Page 41 of Deals & Dream Spells (The Charmed Leaf Legacy #2)
Evryn frowned as he took one of the cups from her hand to examine it more closely. “Who are Rik and Venna?”
Mariselle gave him a look that said, Are you being intentionally dim? “Your grandparents? Valenrik and Rivenna?”
A loud snort escaped Evryn. He handed the teacup back to Mariselle. “You cannot be serious. Do you think there’s a single person in the entire United Fae Isles who could get away with calling my grandmother Venna ?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Mariselle said, “no, I can’t imagine that. But who else could it be? And Kren and Rella are obviously Krenshaw and Nirella. My grandparents. And have you ever heard of someone named Sera? Her teacup is in the kitchen too.”
Evryn shook his head .
Mariselle studied the delicate teacups with a thoughtful expression. “What do you think this means?”
With his mind still lingering on the half-written passage in his notebook, Evryn struggled to formulate a sensible answer. “I …” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably nothing of consequence.”
“Nothing of consequence? Our grandparents had personalized teacups hidden away in this cottage like some sort of … clandestine tea society,” Mariselle exclaimed, her eyes wide with scandalized delight.
She turned the cups in her hands, examining them from every angle as though they might reveal additional secrets.
“Not just any teacups. Ones with … diminutive forms of their names. Familiar names. You don’t think they were …
” Her voice lowered conspiratorially, hovering between fascination and horror.
Evryn raised an eyebrow, immediately understanding her implication. “Friends? Impossible,” he scoffed, though the evidence in her hands suggested otherwise.
“Then how do you explain this?”
Evryn inhaled deeply, searching his mind for an answer that made sense. ‘They were friends’ was not only improbable, it was as likely as discovering gossip birds had taken a vow of silence.
“We know Krenshaw Brightcrest and Thaelan Rowanwood were business associates. We know they often worked here at the cottage. I also know that Thaelan and his older brother, my grandfather, were considered to be close. I suppose it’s not entirely beyond imagination that they might all have shared tea here occasionally, along with their wives—in a strictly professional capacity, of course. ”
“I suppose,” Mariselle said, though she sounded unconvinced.
After another moment’s pause, she turned and headed back to the kitchen, where the light clinking of porcelain and the gentle splash of water indicated she was preparing tea.
Evryn tried to refocus on his writing, but the words refused to flow.
Instead, his mind kept circling back to those teacups.
His grandmother being called ‘Venna’ by anyone, let alone Brightcrests, seemed utterly inconceivable.
The quiet sounds of Mariselle’s movements in the kitchen filled the cottage.
A few minutes later, she emerged, a steaming cup in her hand.
She rounded the table and stopped beside the window seat.
“I made you some tea,” she said, then smiled and turned the cup so he could see the label. “In the Rik teacup.”
Evryn eyed the steaming liquid warily. She’d offered him tea before, and he’d invariably declined, knowing better than to accept anything from those deceptively delicate hands. But tonight, an oddly familiar aroma wafted from the cup. Something comforting. Something he actually enjoyed.
“What is it?” he asked, making no move to take it.
“An infusion of duskmint and vanilla. Apparently you like it?”
His eyes narrowed further. How did she know his preferred tea? And more importantly, why would she trouble herself to prepare it? The blue-haired menace before him did nothing without purpose, without calculation.
“Why would you go to the trouble of brewing the tea I like?”
She rolled her eyes with dramatic flair. “Because I like it. I thought you might want some too.” When he still made no move to accept the cup, she let out an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for goodness’ sake.”
She lifted the cup to her own lips and took a deliberate sip before returning it to its saucer and extending it toward him once more. “See? Perfectly safe.”
He regarded the cup with even greater revulsion now. The thought of putting his lips where hers had just been caused an inexplicable heat to crawl up his neck. Absolutely not.
Reading his expression with irritating accuracy, she rolled her eyes again and rotated the teacup on its saucer. “There. So that your perfect lips do not have to be tainted by touching the same part of the cup my lips have touched.”
Despite himself, Evryn felt one eyebrow arch upward as he finally took the cup from her. “You think my lips are perfect?”
Without missing a beat, she replied, “I think your lips are perpetually formed into a self-satisfied smirk that must be exhausting to maintain. Perhaps the tea will help you relax that particular muscle group.”
Evryn found that his lips were indeed curved into a smirk, and he couldn’t help laughing quietly as she crossed back to the kitchen. He took a cautious sip of the tea—which was, infuriatingly, brewed exactly as he preferred—and placed it on the window sill within easy reach.
He returned to his writing, Mariselle returned to her dream core.
He sipped the tea and followed his thoughts across the page.
After some time, he noticed the quill moving more sluggishly, his usually precise handwriting becoming increasingly erratic.
An unnatural heaviness settled over him, as if the very air had thickened.
How long had he been writing? Minutes? Hours? The words before him blurred, dancing across the page. His eyelids grew impossibly heavy, each blink lasting longer than the one before.
With dawning horror, realization cut through the fog clouding his mind. The tea. She’d put something in the tea. How could he have been so foolish?
“You … you poisoned me,” he slurred, the notebook sliding from his suddenly weak fingers. His limbs felt weighted with lead, his head too heavy to hold upright.
The last thing he saw as his eyes slid shut was Mariselle leaning closer, her blue hair gleaming in the faelight as she blew him a kiss.
“Sweet dreams, Rowanwood,” she whispered, her voice following him down into darkness. “See you on the other side.”