Hearts & Honey Light

Three years, and The Charmed Leaf Tea House had not changed.

Not from the outside, at least. The same worn stone steps. The same heavy oak door with its intricate carvings of teacups and leaves. The same vines climbing the walls. Even the same clusters of tiny purple flowers that bloomed year round, enchanted to defy the seasonal changes.

Kazrian Rowanwood stood on the opposite side of the street, hands in his coat pockets, conducting a perfectly rational assessment of the building and absolutely, certainly not thinking about the young woman who might be within.

He had not thought about her yesterday, when he’d stepped through the Veil Gate from the Shaded Lands for the first time in almost three years. He had not thought about her as the enchanted carriage had carried him through the familiar streets of Bloomhaven to Rowanwood House, where his grandmother resided for most of the year and where he himself had once spent every Bloom Season. And she was most certainly not the first thing that had surfaced in his mind when he’d opened his eyes this morning.

No. He was most determinedly not thinking of Miss Lucie Fields.

Who was likely no longer Miss Lucie Fields at all, he reminded himself yet again. Three years was more than enough time for a woman to marry. She was probably Mrs Lucie Somebody by now, bearing a surname that belonged to a man she actually loved, living a life that had nothing whatsoever to do with a fae boy she had once told, quite clearly, that she did not care for in that way.

Kazrian wouldn’t know. He had left Bloomhaven for the Shaded Lands with his sister Aurelise after her marriage to Prince Ryden and had decided, quite simply, not to return. Though Aurelise traveled regularly to Bloomhaven and across the United Fae Isles, Kazrian had told her he preferred not to receive news of Lucie’s life. And his twin, who was the only person in the world who knew the full, humiliating scope of what he’d felt and what he’d been told in return, had honored that request.

No one else in his family had ever known he’d been in love with Lucie at all, so if she had married, they would not have thought to mention it to him. Why would they? To the rest of the Rowanwoods, Lucie had only ever been the human girl in their grandmother’s tea house kitchen.

Not the person who had rearranged the entire architecture of his chest when he’d first laid eyes on her at age fifteen.

But that was beside the point. The point was the building, and the difficulty was that the tea house and Lucie had become inextricable in Kazrian’s mind. He could not think of one without the other surfacing, unbidden, like a gear that turned a second gear whether you wanted it to or not. He had known her here. Every memory of her existed within these walls. It was a design flaw in his own makeup, and he had not yet identified a repair.

Not that any of this should matter. Whatever he had once felt for Lucie, he did not feel it now. He was quite resolved on that point. It was merely the memories—persistent, unwelcome things—and the fact that Bloomhaven was far quieter than he had ever experienced it before, which afforded those memories more space than they deserved.

The Bloom Season had not yet begun, and Bloomhaven wore its off-season face: quieter, slower, stripped of the glittering crush of fae society that would descend in a few weeks’ time. The lane was nearly empty. A shopkeeper was sweeping her front step a few doors down. A pair of garden gnomes were asleep in a miniature wheelbarrow that was tucked between the flowers edging the pathway around the side of the tea house. The town belonged, for now, to its small magical inhabitants and year-round residents. And the working-class human families who resided here permanently. Families like—

No. He would not think of Lucie’s family.

His grandmother had told him to come to the tea house garden this morning, and that was what he would focus on now. Not the building. Not the memories. Simply the task of crossing the street and walking around the side of the tea house.

And whether Lucie still worked at The Charmed Leaf or not, she would not be here now. It was too early. In these quieter weeks before the Season began, the tea house did not open until midday.

Kazrian passed along the side of the building and very firmly did not look through the kitchen windows. He kept his gaze on the garden path ahead because it did not matter who might be inside.

A faint tapping caught his ear as he neared the back door that led from the garden into the kitchen. Despite himself, he glanced over. The door’s handle was wrought in the shape of a curled vine, with small decorative brass leaves along its stem, and one of them had come partially loose. It was tapping against the handle in a soft, regular rhythm and—he paused for a moment to listen—humming a tune in time to the rhythm?

A stray thread of magic from the tea house’s enchantments, most likely. The kind of small, restless fault his fingers itched to correct on principle. Kazrian filed it away and kept walking.

The back gardens were more lush than he remembered. Herb rows filled the air with the sharp scents of rosemary, thyme, and lavender, and the flower beds were already bright with blooms that no sensible plant would produce this early in the year without magical intervention. A flower pixie hovered over a cluster of reluctant daffodils, and as Kazrian passed, two of them relented and opened.

Several members of his family were already gathered beneath the trees in the outdoor seating area, spread comfortably among the wrought-iron garden chairs, the table between them bearing a plate of fruit. Grapes and figs and slices of pear. His grandmother occupied her chair with her usual immaculate posture, hands folded neatly in her lap. Jasvian sat beside her, long legs stretched before him, while Iris perched at Jasvian’s side, laughing at something. And Rosavyn—

Rosavyn was on all fours in the grass, skirts dragging through the dew, one arm stretched out ahead of her as she roared like some fearsome creature at two small children who shrieked in delighted terror and scrambled to flee. Coralie, three and quick, darted away. Emeric, not yet two and still negotiating the mechanics of running, stumbled onto his hands and knees and began crawling away while giggling.

Something in Kazrian’s chest loosened.

He had seen them all over the past three years, of course. They had visited the Shaded Lands numerous times. But seeing his family here, beneath these trees, in the garden where he himself had played as a child every Bloom Season, was different. They fit this place. They belonged to it. And he had been away long enough to have forgotten how much he loved the sight of them in it.

He reached them in time to hear his grandmother mutter, “Good stars above. I have quite given up on making her fit for proper society.”

“I heard that, Grandmother,” Rosavyn called out with a laugh. “And I do hope you mean it.” She glanced back, still on all fours. “I am thoroughly weary of reminding you that I have embraced my spinsterhood with open arms and have absolutely no intention of—” Her gaze landed on Kazrian. “Oh, Kazrian! You’re here! I thought you would never rise this morning.”

She was on her feet and throwing her arms around him before he could brace himself, grass-stained and laughing. He caught her and held on.

She had arrived at Rowanwood House only days before Kazrian. The moment she’d learned he was coming to Bloomhaven ahead of the Season, she had declared that she would come too, insisting that Rowanhill was unbearably dull now that Evryn and Mariselle’s visit had ended and the two of them had returned to their home in Bloomhaven. Their mother had chosen to remain at the country estate until the Season began in earnest, but Rosavyn claimed she could not possibly wait that long and would go mad with boredom if she were forced to try.

Jasvian stood and clasped Kazrian’s hand, then pulled him into a brief embrace. “It is good to have you back,” he said warmly.

Iris kissed his cheek and squeezed both his hands. “We have missed having you here, Kazrian. Truly.”

“I feared we had lost you to the Shaded Lands entirely,” Jasvian added, with the faintest curve of a smile. “That you had fallen so thoroughly in love with the place you might never set foot here again.”

Kazrian smiled back and did not say that, left to his own devices, Jasvian would very likely have been right. He would not be here at all if their grandmother had not insisted.

Lady Rivenna had officially handed over proprietorship of The Charmed Leaf Tea House to Iris at the close of the previous Bloom Season, and precisely no one had been surprised when she had, almost immediately, purchased a vacant building at the far end of the very same lane and embarked upon a new venture.

A confectionery, of all things. The Honeycomb, she called it. No scones—Orrit would sooner set fire to his own ovens than leave The Charmed Leaf, and no living soul could rival his legendary recipe—but enchanted confections of some sort.

Evryn had been commissioned to install a lumyrite lattice throughout the building to power the enchantments required for crafting magical confections. Aurelise, after returning from one of her recent visits, had recounted the resulting clashes between their grandmother and Evryn in hilarious detail. The arguments over placement and configuration had been quite something, because naturally their grandmother, who possessed no lumyrite ability whatsoever, would not hesitate to instruct Evryn on the use of his own magic.

The lattice was laid successfully, but it turned out that an old building steeped in generations of residual magic from its former occupants did not take kindly to new infrastructure. Different enchantments clashed. Systems misfired. Nothing could be relied upon to function as it should, his grandmother had complained in her letters.

In the end, she had all but commanded Kazrian to return to Bloomhaven. She had informed him that The Honeycomb required someone who could diagnose and repair lumyrite systems, that he was the only Rowanwood whose ability suited the task, and that it was utter nonsense that he had been away so long. He would return. He would fix her confectionery. And with any luck, he would secure a wife this Season while he was about it.

Kazrian had agreed to two of the three.

“I still cannot fathom what they had you doing over there,” Rosavyn said, giving his shoulder a squeeze that turned into an impressed pat. “Wrestling dragons?”

“Well. Not wrestling, precisely.”

“Rowing on that lake, I expect,” Iris said, her eyes bright with amusement as she reached over and gave his other shoulder an appraising squeeze. “Did you not thoroughly trounce both your brothers the last time we visited?”

Jasvian folded his arms. “By a negligible margin.”

“If the two of you are quite finished inspecting me,” Kazrian said mildly, “I should like the use of my shoulders back.” He looked past Iris, intending to mention the tapping door handle to his grandmother, but paused.

Lady Rivenna was bent forward in her chair, and Coralie had both hands clamped around the older woman’s left shoulder, squeezing with the earnest focus of someone performing Very Important Work. The Rowanwood matriarch held perfectly still, her head inclined slightly as though the three year old’s assessment warranted serious consideration.

Kazrian directed an amused glance at Rosavyn—look what you’ve started—before addressing his grandmother. “I noticed a brass leaf on the back door handle that’s come loose and is tapping. I could take a look at it? I’m sure it would require only a quick adjustment.”

“Like the ‘quick adjustment’ that left my pianoforte playing itself at three o’clock in the morning for a fortnight?” his grandmother said wryly, sitting back as Coralie released her.

“That was years ago, Grandmother. My abilities have—”

“Uncle Kazriannnnn!” Coralie shrieked. She launched herself from Lady Rivenna’s side in a blur of tangled dark hair and mud-stained muslin and collided with his leg at full tilt.

“Thank you for the offer, Kazrian,” Iris said, moving toward Emeric, who had just discovered a small garden hand fork beneath Jasvian’s vacated chair and was brandishing it with wide-eyed delight. She gently extracted it from his grip and held it out to the garden gnome who was hurrying over, looking deeply apologetic about having misplaced his equipment in the vicinity of a toddler. “But I’m afraid it’s a project the kitchen pixies have taken upon themselves,” Iris continued. “They’ve some notion of enchanting the back door to hum a little tune whenever someone comes through, and from the sound of it, they are still very much in the experimental stages.”

“Pick-a-back, pick-a-back, pick-a-back!” Coralie begged, tugging repeatedly on Kazrian’s trouser leg as she stared up at him with pleading eyes that were almost exactly like her mother’s.

Kazrian required no persuading whatsoever. “If the lady insists,” he said at once, crouching with his back to her and his arms open behind him. Jasvian was already there, scooping Coralie up and settling her onto Kazrian’s back, where she immediately locked both arms around his neck.

“There now,” Kazrian said, straightening with a wide grin and hitching her a little higher. “A far better use of my shoulders.”

He set off at a cheerful trot around the arrangement of garden chairs, Coralie bouncing, giggling, and shrieking instructions. “Faster!” and “That way!” and “We’re being chased by DRAGONS!”

Jasvian settled back into his chair, beside the one Rosavyn had just dropped into. A few feet away, Iris was crouched down in front of Emeric, who was now in the grip of a passionate and full-throated outrage over the swift and unjust confiscation of what had clearly been the most magnificent object he had ever held.

“I know,” Iris said gently, catching his flailing hands. “I know. It was a very fine fork. But we do not stab things before luncheon, my love. That is an afternoon activity at the earliest.”

Emeric was unmoved by this reasoning and let out a wail of deepest betrayal.

Lady Rivenna rose from her chair. “Oh, you poor dear,” she said, looking down at Emeric with a sympathy so grave and sincere that one might have thought the child had suffered a devastating personal loss. “What a dreadful injustice. One moment you possessed the finest weapon in all the garden, and the next—cruelly snatched away.”

“Because he would likely have poked his own eye out with it,” Iris grumbled, sitting down beside Jasvian and allowing him to fold her hand into his. “But never mind that.”

“Come with me, my darling,” Lady Rivenna murmured, bending closer to Emeric with the conspiratorial air. “Shall we go inside and steal a scone from Orrit?”

Emeric’s tears ceased as though a tap had been shut off. He raised his arms.

“Do take note, Kazrian,” Rosavyn said, bright with amusement. “In our day, unauthorized scone removal was grounds for immediate kitchen exile. Now she is leading the expedition herself.”

Kazrian shook his head as he trotted past with Coralie still bouncing on his back, a smile tugging at his mouth. His grandmother—terror of Bloomhaven society, a woman who barely softened for her own grandchildren—had, it seemed, been utterly conquered by the very smallest members of the household.

“Are you not meant to be showing me around The Honeycomb, Grandmother?” he called after her. “You said we would begin this morning.”

He meant it lightly, but beneath the ease of the morning and the familiar rhythm of his family’s voices and teasing, there was an impatience he could not quite set aside. He had come to Bloomhaven for a purpose, and the sooner the work was done, the sooner he could leave. With any luck, he might even have The Honeycomb functioning properly and be back in the Shaded Lands before the Bloom Season began.

“Yes, yes, all in good time,” his grandmother called back, Emeric settled contentedly on her hip as she made for the kitchen door. “A scone is the more pressing matter at hand.” She paused between the herbs and flowers and looked back. “Sit for a while, Kazrian. Spend some time with your brother and sister. It has been an age since you were all together.”

“I spent the entirety of last evening with Rosavyn,” Kazrian pointed out as he turned and lowered Coralie from his back onto Jasvian’s lap. “And it has been all of four months since Jasvian and his family visited the Shaded Lands.”

“An eternity,” his grandmother said, walking away.

“She has a point,” Rosavyn said. “Four months is an age when there are small children involved. Emeric could barely speak a word the last time you saw him. Now he’s unearthing weaponry from beneath the furniture.”

“Naturally,” Kazrian replied. “What do you think he and I spent our time doing when he visited? I showed him all the best hiding spots.”

Rosavyn laughed and threw a grape at Kazrian. He fumbled it, nearly lost it, and closed his hand around it at the last possible moment.

“And look at that!” Rosavyn added. “Did I not say so, Grandmother? His reflexes have improved along with the rest of him. Do you remember how he used to walk into things?”

But their grandmother, having reached the kitchen doorway, ignored them both. Kazrian threw the grape back, and Rosavyn, who had half turned while calling across the garden, did not see it coming. It caught her neatly on the forehead and bounced onto the ground.

Kazrian bit back the laugh that threatened to burst from him at the sight of her magnificently unimpressed expression. “At least I can aim.”

He stepped around the chairs before she could retaliate further and followed his grandmother’s path toward the kitchen. “The Honeycomb is just at the end of this street, is it not? Might I go ahead and begin looking around?”

He did not follow her inside—he had resolved not to set foot in the tea house today, and most especially not its kitchen, and he saw no reason to abandon a perfectly sound strategy now. He stopped a few paces from the open doorway and waited.

“Ah, yes, perhaps that would be better,” his grandmother’s voice floated back from somewhere within. “You’ll find it easily, in between the bookshop and the florist. It is open, so you may let yourself in. I may be some time yet, I’m afraid.”

Kazrian turned back toward the garden and raised a hand in farewell to the others. “I shall see you all this evening, then? Grandmother mentioned you are hosting family dinner.”

“Yes,” Jasvian said. “Evryn and Mariselle are coming as well.”

“Do be careful at The Honeycomb,” Rosavyn added sweetly. “I’m told the place adds stairs where there ought not to be stairs. You and unexpected architecture have never been the best of friends.”

Kazrian only smiled, shook his head, and started back along the garden path around the side of the tea house. He had every intention of walking past the kitchen windows again without stopping. He had managed it on the way in. There was no reason he should not manage it on the way out.

But his feet slowed as he drew alongside the glass, and before he could instruct himself otherwise, he looked.

The kitchen was warm and bright and familiar in a way that pulled at something in his chest. Two kitchen pixies darted past the window in a blur of blue-tinged light. Orrit was at the central worktable, wiping the surface clean with a cloth nearly as large as himself. Emeric was perched on one of the side counters, legs swinging contentedly, while Kazrian’s grandmother arranged a scone on a small plate beside him.

Kazrian stepped closer to the glass.

He told himself he was simply looking. Taking stock of a room he had once known well. Noting what had changed. But his gaze moved past Orrit, past the hearth, past the copper kettles and the ovens, and found the far end of the counter—the stretch of surface just beyond Lissian’s tea brewing station, where a certain recipe book had sat for years. A thick volume bound in soft brown leather that had become battered and worn as time passed, its spine cracked, its cover marked with rings from teacups and sticky fingerprints from a hundred batches of confections.

Lucie’s book. The one she had filled, page by page, with everything she had learned from Mama Saffron and everything she had invented on her own. It had lived on that counter for almost as long as Kazrian had known Lucie. It had become as much a fixture of the kitchen as Orrit himself.

The book was not there.

Which meant she was not here. She had taken her book and gone. Married? Moved away? Begun a different life in a different kitchen? It did not matter. He had asked not to know, and now he did not know, and that was precisely as it should be.

Kazrian turned from the window and walked on.

The feeling in his chest, he told himself, was relief. It was not disappointment. It was certainly not the slow, hollow turning of a gear deep within his own workings, reaching for a counterpart that had been removed.

It was relief. He was sure of it.