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Snow crunched under Arya’s boots as she stepped out of the taxi. Her breath turned white in the Moscow air, and she pulled her scarf higher against the bite of winter. The city felt huge, heavy with history, every building older than the stories she’d grown up hearing at her grandmother’s knee.

She had come here for stories.

That was always her reason. New places made her want to write. Different streets, different skies they gave her new people to imagine, new lives to borrow for her novels. When the invitation had arrived, sealed with a golden crest, she’d laughed at first. Someone must’ve sent this to the wrong person, she told her mother. But then she saw her grandfather’s name inside, scrawled in handwriting that trembled with age. A note from a man in Russia Mealid Viktorov who had been her grandfather’s best friend once. A promise made between boys that had stretched across decades.

And now she was here, holding her sketchbook like a talisman, wondering if this frozen city might give her the character she’d been searching for.

The Mealid mansion wasn’t a house at all. It was a palace. Gold lights blazed from its tall windows, and the gates opened so smoothly it felt like something out of a dream. She thought she should have felt small, walking past statues and servants bowing and calling her “Young Miss.” But instead she felt oddly calm, like she’d stepped into the first chapter of a story that was already half-written.

Inside, she lost herself for a moment. Art filled every wall paintings, sculptures, things she had only ever seen in glossy books or tiny online images. Her fingers itched for her pencil. “I could make an entire novel out of just this room,” she whispered to herself.

And then she noticed him.

At first, it was just the flash of camera lights, the murmur of a crowd. Then her gaze caught his tall, sharp in a black suit, a man who looked as though the world had been made to orbit him. She knew that face. Everyone did. Adrian Mealid, the actor. The star.

He was smiling for them, the public smile that reached his lips but not his eyes. But when his gaze slid past the crowd and landed on her just her it changed. The smile wavered. Something alive flickered in his eyes, quick and unguarded.

Arya’s stomach flipped, heat rushing up her neck. She looked away too quickly, pretending to study the marble floor, her pulse skipping in her throat.

But Adrian didn’t look away. For the first time in years, the practiced charm cracked, and he felt something reckless, something dangerous and unfamiliar.

“She’s... exactly my type,” he thought, and the realization unsettled him.

Arya had come to Russia searching for inspiration. What she didn’t know what he couldn’t have guessed was that she had just stepped into the center of his story.

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