillness to her that wasn't human stillness — I didn't have that word yet either.
She looked at us.
We looked at her.
Amara raised one hand.
*"Hi,"* Amara said. *"You're really pretty. Can I have your number."*
It was not a question.
The girl stared at her.
Then at me.
Then at Vera.
Then back at Amara.
She did not give her number.
What she did instead would turn out to be, in retrospect, the decision that changed everything — she turned around, walked to a set of very large doors, and opened them.
She looked back at us once.
Then walked through.
*"I think she wants us to follow,"* Amara said.
*"I think that's a terrible idea,"* I said.
*"Vera?"*
Vera was already looking through her glasses at the doors with the expression she gets when she's processing something the rest of us haven't caught up to yet.
*"Something's not right,"* she said quietly.
*"About the situation or—"*
*"About all of it."* She paused. *"But she didn't hurt us."*
*"Yet,"* I said.
*"Yet,"* Vera agreed.
Amara was already at the doors.
I looked at the ceiling — beautiful, genuinely beautiful, I'd like it noted that the ceiling was stunning — and followed.
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The room on the other side was the kind of room that understood exactly what it was.
High. Dark. Deliberate. The kind of space that had been designed to make whoever walked into it feel small. Columns. Stone. Light falling from somewhere above in that particular way that suggested it had been calculated.
There were people in it. Figures along the walls, still in ways that weren't quite right.
And at the far end —
Three thrones.
Three men.
My notebook was in my hand before I'd decided to reach for it. Writer's reflex. When something is too much to hold I reach for the page.
I didn't write anything.
I just held it.
Because the man in the centre was looking at us with red eyes and a smile that had three thousand years behind it and I was — I was —
**AMARA [3:01pm]:** [screenshot]
**AMARA [3:01pm]:** okay so
**VERA [3:01pm]:** screenshot
**SERA [3:01pm]:** I see them Vera I'm standing right here
**AMARA [3:01pm]:** the blonde one
**SERA [3:01pm]:** Amara
**AMARA [3:01pm]:** I'm just saying
**VERA [3:01pm]:** we hate men
**AMARA [3:01pm]:** we hate men
**SERA [3:01pm]:** we hate men
A beat.
**AMARA [3:01pm]:** ...collectively though
I looked up from my phone.
The man in the centre — the one with the smile, the one with the red eyes, the one who was looking at us like we were the most interesting thing to walk through those doors in a very long time — spread his hands wide and said —
*"Welcome."*
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*End of Chapter One.*
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