A delightful queer romantic fantasy full of friends-to-lovers chemistry, found family, rival family drama, and cozy garden magic from two acclaimed YA authors making their debut in the adult space. Yael Clauneck is the only scion of an obscenely wealthy banking family with its fingers in every pie in the realm. They’re on the precipice of a predetermined life when they flee their own graduation party, galloping away in search of…well, they’re not sure, but maybe the chance to feel like life can still be a grand adventure. Margot Greenwillow--talented plant witch, tea lover, and greenhouse owner--has never felt further from adventure in her life. She’s been desperately trying to keep what remains of her family''s magic remedies business afloat. So when her childhood friend and former crush, Yael, rides back into her life, she’s shocked. But perhaps this could be a good thing. After all, Margot could use an assistant in the greenhouses. Yael has no experience or, honestly, practical skills, but they’re delighted to accept. They can lay low for a while, flirting with Margot while they figure out what to do next. Meanwhile, Margot has plans of her own--but plans are notoriously unreliable things, unlikely to survive a swiftly blooming mutual attraction, not to mention the machinations of parents determined to get their heir back . . . no matter the cost.

Autorentext

Jamie Pacton is a bestselling, award-winning young adult and middle grade author who lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family. Her YA contemporary books include Furious, Lucky Girl, and The Life and (Medieval) Times of Kit Sweetly. Her YA fantasy novels include The Absinthe Underground and The Vermilion Emporium.

Rebecca Podos is the Lambda Literary Award-winning author of YA novels including From Dust, a Flame and Furious, co-written with Jamie Pacton. By day, she’s an agent at the Rees Literary Agency in Boston.

Leseprobe
1

Yael

This party is supposed to be for Yael. So claimed the coveted invitations, heavy in their goatskin envelopes, thick paper addressed in malachite ink to the cream of society: Mr. Baremon Clauneck and Mrs. Menorath Clauneck request the honor of your presence in celebration upon their child’s graduation from Auximia Academy. But it seems to Yael like any other company event. The jeweled suits and gowns. The deals being made around fountains of pale champagne and velvety red wine. The offering altar tucked inside a private chamber off the ballroom—­one of half a dozen such altars scattered about Clauneck Manor, this one meant for guests to curry favor with the family’s patron. It’s nothing Yael hasn’t seen at a thousand such dinner parties.

They weren’t even consulted on the cake flavor. (Hibiscus, for f***’s sake!)

“Let me guess. Animal handling?”

They look up from sniffing the ten-­tiered monstrosity of a cake on display and find Alviss Oreborn smirking at them over the lip of a massive silver tankard.

“Come again?”

“Your field of study at Auximia. Animal handling, wasn’t it?”

Oreborn is teasing, clearly. He likes to pretend to be salt of the earth, the way he carries that tankard—­albeit engraved with his own family crest—­strapped to his belt like a shortsword and stomps around in mud-­splattered boots even though there isn’t an unpaved street in the capital. Not south of the Willowthorn, at least. But Oreborn is a major depositor with the Clauneck Company. His silver mines are used to mint half the coinage in the kingdom—­mines he hasn’t set foot inside for decades.

“Law,” Yael corrects him, pausing to drain their third glass of champagne, “with a specialty in arcana and transmutation. Father’s putting me in the currency exchange department at the company, apprenticed to Uncle Mikhil.”

“Well now. There’s a fancy job that’ll take you to many foreign shores.”

“I’m not sure it’ll take me any farther than the Hall of Exchange or the Records Library.” Yael grimaces, picturing the airless, echoing library in the bowels of the Clauneck office in the Copper Court.

If one were to gaze down upon Harrow from the back of a great eagle, the kingdom’s capital city of Ashaway would be easy to spot by its black basalt walls, roughly hexagonal; by the deep silver slice of the Willowthorn River, which runs from the mountains of the Northlands down to the west coast, carving right through the capital on its way; and, perhaps most of all, by the triumvirate of shining courts at its very center. The Golden Court at the topmost point, where the queens’ palace sits. The Ivory Court, home to the campus of Auximia, with its white stone towers. And the Copper Court, the main trading square in Ashaway—­and thus, in the kingdom—­named for its copper-­tiled rooftops that blaze like bonfires in the sun. The Clauneck Company office is the tallest of the court’s fiery towers, but the library where records of every deposit, withdrawal, exchange, and investment are kept, accessible only by Clauneck blood, sits well below the earth. Its door is more thickly painted with security wards than the royal toilet.

“When you’ve seen one shore, you’ve seen them all, ey? Anyway, I expect you’ll be occupied by the family business, as well as the business of family making.” Oreborn claps Yael hard on the arm, and they almost fall sideways into the cake stand. “It’s the same for my Denby. See him yonder? Grew up handsome, he did.”

Yael looks across the ballroom at the towering Denby, shaped like a barrel with a beard. At twenty-­three years of age, Yael has accepted the probability of staying five feet and a handbreadth tall forever . . . or mostly, they have. They’ve added a few inches this evening by fluffing up their finger-­length black hair in defiance of gravity and the gods themselves. “Quite a specimen,” Yael manages.

“Isn’t he? I’ll bring him around in a more, er, intimate setting and reacquaint you two from when you were small,” Oreborn says with a wink. “Well, smaller.” Then he claps Yael again, roaring with laughter as he swaggers off.

Massaging their arm through their dress coat—­green silk so thickly embroidered with ferns, buds, and briars, it’s stiff to move in, with a matching vest beneath—­Yael watches Oreborn go. The man is a menace, and his son is a bully. They imagine having to talk to Denby, having to dance with Denby. It’d be like a squirrel waltzing with a big, mean tree.

Rather than consider it further, Yael makes their way to the bar counter to reacquaint themself with something stronger than champagne.

It’s only a moment before one of the barkeeps hired for the night notices them and approaches the counter. “Something to drink, sir’ram?” She pulls a glass from thin air in a flourish of magic, without anything like the scent of ozone and iron that accompanies the Claunecks’ own limited spellwork. A natural caster, then, of which there are none to be found in Yael’s family. Truly, magic doesn’t care whether you’re born into a manor house or a hut in the Rookery.

Yael watches, mesmerized by the muscled forearms beneath her rolled shirtsleeves. “Everything to drink, if you please.” They grin and prop their elbows on the counter, their chin on one fist. “Where do you suggest I start?”

“We’ve a fine Witchwood Absinthe. Folk say you can hear the voices of the dead if you drink enough. Or perhaps a Copperhea…