Page 7 of A Heart of Winter (Fairy Tale Retellings #4)

Sweets for Sweets

A s it turned out, Kai loved both butter cookies and rice pudding. Also the stew, the wine, the cabin, the jasmine tea, and snuggling under a blanket next to the fire while it snowed outside.

“Maybe vacationing in snowy places,” he admitted, pulling me closer to him under the blanket as we let the TV play some cooking show in the background. “I don’t want to live with the cold all the time, but even I’ve got to admit this is pretty great.”

“I’m sure Morwenna would let me borrow the cabin whenever I wanted,” I said, once again letting my mouth run away with me.

But he’d kind of done it too, hadn’t he? I mean, we’d just met. We were on our first date. But he’d been the one to bring up the idea of future vacations.

Maybe he hadn’t mentioned me, but he’d said it to me, and that was something. It implied maybe those future vacations could involve me.

The whole thing felt strange and different from any romantic entanglement I’d ever gotten into before.

Sure, I’d never been big on romance. I was a witch, and it had taken me lots of long, work-filled years to get as good at that as I was.

I hadn’t even had time for much romance till I was a hundred, and then it had been hard to get into the right mindset for it.

It didn’t help that most people were so much younger than me, and my mentor had been calling me an old soul when I was five. Not that I knew so much more than other people, or I was so mature—the older I got, the more I realized that the very concept of maturity wasn’t what people thought it was.

Yes, fine, there was a point where every person reached—or didn’t reach—adulthood, and took responsibility for themselves and their actions.

But after that, there was no great moment of clarity that made you more adult than the other adults.

No enormous insight that people in their thirties didn’t have and people in their fifties did.

Well, unless it was that in the end, only the things you prioritized mattered to you. I’d spent my life becoming a better witch, because that was what mattered most. Then came romance, because it mattered a little, but not as much. And I was fine with that.

Morwenna had only cared about magic and family, and she had magic and me, her family. Romance had never been a thing she cared about, and she didn’t want it.

Kai had established his career, and now he was using it to move somewhere he wanted to be. Romance hadn’t been an early priority, but it was something to him. He understood that his priorities shaped his life.

Lips brushed against the shell of my ear, bringing me back to the present moment. “What’s that old saying? A penny for your thoughts?”

I leaned into him. “Thinking about how the things that are important to us get the most focus in our lives. And both of us spent most of our time on work so far.”

He gave a little snort of laughter. “You should have heard my mother complain about it. I was going to get too old to have children, and she”—he paused and swallowed thickly—“she really wanted grandkids.”

I’d never even considered the subject of children. It was probably why witches were so rare, our relative lack of hurry in procreation. When you were going to live for such a long time, why rush?

“I’m sorry she didn’t get that wish. Do you want to have children?”

He rested his head against mine and gave a sigh.

“I won’t say it never crossed my mind, but it’s what you said earlier.

It’s never been a priority. I wanted to arrange my life how I wanted it, then think about adding things like relationships and kids.

I always wanted a partner to share my life with more than I cared about children. ”

I certainly couldn’t speak against that way of thinking, since it had been exactly my own, just on a longer timeline. Plus I was sure Michael never in a million years would have wanted kids, adopted or otherwise.

But that didn’t matter anymore. I was moving forward, not back, and moving on was the only way to settle my magic.

“A partner sounds nice,” I agreed, snuggling deeper into the blanket and against his body.

It didn’t even occur to me to move to the bedroom as I fell asleep there on the sectional sofa with his body warm against mine.