“Good,” he said, then added, almost as an afterthought, “and nice catch, by the way. That anomaly you flagged in your initial draft? We had no idea the Hale property was sitting on that kind of power.”
Honey blinked. “Sorry, which anomaly?”
“The evidence of dual power sources. The oversight committee was thrilled. They’ve already recommended a formal hearing for next week.”
She couldn’t breathe. She remembered first walking up to the Hale property and noticing the strange flow of magic through the yard, the ley line that didn’t seem to follow a single path. She’d included it in her initial report as some kind of anomaly. But it was just a footnote. She never meant—Oh, god.
“Oh. Uh. That’s—great. Sir, I’m losing you—I think the signal here’s bad—hell—hello?”
She ended the call with a trembling thumb and stared down at the screen like it had betrayed her. The world around her muffled. Voices blended together. The hum of a mixer. The clink of a spoon on porcelain.
Her mind scrambled backward. She’d flagged that as a technicality. A footnote in a margin. She hadn’t intended to trigger a hearing. It wasn’t even a real recommendation, just a placeholder she meant to revise once she understood the flow of magic.
But now the oversight committee was involved. Now it was formal. There were documents. Paper trails. And she knew what they’d find once they dug into it. They'd fall into the “at-risk” category. Which meant…
Which meant the orchard could be—no, would be—claimed by the bureau.
Because of her.
Oh god.
Honey gripped the edge of the table. Her skin prickled. Maybe she could submit a retraction, or argue that it was an exploratory note, or say she’d misfiled the thing entirely. Maybe?—
No. That would call more attention to it. It was already scheduled. The train had left the station, and she was tied to the tracks with a bouquet of guilt.
She was going to have to tell Ethan.
Across from her, Theo tilted his head in inspection of her.
She avoided eye contact and reached for her tea. Her hands trembled as she brought it to her lips and forced a sip past the lump in her throat.
“Would you like to talk about it?” he asked when she put her teacup back in its saucer with a clatter.
“Not particularly.”
Theo gave the smallest of nods. He leaned back in the booth, fingers steepled lightly on the table. “That’s fair. Better to push the feelings down until you have a heart attack one day.”
She let out a weak, half-hearted laugh and immediately buried it with another sip of tea.
He waited.
She didn’t look at him, but her voice cracked anyway when she said, “I think I…I might have triggered a formal hearing on the Hale property.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Triggered, as in...?”
“As in it's my fault.” The words tumbled out. “I found an anomaly in the magic flow. I didn’t mean for it to mean anything, but I flagged it, and now it’s in review and?—”
She let out a tight breath and pressed her palms against the tabletop to keep them from shaking.
“I didn’t realize it would amount to anything. I thought I was being thorough. And now I’m the reason the Hale family is going to lose their home.”
There it was. Said aloud. A solid, awful truth that dropped into the booth like a stone.
She glanced up finally, eyes wide. “How do I tell Ethan that?”
Theo didn’t answer right away. He just looked at her, calm and steady. Then, gently: “You start with the truth. And you lead with the part where you’re sorry, and you didn’t mean for it to go like this.”
Honey stared at him, heart thudding.
