“Again,” she said.

She called herself the Goddess of Delight, and for once, the title was not hyperbole. Angelica didn’t smile like a presenter. She smiled like someone who had already tasted your favorite dessert before you were born and had been waiting patiently to describe it to you.

“You’ve been sad,” she said, not as an accusation, but as a weather report. “You’ve forgotten what delight feels like. Not happiness—that’s too heavy. Not pleasure—that’s too cheap. Delight is the gasp you made when you saw a rainbow for the first time. The involuntary laugh when a dog ran toward you with a stick three times its size.”