He heard the words and was aware, distantly, that he had said them aloud, into the open air, where saying such things—abouther, specifically—was not permitted. But he had named no name. He had been careful. This was safe.
“Ah,” said Rosavyn softly. She uncurled one hand and laid it over his where it rested in the grass. “Yes. I rather thought as much.”
Kazrian turned his head and looked at her. He blinked. He frowned. “You do not even know of whom I am speaking.”
Rosavyn gave him a look of fond patience. “Kazrian,” she said. “Of course I know of whom you are speaking. You have loved her for years.”
“But—” He sat up a little straighter against the tree. “How could you possibly—I have never—I have not said a word, not to anyone except?—”
“Did you truly imagine I would not notice?” She drew her hand back and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I befriended Charlotte years ago, and by way of Charlotte I came to know Lucie, and then Iris when she arrived to work there, and between the three of them, I had ample reason to visit the tea house every Season. I was there, Kazrian. I have eyes. I watched the pair of you orbit one another for years.”
Kazrian sat in a kind of stunned silence. “Have you ever,” he managed at last, “said anything to—to anyone?—”
“No, of course not.” Her voice changed, quieted, lost every trace of its teasing. “Kazrian, I am well aware of what it would mean if even a whisper got out. This is not the sort of harmless fancy one jokes about.”
He looked away, his jaw tight. “Well. Thank you,” he said roughly.
“Yes, well.” She bumped her shoulder against his. “Do not make it strange. Now. You may as well tell me the rest, since we have come this far.”
So he told her. Some of it, anyway. He told her how he’d left—that it was because Lucie had broken his heart, and Aurelise had known about it and seen he was desperate for distance and space, and so she’d suggested he accompany her when she left with Ryden for the Shaded Lands.
“And then today,” he said, “we spoke. Well, argued first, and then spoke, about things that have long been left unsaid. And though she did not say it plainly, I have been turning it all over since the moment I walked out, and I cannot arrive at any other conclusion: the ‘I do not care for you in that way’ was a lie. A lie crafted to make sure I would step back, would stop pursuing her, because she could not see any way forward that would not cost us both too dearly. But it was never because she did not love me.”
Rosavyn listened to all of it without once interrupting, which was itself a small miracle, and when he had finished she was quiet for a moment. Then she said, with enormous gentleness: “Well. Yes. Obviously.”
Kazrian turned to stare at her.
“Oh, do not look at me like that. You might simply have asked me, you great solemn fool, and saved yourself three years of misery. I could have told you on any day of any of those years that the girl was in love with you. I saw her, Kazrian. I saw the way she looked at you when she believed no one was watching, and it was not the way one looks at a friend. It was not even close.”
He pressed a hand over his face and dragged it slowly downward as he groaned. “She did it because I would not listen. I wanted to believe that even though we would have to fight for it, it would all somehow …” He dropped his hand and made a vague, helpless gesture at the garden. “Work out.”
“And can you blame her?” Rosavyn asked. There was no accusation in it. Only the quiet, pragmatic honesty she brought to everything. “Think of what happened with her aunt and Iris’s father, before he left. Even though they did not marry in the end, the damage to the Fields family was already done. From what I’ve heard from Charlotte, it took a long time for the whispers to quiet.” She met his eyes. “Lucie would have been raised with an awareness of that. She would not want it for her family, and she would not want it for you.”
Kazrian let his head fall back against the tree once more and looked upthrough the dark leaves to where the stars were coming out one by one. How differently it might have all turned out, he thought, if they had both been born fae. If they had both been born human. Or if the accumulated machinery of society had not decided, long before either of them was born, that certain people simply were not allowed to be together.
But beneath those churning thoughts, something else had begun, very quietly, to turn. Some small mechanism in him that he could not switch off any more than he could stop his own heart. Because if the no had been a lie—if she had loved him then, and lied only because she could see no other way?—
Then the only question that remained was whether it was still true.
“Rosavyn,” he said. “Do you think there is a chance she loves me still?” He kept his eyes on the stars. He did not think he could have asked it to her face. “Do you think there is any way at all that this … could come right?”
For a long moment his sister did not answer. The fountain murmured. The leaves stirred. “That,” she said softly, “I do not know.” She reached for his hand again and squeezed it, and her eyes were on the stars too when she spoke again. “But I know what it is to want something society says you should not have. I may joke about my situation. You know I do. It is easier than the alternative.” A pause, small and careful. “But beneath all of it, Kazrian, I want what you have. What youhad, at least, and what I hope you may still have. I watched the two of you for years, and I know what I saw. And I want that too.” Her voice was even, but only just. “But society has decided that an unmanifested fae woman is not worth the trouble of loving, and that is simply what I must live with. It is not going to change.”
“Rosavyn—”
“No.” She took a breath and released it slowly. When she turned to look at him, there was a smile on her face. Real, if a little unsteady at the edges. “So I would very much appreciate it,” she said, “if at least one of us got their happy ending. And since the odds are rather against it being me—” her grip tightened on his hand “—you had better see to it that it is you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Have you got it?”
“I think so. Just—hold that panel there. Do not let it shift.”
Lucie stood on the grass just beyond The Honeycomb’s back courtyard and pressed both palms flat against the silver wood, feeling the faint hum of the enchantment beneath its surface, while Balthazar sat a short distance away and regarded her with the expression of someone witnessing a deeply undignified spectacle. She ignored him and held firm while Kazrian ducked beneath the structure and did something she could not see. There was a soft click, a faint vibration that traveled through the framework and into her fingers, and then a sound like a mechanism settling into place—a precise, satisfying littlethkthat she had come to recognize as the noise Kazrian’s work made when it was done right.
“There,” he said, straightening. He stepped back and studied the structure with his head tilted. Balthazar rose, padded past Kazrian close enough that his tail brushed the edge of his boot, and continued on toward the kitchen without a backward glance. “I think that should be about right.”
She certainly hoped it was about right, given that there were only three days until the launch.
