Page 3

Nerissa slid the fresh cup toward her, this one dark and bitter. She didn’t need to sniff.

Mocha. Anger.

“How’s Wren?” Nerissa asked softly.

“Deteriorating. Magical exhaustion. The earth isn’t speaking to her.”

“She’s part of the land. If she’s sick, the forest’s grieving.”

Delilah nodded slowly. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

She carried her drink back to the corner and collapsed into the chair again.

Outside, the mist hung low, cloaking the streets in secrets. The whispering woods loomed beyond the rooftops—alive, watching. Delilah’s fingers curled around the mug again, and her thoughts turned back to Rollo.

The first boy she kissed. The only man she ever loved. The one who disappeared without a damn word.

“Why’d it have to be him?” she muttered.

“Because fate,” Nerissa sang from the counter, not even looking up.

Delilah groaned. “I don’t believe in fate.”

“You will.”

Her phone buzzed. A text from the healer’s ward at the apothecary.

Wren asking for you. Bad night. Spirits whispering again.

She shoved the phone back in her coat.

Duty first. Heartbreak second. The forest needed her.

And Celestial Pines? It needed a reckoning.

2

ROLLO

Rollo Steele had smelled her before he saw her.

He’d barely stepped foot off the dirt trail when the wind shifted—carrying a current of rosemary, damp moss, and something heartbreakingly familiar. His whole body stilled.

Delilah.

The scent hit like a memory swung from a pine branch and smacked him clean in the gut. He stood in the middle of Main Street, boots rooted to the cobblestones, a burlap sack of feed slung over one shoulder and three raccoon kits squalling from the sanctuary cart behind him.

"Easy now," he muttered to the kits, but it wasn’t them making his pulse hitch.

She was here.

After eight years. And she had made it clear she didn’t want anything to do with him. Still, he found himself waiting outside hoping without an audience, she’d hear him out.

The bell above The Spellbound Sip jangled, soft and mocking, as the café door swung open—and there she was. Steam curling behind her like ghostlight, a mug clutched tight inher hands, and her dark chestnut curls pulled back with a ribbon that looked frayed from travel.

Time didn’t dare touch her.

She looked like every spring morning he'd ever missed.