Chapter 14: Tea, Tension, and Tiny Explosions
Elaine was regretting everything.
Not just letting Caius back into her life, or agreeing to host a "friendly" tea to "catch up"—but also the invention of tea itself. Because how could a drink so warm and comforting carry so much emotional carnage?
The parlor felt like a standoff dressed in velvet.
Caius sat at one end of the low table, draped in princely smugness, sipping rose petal tea as though it were liquefied destiny. Lior leaned against the windowsill, his mug of black coffee a quiet rebellion against anything floral or fragile. Elaine sat in the middle like a moderator in an emotional Cold War.
"So," Caius began, his tone dipped in honey and poison, "how long have you two been… this?"
Elaine coughed into her teacup. "Friends."
Lior snorted. "With emotional footnotes."
"We study together," she added quickly, avoiding Caius's raised brow.
Caius set his cup down with the kind of deliberate gentleness that usually precedes a fire. "Interesting. Because I distinctly remember you saying you didn't trust men with swords."
Elaine raised an eyebrow. "No, I said I don't trust men who name their swords. You called yours Dawnpiercer. That's not a weapon—it's a personality disorder."
Lior choked on his drink.
Caius's jaw twitched. "It's a legendary blade blessed by the Oracle of Noctara."
"It sounds like something a bard wrote in the middle of a heartbreak."
"Still better than hiding behind witty commentary."
Lior's voice cut in, low and calm. "At least she doesn't have to hide behind prophecy."
Elaine tensed.
Caius smiled with icy civility. "And you are?"
"Lior Caelum. Elaine's present."
The emphasis wasn't subtle.
Caius's smile thinned. "That remains to be seen."
"Does it?" Lior tilted his head. "Because she doesn't look like someone waiting to be rescued."
The temperature in the room dropped ten emotional degrees. Elaine opened her mouth to speak, but Caius beat her to it.
"I've had… dreams," he said slowly. "Of Elaine. Of places I've never been. Feelings that don't belong to this version of me."
Elaine froze. "You're…"
"That's why I came here to see everything. Glimpses. A garden of fireflies. A book with pressed flowers. A night where someone cried and I—"
He stopped. His eyes flicked to her, unreadable.
Elaine swallowed, heart ticking faster.
Then—
Pop.
A tiny explosion sparked near the fireplace. A shimmer of golden light danced through the air before fizzling out.
All three of them stared.
"…Did your house just sneeze?" Caius asked.
Elaine pinched the bridge of her nose. "That was a memory flare."
"A what now?"
"When emotional charge intersects with timeline instability," she explained, "fragments of other timelines bleed into this one. Sometimes it's sparkles. Sometimes it's birdsong. Once, I got rained on indoors for a week."
Lior pointed at the hearth. "That flare? It also happened the last time I remembered something."
Elaine winced. "Technically, once they remember something, it was me reacting to… them. It means my presence is destabilizing this timeline." She muttered.
Caius perked up. "So whatever we were—"
"Were, past tense," Elaine said quickly.
"It's unresolved," she said carefully. "Not romantic. Just… tangled."
Lior stepped forward. "Then let's untangle it."
Elaine blinked. "How?"
He looked at her directly. "Pick."
Her breath caught. "What?"
"Him or me," Lior said, not unkindly. "This tension? The memory flares? They're only going to get worse. You have to choose, Elaine."
Caius stood. "She already did once."
"And the world nearly ended," Lior snapped.
Elaine stood too fast. "Whoa. Okay. No world-ending over tea."
Both men stared at her, two legacies locked in a silent war.
She took a deep breath. "I need cake first."
And without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and marched to the kitchen, leaving the two very confused, very territorial men blinking in her wake.
Because if she was going to navigate this tangle of fate, memory, and romance, she was going to do it the only way she knew how—
With chocolate in hand, and emotional clarity… eventually.