“You are not helping,” I reply automatically, not bothering to open my eyes.
Lucien’s eyes open slowly as he studies me. “I assume Sir has offered commentary.”
“Rude commentary,” I clarify, shooting a mental glare in the cat’s direction.
Lucien exhales softly, the ghost of a smile touching his mouth, and somehow even his amusement looks elegant. “I’ll take that as confirmation.”
I close my eyes again and try to follow directions like a responsible adult who definitely did not move to a magical town only to spend her afternoons sitting on a rug attempting outdoor enlightenment with a fashion-forward Fae and a judgmental Familiar.
“Focus on the earth beneath you,” Lucien says, his voice taking on that soothing quality that makes me think he could probably talk me into believing anything. “Not the surface. Beneath it. The roots, the stones, the pulse of the land.”
I try to do what he says. I really do. I imagine roots stretching deep into the soil, spreading out in intricate networks, connecting everything in some vast underground web of life and energy. But all I can think about is how the ground is probably cold and damp and full of bugs.
“I live in Massachusetts,” I whisper. “All I can feel is seasonal depression and the urge to buy decorative gourds.”
“You are spiraling,” Sir says with a weary patience.
“I am reflecting,” I argue, because there’s a difference between spiraling and honest self-assessment, even if the end result looks suspiciously similar.
Lucien tilts his head slightly as he watches my face, studying my expression like he’s reading a book written in a language only he understands. “Whatever Sir is telling you right now, I suspect he is not encouraging decorative Cucurbitaceae.”
I snort despite myself, opening my eyes to look at him. “Did you just. . .did you really just use the scientific term for the family of squash?”
“I may have spent some time studying botanical classifications,” he says with that small smile that suggests there are layers to this man I haven’t even begun to explore.
“Close your eyes again,” Lucien says gently. “Try to listen rather than force the moment.”
I try. I really do.
I close my eyes and attempt to sink past the noise in my head, past the frustration that feels like static electricity under my skin, past the constant awareness that my magic should exist somewhere inside me and yet still feels like an empty room I cannot enter, no matter how many doors I try.
For a moment, there is quiet.
Just for a moment, I feel something, a flutter, like a bird brushing against a window. Something warm and electric and alive, humming just beneath the surface of my awareness.
Then my brain decides that quiet is unacceptable and begins replaying the last two weeks in excruciating detail.
Ezra explaining complicated potion and tincture craft while I stare at recipes that might as well be written in hieroglyphs. The way his dark eyes light up when he talks about magic, like he’ssharing secrets of the universe, while I sit there feeling like I’m missing some fundamental piece that would make it all make sense. The Wizard is a major nerd and usually I can get behind that being a book nerd myself, but I feel completely out of my depth, like I’m trying to learn calculus when I haven’t mastered basic arithmetic.
Toni encouraging me to move ivy around The Cackling Hen, barking at me to stop thinking and just will it. She insists that magic isn’t something you figure out, it’s something you experience. Lin waving her hands around in circles telling me to cleanse my chakras.
Sir correcting my pronunciation of an archaic phrase with the disappointment of a professor who expected better.
Lucien standing in the doorway of the shop, watching me with endless patience, like he has all the time in the world and is perfectly content to spend it waiting for me to figure out whatever lesson I’m supposed to be learning.
Maceo brushing past me in the narrow aisles of The Grass Is Greener and letting his hand slide briefly along the small of my back, as if touching me is the most natural thing in the world, as if physical affection is a language he speaks fluently and I’m finally learning to understand.
Three men who have shown up for me again and again in the past two weeks.
Three men who look at me like I’m worth their time, their attention, their care.
Me. Well, I’m standing in the middle of it wondering if I deserve any of it, wondering when the other shoe will drop, wondering what I’ll have to give up when they realize I’m not the powerful Witch they think I am.
My eyes snap open.
Lucien watches me carefully, those violet eyes see too much. “Sweetness, you are not focusing.”
“I am focusing,” I argue, so used to him calling me Sweetness that I don’t even question it anymore. The endearment has become as natural as breathing, like it was always meant to be there.
