Chapter One
Three years,and the Charmed Leaf Tea House had not changed.
Not from the outside, at least. The same worn stone steps. The same heavy oak door with its intricate carvings of teacups and leaves. The same vines climbing the walls. Even the same clusters of tiny purple flowers that bloomed year round, enchanted to defy the seasonal changes.
Kazrian Rowanwood stood on the opposite side of the street, hands in his coat pockets, conducting a perfectly rational assessment of the building and absolutely, certainlynotthinking about the young woman who might be within.
He had not thought about her yesterday, when he’d stepped through the Veil Gate from the Shaded Lands for the first time in almost three years. He had not thought about her as the enchanted carriage had carried him through the familiar streets of Bloomhaven to Rowanwood House, where his grandmother resided for most of the year and where he himself had once spent every Bloom Season. And she was most certainly not the first thing that had surfaced in his mind when he’d opened his eyes this morning.
No. He was most determinedlynotthinking of Miss Lucie Fields.
Who was likely no longer Miss Lucie Fields at all, he reminded himself yet again. Three years was more than enough time for a woman to marry.She was probably Mrs Lucie Somebody by now, bearing a surname that belonged to a man she actually loved, living a life that had nothing whatsoever to do with a fae boy she had once told, quite clearly, that she did not care forin that way.
Kazrian wouldn’t know. He had left Bloomhaven for the Shaded Lands with his sister Aurelise after her marriage to Prince Ryden and had decided, quite simply, not to return. Though Aurelise traveled regularly to Bloomhaven and across the United Fae Isles, Kazrian had told her he preferred not to receive news of Lucie’s life. And his twin, who was the only person in the world who knew the full, humiliating scope of what he’d felt and what he’d been told in return, had honored that request.
No one else in his family had ever known he’d been in love with Lucie at all, so if she had married, they would not have thought to mention it to him. Why would they? To the rest of the Rowanwoods, Lucie had only ever been the human girl in their grandmother’s tea house kitchen.
Not the person who had rearranged the entire architecture of his chest when he’d first laid eyes on her at age fifteen.
But that was beside the point. The point was the building, and the difficulty was that the tea house and Lucie had become inextricable in Kazrian’s mind. He could not think of one without the other surfacing, unbidden, like a gear that turned a second gear whether you wanted it to or not. He had known her here. Every memory of her existed within these walls. It was a design flaw in his own makeup, and he had not yet identified a repair.
Not that any of this should matter. Whatever he had once felt for Lucie, he did not feel it now. He was quite resolved on that point. It was merely the memories—persistent, unwelcome things—and the fact that Bloomhaven was far quieter than he had ever experienced it before, which afforded those memories more space than they deserved.
The Bloom Season had not yet begun, and Bloomhaven wore its off-season face: quieter, slower, stripped of the glittering crush of fae society that would descend in a few weeks’ time. The lane was nearly empty. A shopkeeper was sweeping her front step a few doors down. A pair of garden gnomes were asleep in a miniature wheelbarrow that was tucked between the flowers edging the pathway around the side of the tea house. The town belonged, for now, to its small magical inhabitants and year-roundresidents. And the working-class human families who resided here permanently. Families like?—
No. He would not think of Lucie’s family.
His grandmother had told him to come to the tea house garden this morning, and that was what he would focus on now. Not the building. Not the memories. Simply the task of crossing the street and walking around the side of the tea house.
And whether Lucie still worked at The Charmed Leaf or not, she would not be herenow. It was too early. In these quieter weeks before the Season began, the tea house did not open until midday.
Kazrian passed along the side of the building and very firmly didnotlook through the kitchen windows. He kept his gaze on the garden path ahead because it did not matter who might be inside.
A faint tapping caught his ear as he neared the back door that led from the garden into the kitchen. Despite himself, he glanced over. The door’s handle was wrought in the shape of a curled vine, with small decorative brass leaves along its stem, and one of them had come partially loose. It was tapping against the handle in a soft, regular rhythm and—he paused for a moment to listen—humming a tune in time to the rhythm?
A stray thread of magic from the tea house’s enchantments, most likely. The kind of small, restless fault his fingers itched to correct on principle. Kazrian filed it away and kept walking.
The back gardens were more lush than he remembered. Herb rows filled the air with the sharp scents of rosemary, thyme, and lavender, and the flower beds were already bright with blooms that no sensible plant would produce this early in the year without magical intervention. A flower pixie hovered over a cluster of reluctant daffodils, and as Kazrian passed, two of them relented and opened.
Several members of his family were already gathered beneath the trees in the outdoor seating area, spread comfortably among the wrought-iron garden chairs, the table between them bearing a plate of fruit. Grapes and figs and slices of pear. His grandmother occupied her chair with her usual immaculate posture, hands folded neatly in her lap. Jasvian sat beside her, long legs stretched before him, while Iris perched at Jasvian’s side, laughing at something. And Rosavyn?—
Rosavyn was on all fours in the grass, skirts dragging through the dew,one arm stretched out ahead of her as she roared like some fearsome creature at two small children who shrieked in delighted terror and scrambled to flee. Coralie, three and quick, darted away. Emeric, not yet two and still negotiating the mechanics of running, stumbled onto his hands and knees and began crawling away while giggling.
Something in Kazrian’s chest loosened.
He had seen them all over the past three years, of course. They had visited the Shaded Lands numerous times. But seeing his familyhere, beneath these trees, in the garden where he himself had played as a child every Bloom Season, was different. They fit this place. They belonged to it. And he had been away long enough to have forgotten how much he loved the sight of them in it.
He reached them in time to hear his grandmother mutter, “Good stars above. I have quite given up on making her fit for proper society.”
“I heard that, Grandmother,” Rosavyn called out with a laugh. “And I do hope you mean it.” She glanced back, still on all fours. “I am thoroughly weary of reminding you that I have embraced my spinsterhood with open arms and have absolutely no intention of—” Her gaze landed on Kazrian. “Oh, Kazrian! You’re here! I thought you would never rise this morning.”
She was on her feet and throwing her arms around him before he could brace himself, grass-stained and laughing. He caught her and held on.
She had arrived at Rowanwood House only days before Kazrian. The moment she’d learned he was coming to Bloomhaven ahead of the Season, she had declared that she would come too, insisting that Rowanhill was unbearably dull now that Evryn and Mariselle’s visit had ended and the two of them had returned to their home in Bloomhaven. Their mother had chosen to remain at the country estate until the Season began in earnest, but Rosavyn claimed she could not possibly wait that long and would go mad with boredom if she were forced to try.
Jasvian stood and clasped Kazrian’s hand, then pulled him into a brief embrace. “It is good to have you back,” he said warmly.
Iris kissed his cheek and squeezed both his hands. “We have missed having you here, Kazrian. Truly.”
