Pretending we didn’t have a moment, we sit down at the small kitchen nook table to eat.
Thoughts of romance fly from my mind when I take the first bite. “This is delicious.”
“It is,” Ash agrees.
“You’re a really good cook.”
“I’m good at a lot of things.”
I smile. “That’s such a high fae thing to say.”
He shrugs, cutting his chicken. “It’s true, though.”
“You’re a winter, aren’t you?”
Like pixies, high fae magic reflects a season. However, there are only subtle cues that hint at their type—clues like the way their magic smells. Being a winter, Ash’s magic would alsoreach its apex in the corresponding season. But he won’t draw memories, like a pixie. Nor will he sparkle when he’s interested in someone. His magic is uniquely high fae.
“I am,” he says. “How did you figure it out?”
“Your magic smells like snow.”
He looks up. “Snow doesn’t have a smell. It’s water.”
“Like the air then, right before it snows.” I look down at my plate. “It’s nice.”
“If we’re being poetic, suppose I’ll admit you smell like sunshine.”
I look up, smiling. “Is that repulsive to a snowman like you?”
“No.” Ash takes a sip of water. “It’s forbidden.”
I remember what Rowan said—how Ash would never be serious about me, and my mood instantly sobers. “Is everyone in your family a winter?”
Magic tends to follow family lines, but you can have a rogue season appear at any time. Two summer pixies will probably have a summer child. But they might have a spring, a winter, or an autumn. Fae genes are somewhat unpredictable like that.
“My mother is a winter. Gideon is an autumn, like our father. Anna is…” Ash frowns, uncomfortable. “We don’t know what she is.”
So, Rowan was right about that—Anna was born without magic. What if he’s right about Ash, too?
“She seems very good at her job,” I say.
Ash smiles. “Hers and everyone else’s.”
“Did the dragon find its way home?”
“It did, thankfully—though Gideon refused to issue a fine.”
Maybe autumn high fae are soft like their pixie counterparts.
When there’s a lull in the conversation, I say, “I looked up at least fifty different types of tea today. It’s far more complicated than I realized. Did you know some farmers intentionally allow a type of insect to infect their tea crops because when they feedon the leaves, it triggers a defense mechanism in the plants and makes the tea sweeter?”
“I did not know that.”
“And all true tea comes from one plant—Camellia Sinensis. The variations in taste are due to processing, the region in which it was grown, and the time of year it was picked. It’s amazing, really, that tea can taste different just because it was grown on, say, a mountain.”
“You seem fascinated.”
“I am. Even though this may appear obvious, I realized today that tea is,in fact, a plant.”
