“She answers to me, Cressa. Leave her.”
The silence that followed Kestian Dastran’s pronouncement was not empty, but thick with the hum of Cressa Lorn’s affronted pride. Her perfectly sculpted brows, dark as polished onyx, drew together in a line sharp enough to cut glass. Her gaze, which had been fixed on Neva with predatory intensity, now snapped to Kestian, a flicker of outrage igniting in their depths. The drawing-room, ordinarily quiet under its high stone vaulting, felt cramped around the dispute.
“Lord Dastran,” Cressa began, her tone hardening, “I merely seek to ensure the integrity of your household staff. One cannot be too careful, not with the unrest brewing in the outer districts. A simple registry check is hardly an imposition.” She pointed toward Neva, who still clutched the soiled cloth where the stray terrier peeked out between frayed seams.
Kestian stepped further into the light, his lean frame emerging from the gothic shadows. The platinum thread along his waistcoat caught the lamp, sharp against the grim line of his mouth. His eyes, the color of a winter sky, held Cressa’s with an unyielding intensity. “My house, Cressa, operates under my discretion. Her papers are in order. Now, if you are quite finished interrogating my staff, perhaps you could explain why you’ve arrived a full day before your scheduled visit.”
Cressa’s lips thinned. To be so blatantly rebuffed, in front of a scullery maid no less, was a profound insult to her standing. Her initial plan to expose Neva had backfired, but her aristocratic mind, sharp despite its current desperation, quickly pivoted. A new strategy formed, a more insidious form of humiliation. “My apologies, Kestian. An urgent matter of House Volterra’s shipping tariffs necessitated my early departure from the city. But since I am here, and since your new… *addition* seems so eager to serve, perhaps she can prepare us a High Court tea spread. I find myself quite parched after my journey.”
Cold settled in Neva's gut. A High Court presentation was no mundane refreshment, but the rigid ritual of Oakhaven’s upper crust. Every detail, from the precise temperature of the water to the exact angle of the pour, was a coded language of status. It was a test, designed to expose her. A scullery maid, fresh from scrubbing pots, would flounder, humiliating herself and, by extension, Kestian, for hiring such an incompetent.
Kestian merely watched Neva, an unreadable expression on his face. He didn’t interject, didn’t defend her. It felt like he was observing a curious specimen, waiting to see if she would break. Neva forced a wide, guileless smile onto her face. “Oh, an aristocratic tea rite? How simply delightful! I’ve always wanted to try one. Is it terribly difficult?” Her voice was light, airy, completely devoid of the sharp intelligence that normally defined her.
Cressa’s smile was a cruel, thin line. “Difficult for some, perhaps. But for a nimble-fingered girl such as yourself, I’m sure it will be a charming challenge. The conservatory nook, I think. And do ensure the ‘Dusk Orchid’ leaves are used. They are frightfully temperamental.”
Neva curtsied awkwardly, nearly catching her skirt hem, and bustled out of the drawing-room with the dog wrapped against her ribs. The moment she turned the corridor corner, her smile vanished. Her pulse surged against her collarbone. Dusk bloom. It required a mesh cage heated to eighty-five degrees, steeping for three minutes and fifteen seconds, and pouring from a lead-crystal flagon tilted just seven degrees to keep the dried petals whole. She had rehearsed the steps dozens of times in the Relladon family salon under her grandmother’s watchful tutor.
She reached the sprawling Dastran kitchens, a cavernous space of burnished copper and gleaming brass. Her hands moved with an instinctive economy that ignored her rising panic. She gathered the chased tray, thin eggshell cups, the glass vessel, and the lacquered box containing the rare leaves. Her mind, usually so adept at constructing facades, now accessed a different kind of memory – muscle memory, ingrained from years of aristocratic training.
The dog whined at her skirts, nudging her apron. She brushed his ear once. “Hush, boy,” she whispered under her breath. “Just an old turn around the floor.”
As Neva meticulously prepared each component, Bria, her loyal friend, appeared by the pneumatic tube station, a scroll of parchment clutched in her hand. “Neva! Just got this through the ‘Whisperwind’ network. Cressa Lorn is toast. Rumors are her family’s entire shipping consortium is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. She’s here to secure Lord Dastran’s distribution monopoly for the Volterra routes. Desperate, the scoundrel.” Bria’s eyes were wide with a mixture of concern and mischievous delight. “Trying to intimidate you was probably just a power play to show Kestian she’s still got teeth.”
Neva kept her empty grin fixed, though the purpose fell neatly into place. So Cressa’s venom wasn’t just personal, it was a calculated maneuver. Knowing this, Neva pushed the last lingering threads of anxiety away. She would brew the leaves without a single flaw.
Back in the lower hearth room, Kestian watched Cressa across the mahogany table. Her attempts to discuss market shares and municipal gossip met only flat monosyllables. His gaze kept drifting to the entrance, a peculiar anticipation in his normally impassive features. When Neva reappeared, wheeling a polished brass cart laden with the tray and glassware, Cressa’s jaw tightened. The scullery maid, still sporting that infuriatingly vacant smile, was clearly not intimidated.
Neva approached the low table, her movements fluid and graceful, a stark contrast to her earlier feigned clumsiness. She laid out the cups, saucers, and spoons with practiced ease. The glass carafe, filled with the amber infusion, caught the wall sconces. She lifted the flagon, her fingers steady as they locked around the handle. Her wrist angled seven degrees, sending an unbroken stream into the first cup without splashing a drop.
The steam rose, carrying dried plum and toasted clove into the draft. For Cressa, it was a familiar scent of luxury, a symbol of her fading world. For Kestian, it was a ghost.
The scent, heavy and pervasive, clawed at him. It wasn't just tea; it was the metallic tang of fear, the acrid burn of engine oil, the sharp, medicinal antiseptic from the infirmary. The clinking of porcelain became the shattering of glass, the lamplight flared like gas lamps rushing down a fog-slick road. He was no longer in Dastran Manor, but trapped in the twisted wreckage, the agonizing screams of metal and flesh echoing in his ears. The world tilted, spun, the familiar faces blurring into panicked phantoms. His chest tightened, air refusing to enter his lungs, as if crushed beneath iron beams.
Neva, mid-pour, saw the subtle but alarming shift in Kestian. His knuckles, resting on his knee, had gone white. His gaze, normally locked down, drifted hollow toward the baseboards. The color drained from his face, leaving him ashen. His breathing grew shallow, ragged, a desperate gulp for air that never quite came. Neva dropped her wide smile, setting the tray down before it rattled. She knew this look. It was the haunted emptiness of trauma, the sudden, visceral recall that stole the present.
“Lord Dastran?” Cressa’s tone snapped with impatience, blind to the rigid paralysis gripping him. “Are you quite well?”
Neva didn’t answer. She didn't hesitate. Without a thought for her carefully constructed persona, she swiftly set down the decanter. She leaned down toward the scruffy pup curled against the cart wheel. “Up, little one,” she murmured softly. She lifted the mud-dusted dog, ignored Cressa’s gasp, and set him directly into Kestian’s lap.
The animal's solid heat and rough coat pressed directly against Kestian’s freezing palms. Kestian twitched, then looked down into the terrier's dark pupils as a warm tongue grazed his knuckle. The constriction in his throat slackened, the memory fading to a low ring. He took a shuddering breath, then another, deeper one. The scent of tea, once a trigger, was now merely tea. He sat in his own drafty sitting room. Neva was there, her expression unreadable now, but with an intensity that had not been there moments before.
He caught his breath, the tremor in his hands slowly subsiding. His gaze, still hazy, fell to Neva’s hand, resting gently on Barnaby’s head. It was a slender hand, the nails perfectly shaped and buffed, not a hint of the rough work she claimed to do. The hand of someone who had never scrubbed a pot in her life. His gaze dropped to the crystal vessel on the brass cart, then rose to Neva. “Where did you learn to handle a High Court pour, Neva?”