“He should marry you, Rosy Posy,” Mariselle said.
Rosavyn’s mouth dropped open. She blinked in apparent horror. Then she pointed her fork at Evryn. “You traitor. I cannot believe you told her that awful name.”
“But it is so sweet!” Mariselle protested.
“I loathe it.”
Mariselle was laughing now. “Loathe? I do not believe you capable ofloathinganything, you veritable ray of sunshine.”
But Kazrian’s mind had snagged on Mariselle’s suggestion. It had seemed absurd for the space of a breath—and then considerably less absurd the longer he turned it over. The more he considered it, in fact, the more the pieces seemed to fit with the quiet, satisfying precision of a mechanism clicking into place. “She has a point, Rosy Posy.”
“Not you too!” The fork swung in his direction now. “It is not sweet. It has been banned from this family since I was eight years old.”
“Ah, that must be why I have never heard this delightful name before,Rosy Posy,” Iris said, her expression all innocence as she gazed across the table at Rosavyn.
Rosavyn’s eyes narrowed. “Do not.”
“Do cease brandishing the cutlery like a fencing foil,” Lady Rivenna sighed.
“I meant,” Kazrian said to Rosavyn, “that Mariselle has a point about you and Hadrian.”
“Oh. That.” Rosavyn set her fork down, picked up her wine glass, and waved the suggestion away with a laugh. “Do not be ridiculous. He isHadrian. How strange would that be? And there is the small matter of mylack of manifestation, which you seem to have forgotten. Even Hadrian, as good a man as he is, cannot overlook that.”
Kazrian had not forgotten, of course. He doubted there was a soul in all of Bloomhaven who was not abundantly aware of the unmanifested Rowanwood daughter. The gossip birds had seen to that with admirable thoroughness, shrieking it from the rooftops of Bloomhaven every Season for the past several years.
He had even, during his time in the Shaded Lands, sought out a number of older texts on rarer forms of manifestation. Late emergences, dormant abilities, gifts that presented in ways the standard classifications did not account for. He had not mentioned any of this to Rosavyn. She joked about it, her unmanifested status—joked about spinsterhood and freedom and the considerable advantages of having no one’s expectations to meet—but he knew her well enough to hear what sat beneath the jokes. He would not make it worse by prodding at a wound she had already decided to carry quietly.
In the quiet that followed, Mariselle reached across the table and laid her hand over Rosavyn’s. Neither of them said anything, but Kazrian watched as a current of understanding passed between the two of them, a look that seemed to fold them into a private room and quietly close everyone else out of it.
Kazrian turned this over in his mind, attempting to make sense of it. Because Mariselle had manifested—perfectly on time and with magic that had turned out to be most impressive—so it could not be the particular grief of the unmanifested that connected them. Whatever had just passedbetween his sister and sister-in-law belonged to some equation Kazrian did not have all the terms for.
People did not balance the way numbers balanced. That was the trouble with them. Numbers had the great and underrated virtue of always meaning precisely what they said. A four was a four whether you liked it or not, and it stayed a four, and it never once looked at you across a tea house kitchen as though you were the only thing that mattered and then informed you that you were not.
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
“On the subject of marriage,” Lady Rivenna said.
“Oh, good stars.” Rosavyn closed her eyes. “I had dared to hope we were finished with that particular subject for the evening.” Mariselle withdrew her hand.
“Every Season presents a fresh opportunity, my dear. I see no reason this one should prove any different.”
“I can think of one rather significant reason,” Rosavyn said. “I have advanced a further year without manifesting.”
“All I wish to point out,” their grandmother said, “is that a suitable marriage would go a considerable way toward helping your situation. You are fae, so you would receive a title through the match—Lady someone or other—which is not nothing.”
Rosavyn’s smile did not falter, but something behind it shifted. “You know as well as anyone at this table that a title gained through marriage carries far less weight than one earned through manifestation. I should sooner remain Miss Rowanwood than wear a title all of Bloomhaven knows was conferred upon me by a wedding ring rather than by magic. The former is at least honest.”
“A good marriage would elevate your standing nonetheless. That is simply a fact of the world we inhabit.”
“And a good marriage,” Rosavyn said, with the slow, careful enunciation one might employ when explaining something to a young child rather than to the most formidable woman in Bloomhaven, “will not present itself without my having manifested. You see the difficulty. It is rather circular.”
A clatter from across the table drew every eye. Evryn had knocked something to the floor—his knife, it appeared—and was now peering beneath his chair with an expression of tremendous interest.
“Well,” he announced, straightening. “I have at last discovered something Pinklet will not eat.” He held up a limp spear of asparagus between thumb and forefinger.
Rosavyn seized upon the diversion with visible relief. “I cannot blame him in the slightest. I have long maintained that asparagus is utterly vile.” She looked across the table at Mariselle, and at precisely the same moment, both of them said, “Asparagus mousse,” and dissolved into laughter.
At the end of the table, Iris leaned toward Lady Rivenna. “I have been meaning to ask your opinion, actually. I have been considering a new seasonal blend for the first week of the Opening, and I should so value your thoughts on the composition.”
