He sat beneath the dinner table—or rather, he did not so much sit asvibrate. A small, round, perpetually delighted thing the pink of confectioner’s sugar dyed for a child’s birthday party. Every so often he would trot a hopeful circuit of the table legs, gaze up at each diner in turn with an expression of such radiant faith in the goodness of all things, and then resume his position at Iris’s feet to await whatever wonderful event he was certain must be imminent.
“Coralie named him,” Iris had explained when Kazrian had arrived earlier and was greeted by a pink blur that had flung itself at his shins with such force and enthusiasm that he had very nearly stumbled backward into the hall table. “We did try to suggest alternatives, but she was not convinced by any of them. We decided, in the end, that the name rather suits him.”
Kazrian thought, unbidden, of Balthazar. The two creatures were, when one set them side by side in the mind, so perfectly opposed that it was difficult to believe they belonged to the same general category of small domestic animal. Where the dog was pink, Balthazar was a gray gone strange at the edges. Where the dog flung himself bodily at the affection of strangers, Balthazar had struck at Kazrian’s hand with a crack of magic for the crime ofexisting within reach. Where the dog’s entire being seemed organized around the single hope of being loved, Kazrian guessed that Balthazar regarded love as a transaction he had not agreed to and would not be entering into.
Kazrian wondered whether the two had ever met. He wondered, further, who would survive the encounter, and concluded after a moment’s honest assessment that it would be Pinklet. Not through any superiority of arms, but simply because Balthazar would take one look at that quivering pink optimism and elect to remove himself from a universe that contained it.
“So then I abandoned the chocolate carriage idea,” Mariselle was saying, “and decided to go with an umbrella centerpiece instead. A great silver umbrella, suspended above the pavilion, spinning slowly, and from its edges, dozens of smaller umbrellas detach and drift upward, turning themselves upside down as they float. I’ll add rain, naturally, but the rain will be sweets—tiny fruit sweets—and the moment they strike the ground, each one will transform into a little chocolate pebble. And the pebbles will begin to melt, merging together, until they form a stream, and the stream winds between visitors’ feet, gathering and widening until?—”
“A chocolate river!” Rosavyn, seated at Kazrian’s right, directly across the table from Mariselle, appeared to be on the verge of clapping her knife and fork together in delight. “Finally! You’ve been threatening to create one of those for ages.”
“I could not get it quite right before, if you recall,” Mariselle said. “The river surface appeared to be too glossy. But I think I have it this time. At any rate, I still have several weeks to perfect the design before this Season’s opening night.”
“The High Lady has granted us the third night after the Opening Ball,” Evryn said, leaning back and placing an arm around the back of his wife’s chair. “Which ought to serve us rather better than last year.”
Kazrian glanced between the two of them. Dreamland—the Enchanted Carnival of Slumbering Wonders, to give it its full and rather magnificent title—was a physical manifestation of the dream realm brought into the waking world. A place where visitors walked, fully conscious, through impossible landscapes conjured from genuine dream substance.
Mariselle, whose family had long been renowned for their dream magic, was its architect. Every fantastical vista was born from her imagination andshaped by her extraordinary ability to sculpt dream into something one could see and touch. Evryn, whose gift for shaping lumyrite had proven essential to Dreamland’s restoration, had rebuilt the lumyrite network that anchored the dream realm to physical reality, without which Mariselle’s creations would simply dissolve back into formless dream. Closed for over half a century after the tragedy that had originally torn their two families apart, Dreamland was once again thriving.
“What happened last year?” Kazrian asked.
“Oh, nothing calamitous,” Evryn said, waving a hand. “We merely had the questionable foresight to open the night directly after the Season’s Opening Ball. Half of Bloomhaven failed to appear because they were still recovering from the previous evening’s festivities.”
“Absolutely unforgivable!” came their grandmother’s voice from the head of the table, and for a moment Kazrian thought she was commenting on Bloomhaven’s failure to attend Dreamland. But Iris’s immediate reply made it clear his grandmother’s pronouncement was part of an entirely separate conversation.
“I am not sure I would go quite so far asunforgivable,” Iris said mildly. “She ought not to have done it, certainly, but I do not think she meant any offense by it. I believe she simply prefers her own blend.”
“No offense? She broughther own blendto my tea house and you think shemeant no offense by it?”
“Your former tea house,” Jasvian reminded Lady Rivenna. “Difficult though that may be for you to recall at times.”
She turned her gaze upon her eldest grandson. “I recall it perfectly, Jasvian. I simply choose to maintain standards in an advisory capacity.” Her gaze swept back to Iris. “I would ban her.”
“I cannot ban someone for having preferences,” Iris said.
“You most certainly can.”
“Grandmother.”
“Then perhaps a notice on the door. ‘Patrons are kindly reminded that The Charmed Leaf Tea House servesits own tea.’ One would not think such a thing required stating, and yet here we are.”
Kazrian reached for the bread rolls. They sat in a polished silver dish at the center of the table, each one glazed to a deep, burnished gold. He had almost certainly had too many already, but whoever commanded thekitchen in Iris and Jasvian’s household possessed a gift for bread that surpassed even what was served at the royal table in the Shaded Lands—and that was not a comparison he made lightly.
“Well, in fairness to the woman,” Rosavyn said, “perhaps she has simply not cared for any of the blends the tea house, in its infinite and magnanimous wisdom, has seen fit to serve her. One can only be offered a cup of something one dislikes so many times before one takes matters into one’s own hands.”
Lady Rivenna’s hand flew to her chest. “Rosavyn. How dare you suggest such a thing? The tea house’s wisdomisinfinite and magnanimous, and it never chooses incorrectly.”
Rosavyn smiled serenely at her grandmother and popped a piece of roast potato into her mouth. Jasvian glanced back and forth between the two of them. Mariselle and Evryn both looked remarkably as though they were trying not to laugh as they both raised their wine glasses to their lips. Kazrian’s gaze traveled the length of the table, taking them all in, and he realized how much he had missed this. The easy, affectionate sharpness of them, the way no Rowanwood could resist prodding at another and no slight could land without someone prodding back.
Beneath the table, Pinklet was in the process of completing another circuit. He stopped to gaze up at Kazrian with bottomless hope. Kazrian surrendered a scrap of lamb.
“Oh—” Iris said brightly. “Jasvian, have you had any reply from Hadrian? About whether he means to come to Bloomhaven this Season?”
“Ah, yes, forgive me, my darling,” Jasvian said. “I meant to tell you. A message arrived by pixie yesterday. Hadrian was … brief. And rather vague. Reading between the lines, I do not believe he intends to come.”
Iris sighed. “I feared as much. I do worry about him. He has become rather …”
“Reclusive,” Evryn offered.
