Read an Excerpt From <i>Go Luck Yourself</i> by Sara Raasch

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from the second Royals and Romance novel by Sara Raasch, Go Luck Yourself—a brand new romantasy publishing with Bramble on March 11^th.

Chapter One

Two Months after Christmas

I really was making a concerted effort not to be a prick today.

I took the time to work out because that always puts me in a better mood, but honestly, that was my first mistake, letting myself be in public. Home, classes, studying, that’s it—I’m not fit for community involvement yet.

So tripping off the treadmill and falling on my ass in the crowded gym when a text came through our group chat from Iris?

My fault. Entirely. I accept that. But I put on my big boy pants and attempted to reclaim said concerted effort by grabbing a ridicu­lously overindulgent mocha on my way to the library.

Which triggered mistake number two: I didn’t see one of the cafe doors was locked and rammed right into it, mocha acting like a scalding, syrupy airbag.

So now, I don’t have time to run back to my flat to change—I booked that study room and I’m going to get it today, goddamn it— which means the best I can do is towel off the caramel mocha mess in the washroom, zip my sweater over my ruined shirt, and cut over to the library, smelling faintly of espresso and cocoa.

Do not be a prick.

Do not be a prick.

It’s been almost two months, and it isn’t like I even broke up with her—so why does it feel like a breakup?

Because losing my connection with her wasn’t the only thing that changed last Christmas.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I push into the Cambridge University Library, shower-damp hair falling in my face as I look at the screen like it’s a bomb that might go off.

PEEP, MINI CANDY CANE, AND THE BEST CLAUS

I exhale, loudly, and stop walking up the south wing staircase to collapse against the wall.

Some of my prick-ness does evaporate now.

I won’t have to see Iris next weekend. I won’t have to plaster on a smile like I didn’t profess my love to her eight weeks ago, right after her engagement to my brother got called off, only to realize halfway through my drunken spewing of feelings that I was not, actually, in love with Iris. And she was not, in anyway, in love with me.

Buy the Book

Go Luck Yourself

Sara Raasch

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Go Luck Yourself

Sara Raasch

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Which should’ve deflated the awkwardness right out of the whole situation, but the singular moment my brain continues reliving, the thing that keeps me pinned to the wall in the staircase as another student sidles past me and down to the exit, is the bone-aching em­barrassment of realizing that she knew I’d been at least trying to be in love with her our whole friendship, and she’d been dreading this very proclamation all that while.

It just made sense for us to be together. It’d made sense since we were twelve years old, and something about her walking into our Christmas Eve Ball like the personification of springtime, Perse­phone come to life in pastel purple and airy fuchsia, made all those stories I was obsessed with say She’s a Princess of Easter, you’re a Prince of Christmas, that’s happy ever after.

But I’d realized at a younger age that being Santa’s son isn’t the storybook dream it should be. Not even my own father thought I should be the one to marry Iris when he wanted to forge an alliance with Easter; he’d foisted the situation on Coal. So why did I keep ahold of the prince and princess, happy ever after dream, when nothing else in my life was a fantasy?

Because marrying her would’ve made you useful, and you have nothing else to offer.

My eyes at least don’t sting when I think that now. Two months of reeling in the vortex of realizing that I have nothing to contribute to Christmas has helped me progress past grieving to numbness.

Coal and Iris banter in our group chat some more, errant wedding stuff, and my thumb hovers over the Settings button. I could mute the chat. Why they continue to use it, to loop me in on their conversa­tions, I don’t know. Well, I know why Coal does—he’s determined to keep our friend group from falling apart. He and Iris were never even remotely interested in getting married, so their relationship well sur­vived any fallout of their almost-marriage. But is Iris going along with including me in the group chat because it’s what Coal wants? Or does she want me in her life, even after I proved what an oblivious ass I am?

On paper, she and I worked. Oh my god, the hours of my life I wasted writing about that happy ending, bullshit poems and stories and letters, some love-struck sap. And I didn’t realize until the very moment of telling Iris I love you that I only loved the idea of a happy ending, not her.

But the look on her face—she knew. And she gently said, “Kris…” in that delicate, trying-to-talk-down-a-crazy-person tone, and that was what had clinched it for me.

Have I been this disgusting the whole time? Have I been using her for my own ends all along? We were friends once, right?

We have a whole separate text thread for the two of us, where she sends me the absurd overly pompous words her professors use that she doesn’t even believe are real; and I send her photos of objects that are particularly odd looking or interesting people around cam­pus that she can use as studies for sketching or sculpting or whatever her art outlet of the day is.

That was real, wasn’t it? That friendship?

I swipe over to that private thread. The last text was weeks ago, the morning classes started for this term:

IRIS

She initiated it. She reached out. I was the one who chose not to respond.

I can’t deal with this right now.

Ever the psychic, my brother sends me a private text.

COAL

There’s a long enough pause that I push off the wall and continue up to the third floor of the library. My shirt is stuck to my stomach now, the drying mocha making the fabric stiff and tacky. And I only now connect that this means I haven’t had coffee all morning, and it’s, what, almost ten? I booked the study room for two hours, no time to make another coffee run before my reservation, so this ses­sion will have to be done sans caffeine and this is still no reason to get fucking pissy.

Deep breaths. I’m making an effort today. Shirking this fog.

My phone buzzes.

In response, Coal sends about fifteen middle finger emojis.

One side of my mouth cocks. He’d be way too pleased with him­ self if he knew the only time I’ve smiled the past few weeks was at his bullshit.

Coal doesn’t need to learn to stand on his own as Christmas’s leader, though. He’s already crushing it.

Which means he doesn’t need me as much. He never really did.

I rub my chest as I mute my phone and push into the third floor.

Desks and tables sit in perfectly organized rows between shelves of reference books, but I weave through them all to reach the hand­ful of private rooms. My third year at Cambridge, and just last term I found the perfect work setup: a study room that gets ideal air circu­lation because the vent actually opens, is far enough from the main stairwell so noise is minimal, and has whiteboard markers that al­ways work. I’m not too proud to admit that I can be bought with office supplies.

But as I come up to the study room, I stop. Dead in my tracks.

The door is shut. The chalkboard on the front has a word scrawled across it in handwriting I know too well:

OCCUPIED

That overly stylized cursive is mocking me. Flat out pretentious for pretentious’ sake at this point. And the window to the right has the blinds drawn, but the light is clearly on inside.

I pull out my phone again—ignoring another stream of texts be­ tween Iris and Coal—and check the time. Five after my scheduled window started.

No fucking way.

I booked it this time. I fucking booked it this time.

It’s a big university. I get that I’m not the only one here. Like, logically, I know that other people have discovered that this study room is excellent, and doesn’t have that weird smell that the others do, but as I stand in the middle of the aisle between students typing away on papers like I should be doing, my vision goes red.

This is the fifth time in the past two weeks that I’ve come to use the room and found this same cursive OCCUPIED drawn across the chalkboard. The first two times, bad luck on my part, whatever; I’d try again later. C’est la fucking vie. But by the third time, I realized that something about this jackass’s study schedule lines up exactly with mine, only they always get here before I’m able to no matter how early I shift things around, so today, I booked it in advance and that study room is mine.

There’s something at Cambridge called the Week Five Blues: midway through a term, when the end isn’t in sight yet, the drag of slogging through the first half catches up to students and everyone goes a little droopy. Only I’m not having Week Five Blues right now; I’m having Week Five Blind Fury.

I stomp the remaining space to the study room and bang my fist on the door. Which earns me a startled shush from a nearby guy who looks like he’s on the my-blood-is-now-energy-drinks end of the Week Five Blues spectrum.

There’s no response from the room thief.

I try the handle. Locked. Fucker.

Knock again. Louder. I get another shush and I concave my body around the door like that will muffle what is now full-on pounding.

Finally, there’s the sound of a chair creaking inside.

Then a voice. Masculine, annoyed. “Yeah?”

“This room is mine,” I say into the door’s seam.

A pause.

The lock clicks. The door cracks open a sliver, and a guy peers out at me.

Pale skin. Red hair poking out from under a gray beanie. High, sharp cheekbones. Freckles scattered across his face, full lips twisted in derision through his short red facial hair. Chunky headphones hang around his neck with the faintest pulse of music vibrating out of them.

I have several immediate thoughts:

I should send Iris a picture of this guy. He’d make a great character study.

And: fuck, he’s hot.

The latter one might as well be a mental ball gag for the way my throat closes over.

Aaaaaaand now there are two thoughts strangling me.

I legitimately cannot remember the last time I found anyone at­ tractive outside of Iris. The people I dated as half-assed attempts to distract myself from her were more just… okay? And even the sight of Iris never choked me up like this.

I blink dumbly. I’ve been quiet for an unacceptably long time.

“The fuck you want?” the guy snaps in an Irish accent so thick my already teetering brain blacks out, resets, and barely registers what he said.

Stop thinking about ball gags.

I whip out my phone—Iris and Coal are still talking, now about how her sister almost had tiers of donuts instead of a wedding cake—and pull up the app to show him my reservation. “This study room is mine.”

The guy squints at the screen. “I got no idea what you’re show­ing me. Who the fuck is Lily and why does she hate—are those the words cream filled?”

I yank my phone back. The texts popped down over the app. My cheeks burn.

“Not that—”

“Cream filled. Ya pervert.” Then he cocks his head and frowns. “Do I know you?”

I glower at him. “I don’t make a habit out of associating with thieves.”

His eyes roll. “Christ—”

“I booked this study room.” I shove my phone into my pocket. “I got on the app. I booked this room. It’s mine. You need to leave.”

He sizes me up with renewed interest and leans one shoulder against the doorframe. “Ah. So you’re the one.”

“The one?”

“The bastard who’s been stealing it from me.”

I scoff “Stealing it from you? You’re the one illegally here now.”

“Illegally? Get off it.”

Someone shushes us.

I rip a hand through my hair as I drop my voice. “At the very least”—all right, let’s not get carried away—”negligently here. I booked this room.”

“I do na care if the King himself gifted this room to you. Is there some repercussion for not obeying that almighty app of yours?”

…is there?

My pause is answer, and he grins, victorious.

“I’ll be getting back to my work, then.”

He starts to shut the door.

I wedge my foot in it.

The look he gives is half disbelief, half disgust.”Oh, piss off—you canna be this high on the room?”

“You’re the one high on it. Give it up. There are others you can use without breaching the agreed-upon social constructs of the Spacefinder app.” Do I sound as batshit as I think I do?

The guy’s brows twist in stifled repulsion.

Yeah. I do.

He leans towards me through the door. He’s taller than I am, which isn’t exactly a rarity, but he’s using that height now to his ad­ vantage, so I hate him even more on principle.

A billow of spice hits me, too-rich cologne undercut with a bitter chemical scent that makes my nose itch. And I feel like a moron for smelling him, because he’s definitely not smelling me, but I can’t move back without relinquishing my hold on the door. He realizes that and presses closer, closer, and I bend back farther, farther, as mocking scorn rises on his face—

He stops. Sniffs.

“What kind of cologne is that, boyo?” Boyo?

“Eau de mind your own business.”

He snorts. “Rather more of an eau de I dropped my coffee all over myself?”

I was really trying to break out of my gloom today.

And you know what? I am, actually.

I’m going from wallowing in self-hatred to being actively irate.

Which is an… unusual reaction for me. I can’t remember the last time I got angry. Even my aforementioned prickish state mani­fests in me swallowing whatever irritable comments I want to make so I just end up depressed and sulky.

This is the first time I’ve let the anger out.

And I gotta admit. It feels good.

“Listen up, pal—I am two days from this paper on French polit­ical thought determining whether I pass this course on European politics,” and that still won’t save me from having to do a fourth year at what is typically a three-year school, but fuck that. “Which means right now, my body is being held together by obscure facts about the French Revolution. I don’t care how hot you are, if you don’t get out of that room in the next ten seconds, I will grab you by that tank top you think makes you look effortlessly relaxed but really makes you look like you’re trying too hard and go full Robespierre on your ass.”

The guy peels back from me with a tawdry grin.

Then I hear what I said.

ohhhhhh for fuck’s sake.

“Hot, eh?” His eyes trail over me so very, very slowly, but his con­ceited smirk is an equalizer to any reaction that tries to prickle along my skin.

“Not…” I stutter. “That isn’t the point of what I said.”

“Nah. Rather the bit where you wanted to grab me by my tank top and do what with me?”

Jesus fuck. “Get out of my study room.”

His jaw cocks to the side and he arches one thick brow. “Or what? You’ll enact your fancy wee death threat?”

This situation.

Might be getting away from me.

I’m in too deep now. So I hold, seething, and the guy chuckles dryly.

“Christ, but this university will kill us all.” He scratches his forehead and fixes me with a resolved glower. “I got my own overhang­ing schedule of misery to dance with, so bring it on, Coffee Shop.”

He punts my foot out of the way and slams the door in my face.

I grab the knob, but he instantly locks it, and I rattle the handle futilely. I swear I hear him laugh inside.

Part of me wants to hammer on the door again, cause all kinds of pandemonium until he gives it up. But I don’t want to risk being thrown out of the library or losing access to this study room entirely, so I force myself to breathe slowly through my nose.

What would I do if I wasn’t mentally and emotionally drained from school and home shit, and overall stretched in like seventeen directions? What would I do. What would I…

No. Screw that.

I don’t want to take the High Road.

I don’t want to do the responsible thing because I did the respon­sible thing and this asshole is still in my study room.

So what would my brother do? Or what would he have done be­fore he reformed, back when he was a whirlwind of rashness and chaos?

I look down at my hand and flex my palm.

Christmas’s magic lets me spread my Holiday’s cheer far and wide. It also lets me create a lot of things spontaneously.

Like, for instance, for a totally innocent example, tinsel.

Enough to fill a whole study room?

This is a horrific use of magic. It breaks pretty much all of the don’t use excessive displays of magic around normal people rules, but Dad isn’t really in charge of Christmas anymore, is he? Coal is. And Coal would absolutely be behind this use of Christmas’s magic.

So fuck it.

There’s a moment. Where I’m staring at the door. And I think to myself, This is my rock bottom.

But I might as well find out what the full depth of my rock bottom looks like. Maybe there’s something interesting down here, like my dignity.

I lay my hand flat on the door and grab on to every connection I have to Christmas’s magic and pummel that study room with tinsel. In Cambridge blue, because school spirit and all.

A sharp cry pops from within that room.

‘JESUS FUCKING SHITE—”

Time stretches in a weird pause as I nonchalantly walk a few feet back towards the desks. I get to a bookshelf and duck against it as the knob is twisting, and everyone seated is looking at the room. Someone is already shushing.

The door heaves inward, shoving against the tinsel, until he manages to get it open enough that he can stumble out—along with a waterfall, a deluge, a whole ass bunch of bright blue tinsel.

The study hub goes utterly still.

The guy stands there, arms out helplessly, looking like the Swamp Thing from the Cambridge lagoon. I can’t even see his face, he’s so covered.

I’m proud to say that I’m not the first one to laugh.

That honor goes to energy-drink-in-my-blood guy, who cackles and yanks out his phone and records, and soon the whole study hub is busting up and filming this guy getting pranked.

I pull out my phone and hit record as he removes a handful of tinsel from his face. His eyes snap around at the laughing students and he looks more irritated than embarrassed as he bobs his head in a yeah, have a laugh at my expense way.

His gaze locks on my phone.

I lower it and give him a cheesy grin.

He’ll probably blame it on some kind of confetti bomb. I don’t care. Let him know it was me though. I want this credit.

Don’t mess with my study room, asshole.

His face dissolves into a withering glare and he flips me off.

* * *

If I’d known it was that easy to vanquish this squatter from my study room, I’d have tinseled him weeks ago.

The guy digs his stuff out of the piles of glittery mess and stomps off, leaving a trail of shimmering blue in his wake. I watch him go from where I’m leaning on a bookshelf, and as he gets to the stairs, he glances back, meets my eyes again, and grimaces.

I waggle my fingers at him, my princely upbringing channeled into that fuck-you cordiality.

He disappears down the stairs.

I do feel bad for whatever janitorial staff will have to deal with this mess, so after I magic away the tinsel from the room and fin­ish my paper—in peace and quiet, the luxury—I follow that guy’s path through the library and make the rest of the tinsel vanish when no one’s looking. The trail takes me down into the main stacks, weav­ing among shelves dedicated to—art history? That makes sense. The beanie. The designer tank. That rancid expensive cologne. He’d defi­nitely be in something as pompous as art history.

As I get rid of the final evidence of my first nefarious magic act, I can see why Coal got so into it; I feel a hell of a lot better than I did earlier.

At least until I do a calculation of how much magic I used to cre­ate all that tinsel and make it vanish.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t worry about magic use. We’ve always had enough, more than enough, and that was kind of our problem.

But now…

I honestly don’t know how much magic we can spare for stupid shit.

My chest gets too hot, ribs tensing in a crush of shame.

See, this is why I think things through.

COAL

I pull up the video and almost, almost send it to him.

The freeze frame is that guy peeking up through the blue tinsel. Gray eyes are pinched with annoyance. Mouth is agape in a breathy gasp.

A shiver walks down my spine and I close out the video.

There’s enough of a tone shift between Coal’s last two texts that I can feel his anxiety twisted up in it.

He’s back in Christmas, finishing out his final semester at Yale online; I only came back to Cambridge after he damn near booted me out, claiming that someone needed to have a normal collegiate expe­rience and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be him, so I should go have fun.

Nothing says fun like intensive courses in a program I loathe with my whole being.

Coal had been so insistent, so hopeful about the idea of me having fun in a way that told me he felt guilty for letting me take care of him most of our lives, for being the rock while he was the wind. I’m not sure how much I like all the self-actualizing he did over Christ­mas; I’m happy he’s gaining a better awareness of himself, but it also means he’s gaining a better awareness of me, and I’ll be damned if I can handle getting all introspective after…

After Coal discovered our dad had successfully overtaken half a dozen Holidays and was tapping their joy directly into ours.

After he confronted Dad with the backing of those Holidays and basically forced him out as reigning Santa in all but his control of our magic.

After Dad went from manipulative and angry to sitting quietly in meetings as Coal sets up a fair trade of joy with other winter Holidays, like he surrendered to Coal. But I don’t trust it, and I shouldn’t have come back to school. Coal’s dealing with all this shit, and I left him to fuck around with term papers?

I swipe to a new text thread as I make my way back out of the library.

HEX

Hex is in a similar situation to mine—juggling school and his own Holiday duties, but at least his parents are actually doing their jobs and running Halloween. Like Iris, he’s been into the online school thing for a while, so he’s able to pop over to be with Coal more freely.

Which is… weird. Good. But weird. The prevailing theme that came out of Christmas: good but weird.

All these changes—Coal being in charge now, him having a stable relationship—are good.

It’s only the shit I caused that’s decidedly not good.

Nope. Not going to wallow.

I stare at Hex’s texts and feel the same lack of weight on my shoulders that I’ve noticed since Christmas. It’s simultaneously free­ ing and staggering.

The sun outside the library is bright and bursting through the almost constant British cloud cover, and I stand in its rays for a second, and breathe.

I’m still a Prince of Christmas, still part of Coal’s restructur­ing to create a collective that pools joy between the winter Holi­days. I’ve written a lot of official responses to other Holiday leaders and drafted speeches for Coal to use during meetings. I’ve been a sounding board for his ideas about how to interact with other lead­ers, what topics to bring up about resource divisions, how he’s ar­ranging to not only share magic among us all but also pay back what Christmas stole over time—which makes pointless magic use like creating tinsel even dumber.

But is any of what I’ve been doing necessary?

I close Coal’s text box. Close the one with Hex. The group chat remains, Iris and Coal’s bantering filling my screen; and the private thread with Iris.

I almost text her about the cheekbones on that guy.

I almost join the group chat and tell them how Iris’s comment on cream filling came at the worst possible time, join in their light­heartedness like nothing’s wrong, like nothing changed.

But there is stuff wrong.

Things did change.

And I’ve never been good with change.

On autopilot, I swipe to a different text thread, one that’s been silent since right after Christmas.

MOM

I finally responded. Just once:

I almost said, If it was real, you would’ve known. But the thought of any real wedding, for me or Coal, being marred by our mother show­ing up had me ignoring the rest of her barrage of texts.

I scan them now, and even though they’re the shit I expect from her—how could you, get your brother to talk to me, why can’t you do even simple things—my hand shakes and I pocket my phone before I drop it.

A clamp squeezes around my chest.

I duck into the shadows between the wall of the library and an arching ornamental tree still winter-frozen. I dig my fingers into the mortar between the bricks and demand that I take a full, deep breath, in through my nose, in through my nose, in through my­—exhale too, goddamn it—

A long, blown-out exhale finally comes, and I rock forward, all my weight on the wall, the coldness of the brick bleeding into my forehead. The rush and rumble of air entering and leaving my body drowns out my thoughts, and I focus on that noise. Nothing else.

And, in place of all other thoughts, I hear that guy say, in his thick accent, cream filled.

An unexpected laugh cuts through my chest, alleviates some of the lingering, relentless tension.

I breathe again, and this time, it goes in and out smoothly.

* * *

Three days later, my paper is submitted, it’s almost the weekend, and I actually wake up feeling more like myself.

Until I turn on my phone and see two dozen missed texts and calls from Coal.

Shock freezes my veins, crackling and crawling up my body.

COAL

Buy the Book

Go Luck Yourself

Sara Raasch

Buy Book

Go Luck Yourself

Sara Raasch

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
• IndieBound
• Target

Excerpted from Go Luck Yourself, copyright © 2025 by Sara Raasch.