Iris fell silent, her gaze drifting to the window where moonlight cast silver patterns across the glass. The tea house seemed to hold its breath around them, the vines on the walls barely stirring. A fragile hope flickered within her—the possibility that her strange magic might truly have value—but it wavered she thought of the whispered judgments, the sidelongglances that followed her everywhere, the Brightcrest sisters’ sneers.
“Something else troubles you,” Rivenna observed after a moment, her tone returning to one closer to her usual brusque manner. “What happened in the maze? Be out with it so we may move on.”
Iris sighed. “The Brightcrest sisters … they called me a ‘half-breed interloper.’ Said I was merely a novelty that would soon fade, that I would never truly belong in this world.” She raised her gaze to meet Rivenna’s. “And I fear they’re right. Everything about me—my bloodline, my upbringing, my magic that I’m clearly incapable of controlling properly—marks me as an outsider. I fear that you, too, will soon realize this about me. You will decide you’ve made a mistake offering me this apprenticeship. Because it isn’t only the Brightcrests. You must have noticed the way at least half of the tea house’s patrons seem to lean away from me when I pass them. The sideways glances they still give me. Not a day goes by when at least some of the whispers the tea house shares with me are about how I did nothing to deserve this position and that I am not worthy of proper society’s attention. Soon you will see that I’m nothing but a … a …”
“Usurper?” Rivenna supplied. “Upstart? Stain on the pristine fabric of fae society? Do feel free to stop me when I reach the correct level of dramatic self-pity.”
Iris stared at her, caught between outrage and disbelief. “I don’t understand how you can be so … so …”
“Unsympathetic?” Rivenna leaned back in her chair. “Let me tell you something about sympathy, my dear. When I was first betrothed to the Rowanwood heir, do you know what society’s leading ladies said about me?”
The abrupt shift threw Iris off balance. “I … what?”
“They said I was a social-climbing nobody with parlor trick magic who’d somehow managed to enchant a man far above my station.” Rivenna’s voice was crisp, matter-of-fact. “They wondered aloud—and quite deliberately within my hearing—how long it would take him to come to his senses.”
“But you’re Lady Rivenna Rowanwood,” Iris protested. “You’re practically the queen of Bloomhaven society.”
“I am now. But I wasn’t born into this position. And that, Lady Iris, is why I understand perfectly well what you are feeling right now. Did you know—” she tipped her head slightly to one side “—that you and I are not so unalike?”
Iris frowned. “How so?”
“What is my magical ability?”
“It is—” Iris broke off. “I suppose I don’t actually know. Something to do with tea leaf reading?”
A small smile curved Rivenna’s lips. “Patterns, Lady Iris. But more specifically, connections. My magical ability allows me to see the connections between people—the intricate webs of relationships, influences, and experiences that bind us all together.” Rivenna’s fingers traced an invisible pattern on the table, her eyes distant. “It has proved a useful ability, though many still think that all I can do is …” She looked up with a wry smile. “Make pretty patterns. At my debut, my demonstration was considered utterly unremarkable, just as yours was.”
Iris found herself leaning forward, eager to know more. “What did you do?”
“I used threads of light to weave patterns in the air showing the connections between everyone present—bloodlines, alliances, rivalries, tentative matches that had already begun to form. The threads were all color-coded to mean different things, and what did the majority of the ballroom see? A pretty web of colored light. The High Lady herself could barely conceal her yawn.”
“I can certainly relate to that.”
“Indeed, I felt precisely as you do now. Unworthy, out of place, possessed of a gift that no one valued or understood.” Rivenna’s gaze grew sharp again. “But I refused to accept their assessment. I discovered something important, Lady Iris. Something you would do well to remember: if you do not feel you belong anywhere, then you mustmakea place in which to belong.”
“The tea house,” Iris murmured, understanding dawning.
“Precisely. I created a space that would draw people to me rather than requiring me to seek acceptance elsewhere. A place where my particular gifts—seeing how people and events connect, reading how these patterns shape society itself—would be not merely useful but essential.” Rivenna gestured to the silent tea house around them. “And now, generations later, not a single event of consequence occurs in Bloomhaven without being whispered about within these walls.”
“But how did you know it would work?”
“I didn’t. But I suspected they would come to need me. Need my insights, my ability to know when and how to place the right people together to foster existing connections and form new ones. I knew I could create opportunities for the types of interactions people would enjoy and want to experience again. A need to return, again and again.” She paused. “And I must say, watching everyone pretend they never doubted me has been rather entertaining.”
A laugh escaped Iris before she could stop it. “I can imagine.”
“Can you?” Rivenna fixed her with a penetrating look. “Then perhaps you can also imagine what you might do with your own talents, instead of sitting here waiting for society to grant you permission to exist.”
“I …” Iris faltered. “You think that my magic … this ability to see multiple possibilities …”
“Is rare and valuable beyond measure,” Rivenna finished. “The tea house chose you for a reason, Lady Iris. It recognized in you something that most others have failed to see. Something that, in time, will make you as essential to Bloomhaven’s society as I have become.”
The vines along the wall nearest to them stirred, reaching out a tendril that brushed against Iris’s hand with what felt remarkably like affection. Yet she couldn’t shake the fear that sat in her chest. “It hardly seems possible,” she said softly, her gaze drifting to the questing vine at her fingertips. “Each day I grow more devoted to this position, yet I cannot shake the feeling that it all rests upon some fortunate error. That I am merely borrowing a place that was never truly meant for me, and one day I will be asked to surrender it when the mistake comes to light.”
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” Rivenna said, leaning forward as her voice took on a firmness that commanded attention, “as it seems you still harbor doubts where there should be none. This apprenticeship is not a temporary arrangement or a trial position. You have beenchosen—by both myself and the tea house. This is your future, Lady Iris. This is where you belong. Theonlycircumstance in which you would not become the eventual proprietress of The Charmed Leaf is if you yourself decided you no longer wished it. The question now,” Rivenna continued, rising to her feet with a rustle of silk, “is not whether you are worthy of this position, but whether you are brave enough to embrace it fully. To create your own place in a world that may not immediately understand your value.”
She extended a hand to Iris, and after one last moment of hesitation, Iris reached for it and stood. “Thank you, Lady Rivenna. I believe I am.”
Chapter Twenty-One
