“I did not get the chance to tell you,” her mother said. “After. In all the dreadfulness that came afterward, I never got to say it. But at the launch, Lucie—when you stood up before the whole of that garden and did what you did with the honey light and the confections and all that magic you channeled as if it were the easiest thing in the world—” Her voice caught, and steadied. “You were spectacular. You were absolutely, perfectly spectacular. And I have never in my life been prouder of anyone than I was of you, standing there. I am so proud of you, my darling. I hope you know it.”
And it hit Lucie all over again—the enormous, impossible, glowing fact she had somehow, amidst this conversation, entirely managed to forget. It came flooding back all at once, sending warmth from her chest outward to her very fingertips.
The Honeycomb was hers.
She had not told her mother yet. She had not told anyone. She opened her mouth, the words rising, bursting to be said?—
A knock at the door. Faint. Small. A precise littlerat-tat-tat.
Lucie’s head turned. “Messenger pixie?”
“Oh—the pot.” Her mother stood abruptly, remembering. “Let me check on that before it—You get the door, darling.”
Lucie set the cushion aside and rose from the sofa, and the Honeycomb revelation sat inside her chest like a held breath, still unspoken.
She crossed the parlor and opened the front door.
A messenger pixie stood on the step, dressed in a neat little coat with a satchel slung across its small body and a letter clutched in one hand. “Miss Lucie Fields?” the pixie asked in a high voice.
“Yes, that is I.”
Lucie took the letter. The pixie gave a crisp nod, turned on its heel, and was gone, a blur of wings disappearing into the lavender twilight evening.
She stood in the open doorway and looked down at the letter in her hand.
Lucie,
I have written this letter four times. The first three attempts are in the fire, where they belong, because I could not seem to say everything I want to say plainly without making a thorough mess of it. You will be unsurprised to learn that I am considerably better at diagnosing lumyrite faults than I am at setting my own heart down on paper in any kind of order. But I am going to try again.
It has been unbearable, being away from you.
I understand the reason for it. My grandmother is right, and I know that my being seen at The Honeycomb just now would do more harm than good. I know this. I have accepted it. And I have spent every single day since the launch reminding myself to accept it again, because the understanding does not seem to hold for more than a few hours before it requires re-establishing.
I confess I find myself half wishing the lumyrite lattice would develop some spectacular new fault. Nothing dangerous, nothing that would trouble you, just something stubborn and inconvenient enough to require my attention for several hours. Daily, if possible. I am not proud of this. I am simply telling you because I have never been particularly good at telling you anything other than the truth, andthe truth is that I would invent a reason to stand in your kitchen every morning for the rest of my life if I thought you would let me.
I will not pretend I do not know what is being said. I know that we are the story of the Season, and I know that a great deal of it is unkind. I also know that a portion of that unkindness falls hardest upon you, and upon your family, in ways it does not fall upon me. That is the part I can scarcely stand still to think about. But I would be dishonest if I did not also tell you the rest of it. The Honeycomb has been a triumph, Lucie. A genuine one. People cannot stop speaking of what you made. I hear of it everywhere I go. They loved it. They loved YOU, Lucie.
Most of all, my grandmother has given me reason to hope.
I know she has spoken to you. I know you are aware, now, that the Rowanwoods would stand behind us. And I know my grandmother has made it plain to your mother that she will have Lady Rivenna’s support. Not only in this, but always.
I am not foolish enough to pretend that our being together would be without consequence. There would be difficulties. There are people who would never accept it, and I cannot promise you that every drawing room in Bloomhaven will open its doors to us, or that the whispers will stop, or that it will be easy.
But I can tell you this.
If you will have me … if, knowing everything it would cost and everything it would mean, you would still choose me … then I am yours. I have been yours since the day we met. I was yours when I left, and I was yours for every one of the days I was gone, and I was yours the moment I came back and stepped into that kitchen and it felt as though no time had passed at all. And if you will let me, I will spend the rest of my life being yours in a way that is no longer a secret, no longer a thing we pretend we do not feel, but something we build together, openly, and without apology.
Yours, as I have always been, and will always be,
Kazrian
P.S. The Rowanwood Masquerade is tomorrow. I am asking you to come.
I asked you once before. You said no, and I understood, and I understand still. You danced with me anyway that night. In the kitchen. In the quiet, with no one watching, in the very place where I first saw you and where I loved you every day after. I would not trade that dance for a hundred ballrooms.
But now I am asking again. Not because I have forgotten what it would cost you to walk into that room and reveal who is behind the mask. I know exactlywhat it would cost if you chose to remove it. But if you are willing, then come. I will wear no mask so that you will easily find me. It would be my honor to dance with you there.
She stood on the doorstep with the letter in both hands and the evening settling around her and read it again from the beginning, because she could not do anything else. The words blurred partway through the second reading, and she blinked hard, and it did not help in the slightest, and by the third attempt she had given up trying to see clearly and was simply pressing the paper to her chest and breathing.
