Page 45 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
When she finally pulls back, she lets her forehead rest against mine, and I wrap both arms around her waist like I’m anchoring us both to the ground.
“I don’t deserve you,” she murmurs.
“You do,” I say, low and certain. “You deserve more than this glade. You deserve the whole godsdamn forest.”
A loud throat-clear interrupts whatever else I might’ve said, and we both turn to see Bramley standing a few feet away, arms crossed and face as grumpy as I’ve ever seen it—though the corners of his mouth twitch like he’s fighting the ghost of a grin.
“I came for a cider refill,” he says, gruff and pointed, “not a live reenactment of an orc courting ritual.”
Tessa snorts and steps back with one last squeeze of my hand, giving Bramley her best sunny smile. “You’re just mad because we didn’t invite you to the wedding yet.”
His bushy brows shoot up. “Yet?”
I stiffen. “We’re not—we didn’t?—”
“Relax,” Tessa drawls, patting my chest like I’m a particularly excitable mule. “No rings yet. He’s just getting around to planting metaphorical trees.”
Bramley harrumphs, clearly not satisfied with that answer, and then—like he’s been holding it back all day—he jerks his chin at me and mutters, “You’ll need a sturdier barn once those half-orc babies start climbing the rafters.”
I nearly choke on air.
Tessa doubles over laughing.
Bramley just turns and walks off like he didn’t just lob a godsdamn grenade into the middle of my nervous system, leaving me standing there with the echo of “half-orc babies” bouncing around in my skull like a pinball.
Tessa’s wheezing, trying to catch her breath. “You should see your face,” she gasps. “You look like someone told you taxes are made of spiders.”
“I—what—he?—”
“Articulate, as always,” she teases, pressing a kiss to my cheek and then sauntering off toward the cider barrel like she didn’t just break my brain with one laugh.
And damn me, I’m still standing there, hand clutching that last deed, heart hammering like I just sprinted a mile uphill. Because as ridiculous as it sounded… it didn’t scare me.
Not like it used to.
Maybe Bramley’s right. Maybe Iwillneed a sturdier barn.
Hell, maybe I’ll build it myself.
One maple tree at a time.
CHAPTER 23
TESSA
The first time I hold one of the finished sachets in my palm, I feel like I’ve bottled sunlight. The warmth isn't literal—not heat, exactly—but something deeper, like the way early autumn air wraps around you when the wind still remembers summer. Each one is small, stitched from soft linen dyed with petal-infused water, sealed with a twist of vine thread, and tied with a copper wax seal I stamp myself with a tiny oak leaf and heart pressed into the center. Inside, nestled among herbs and dried blooms, are the seeds.
I call themHollow Blooms.Little enchanted bouquets you can take home in your pocket, carry across the world, bury in your own backyard and—if the charm takes—watch something from here grow somewhere else.
The spellwork is delicate, the kind that hums instead of sings, coaxing life from seed to sprout wherever the soil’s willing. It’s not flashy magic, not the sort that makes newspapers or earns medals, but it’s mine. Grown slow. Rooted in this place. Just like me.
Tara calls it “witchcraft for romantics,” which I take as the highest compliment.
“They’re like... floral horcruxes,” she mutters around a mug of rosehip tea, “except you’re not hiding a piece of your soul, you’re offering it.”
I grin from across the counter, fingers stained green from threading goldenrod through a drying rack. “Exactly. Just with fewer dark curses and more honeysuckle.”
The orders come in faster than I expect.
