“Yes.”
The name sat in the room, cold and clarifying. “You saw something,” he said. “In your patterns or connections or—the tea leaves. The futures you catch glimpses of.”
“I noticed a troubling connection that was strengthening in that girl’s life.” Her mouth thinned. “You know it is nothing more precise than that. Connections and patterns are—complex. Always shifting with every choice every soul makes. Nothing is ever set in stone. I saw Mr Stratton drawing nearer to a place in Lucie’s life, and I felt that there was something … not quite right where he was concerned. But I could not be certain my instinct was correct, any more than I could be certain that anything of meaning still remained between you and her. I was certain of nothing.”
“Then why not simplyspeakto her about it?” The frustration broke through again. “Warn her. Tell her what you feared.”
“Because it was not my place, and because I could see nothing for certain, and because Iwill notreach into a person’s life and steer it for them.” She said it with sudden, real force, the force of a genuine conviction beneath all the manipulation. “I …”
She trailed off, and for the first time since Kazrian had entered the room, something in her seemed to falter. Her gaze drifted past him, settling somewhere distant. “I overstepped with your sister,” she said quietly. “With Aurelise. I believed I knew better, believed I was shielding her from harm, and it transpired that I did not know nearly enough. My interference very nearly cost her the happiness she has now.”
Kazrian blinked. “I have not the faintest idea what you are referring to.”
His grandmother waved a hand, brisk and dismissive. “It matters not. That was resolved years ago. But I learned from it. I have been a good deal more cautious since then about the manner in which I … open doors. Arrange circumstances. So no, Kazrian, I do not wish to take away anyone’s will. And I was not prepared to so much as hint at anything unfavorable about Mr Stratton if it turned out that my instinct was wrong.” She paused, and then added, almost as though she could not quite help herself, “Though I am beginning to strongly suspect that I was not.”
Something tightened uncomfortably in Kazrian’s stomach. A cold, uneasy pull that had nothing to do with anger. “What do you mean by?—”
“So there it is.” His grandmother’s voice settled, final and clear, in the way it did when she considered a matter closed. “That is why I did what I did. To keep you here. To give you a chance with Lucie before it was too late for you to have any choice in the matter at all.”
He stared at her. “Then why, Grandmother, have you been parading eligible fae ladies in front of me for weeks?”
A breath left her, short, exasperated. “Because I have found, in my long experience, that nothing clarifies the one thing a person truly wants quite so efficiently as an evening spent in the company of a great many things they do not.”
For several seconds he could do nothing but stand there, marveling at the sheer architectural scale of it. “You are meddling,” he said eventually, “and manipulative, and I do not know how you sleep.”
Lady Rivenna spread both arms wide and did not trouble to deny a single word of it. “When one is given a particular sort of magic, my dear,” she said, “what precisely is one meant to do with it? Ignore it? Fold it away in a drawer?” She reclaimed her tea. “I see the patterns. I see the doors. It would be a waste not to open at least some of them.”
“So there it is,” he said flatly. “You are sorry, then. For the hob, and Lucie’s hand, and the pixie. But not for the rest of it.”
“No,” said his grandmother. “Not for the rest of it. I regret that anyone was hurt. I do not regret giving you your chance.” Another pause, quieter. “I am sorry, Kazrian. And I am not sorry. Both are entirely true, and I am afraid you shall simply have to hold them at the same time, as I do.”
“Well, I confess that does not seem like an actual apology.”
“It is the only sort of apology I have to give you, which is an honest one.” The corner of her mouth moved. “I am a complicated old woman, my dear. Surely you did not expect me to become a simple one at this late hour, purely for your convenience.”
He almost laughed. Even angry as he was, she almost startled a laugh out of him.
“Are you not glad of it, though?” she asked, and her tone had gentled. She watched him closely now. “Whatever I did, and however I ought not to have done it, are you not the smallest bit glad? To have had these weeks. Tohave stood beside her, day after day, and worked with her, and learned for yourself, past all doubting, that you are still—how shall I put it delicately—hopelessly and comprehensively in love with the girl?”
And that was the thing that undid the last of Kazrian’s restraint.
“No!”It came out of him too loud in the small room, raw, and he did not care. “No, Grandmother, I am not glad, because that is precisely the trouble with it. I did notneedthese weeks to learn that! I already knew! I have known every single day for three years and every day for years before that! I may have told myself that I did not love her still, but I always knew that was a lie.”
He began pacing, the words spilling out of him in a torrent he could not have dammed if he tried. “All you have done—all your meddling has accomplished—is to give me weeks of standing close enough to touch her and not being permitted to, of watching her hum over her recipe book, of falling asleep beside her in a storeroom and waking to find her turned toward me, andnoneof it changes a single thing! Because it cannot go anywhere! Because she has told me plainly that there is no future for us, and she isright, and now—thanks to you—I have a whole new store of memories to carry back to the Shaded Lands and it will be a thousand timesharderto say goodbye than it already was!”
The silence rang.
His grandmother did not look wounded. She did not look chastened. She looked, if anything, faintly and infuriatingly satisfied, as though he had said something enormously useful. She sipped her tea and waited.
And into that silence, something dropped into place. A single, clear note, like a coin falling to the bottom of a well. A thing that should have occurred to him the moment she confessed her reason for tampering with the lattice, and had not, because he had been too angry to see it.
He stopped pacing.
“Wait,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow.
He turned to her fully, and his heart had begun to do a hard, unsteady hammering against his ribs that climbed with every beat until he began to feel almost lightheaded.
