The email arrived at 5:42 a.m., which was an ungodly hour for anything except bakers, joggers, and women who had taught themselves that tenderness could be scheduled like meetings…
Elena Lin had learned…
Elena Lin had learned to wake before the world remembered its sharpness. If she moved through the soft blue hour—between first kettle hiss and the city’s first horn—she could make choices without the noise of other people’s needs pressing in. She could decide which centerpiece belonged to which table, which bride needed permission to love the cake she liked instead of the cake her mother preferred, which sponsor to charm for a cause that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the bills that made her small apartment feel like a leased lung. She could be generous, and fierce, and nobody would accuse her of being difficult because the streets hadn’t filled with witnesses yet.
At 5:42 a.m., her phone chimed. A new message from an address so clean it looked false: protocol@valcourt.house.
Her thumb hovered. Scam, she thought. Then she read the subject line:
CONFIRMATION: Attendance — “Roses Under Glass” Gala Guest: ELENA LIN
“Funny,” she told the empty kitchen, pouring hot water over tea leaves. “I don’t RSVP to parties that don’t invite me.”
But there it was, in the meticulous body text below the crest she’d seen only in magazines—a silver shield behind a single etched rose:
We are pleased to confirm your attendance. Dress code: formal. Arrival window: 19:00–19:20. Private elevator will be made available upon name verification.
— Office of Protocol, Valcourt House
She skimmed for the obvious tell: a misspelling, a grammar error, a link to a nightmare. Instead she found a phone number with a Paris country code and an attachment: GuestList_RUG.pdf. Her name appeared again, in a column of gold-lettered people who paid their taxes and then donated the rest for sport.
She didn’t belong there. She belonged to perfectly ironed vendor manifests and invoices nobody read until something broke. She planned other people’s evenings; she didn’t get swept into them. Except—she checked her separate inbox, the one for clients. A simple wire had landed at 5:01 a.m. from H.V. FOUNDATION, subject HONORARIUM, with an amount that would pay her studio rent for three months.
Her tea went bitter. She sipped anyway.
