Page 76 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

That seemed to scare him properly, because his face went white.

Cera couldn’t resist adding, “Get it? Murder-y? That’s a corvid pun.”

“Korvi is a raven,” Tasi said.

“Killjoy,” Cera muttered. Then she clicked her tongue and added, “Let’s go home.”

And together, raven and owl flew away into the night.

EVERY ROSE

HAS ITS THIEF

By

HANNAH NICOLE MAEHRER

CHAPTER 1

LEANNA

Leanna Dowen was in debt. Or rather, her father was in debt and graciously left behind his poor choices in life to her. Leanna sighed, trudging down the pebbled walkway she used to traverse as a child on her way to school. Now she traversed it as a young woman on her way home from a ten-hour shift as a laundress.

Feet dragging in the dirt, red hair all askew, she couldn’t contain the yawn that came from deep within her. An endless well of exhaustion.

As she neared her humble home she heard familiar barking and smiled wide.

“Thorn! Here sweet!” she yelled, knowing the dog wouldn’t dare leave her yard without her permission, but the moment that was given the pup barreled down the drive and into her arms.

The animal was a sleek black all over, save for the chocolate brown of her eyes that made Leanna think of her warmth and comfort.

And because Thorn was a dog and could not speak, the animal was the perfect confidant.

Leanna’s life was not sad. It was under construction.

Picking up her pace, she rounded the neighbor’s yard of her childhood nemesis, Edward Lowen. The grand house was larger than her family home, larger and more foreboding, unwelcoming in its glory.

Much like Edward Lowen himself.

Leanna still remembered the day she’d met the evil little snipe. His dark curls had shone ebony in the early morning sun as he walked over with his parents, who looked perfectly in love and perfectly happy. She remem bered noting it even at nine years old, mostly due to never seeing her parents look at each other in such a way, and it had occurred to her then that married people were meant to like one another.

Her parents had very clearly been uninformed of this.

But regardless, Leanna didn’t know many children in the area her age and she’d been excited to meet the boy moving into the house with the most beautiful garden of flowers the kingdom of Marigold Lane had ever seen.

“They have money coming out their ears!” her father had barked in their kitchen while her mother made a ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ pie, as was her custom. “To be able to afford such a garden.”

“It’s family money, from what I understand. You wouldn’t know of such things,” her mother had snapped, slamming the oven shut and stalking for the windowsill to allow the pie to cool.

Leanna had observed this as she had all her parents’ volatile interactions, quietly.

Magical flowers were the currency of the realm. A garden full of them may as well have been a mountain of gold coin, and was guarded as such when her family had made their way up the drive.

“One of those flowers would feed us for a year,” Leanna’s father had grumbled, straightening his shoulders when the Lowens had come out to greet them. Her father had always been a proud man, wanting more than life had given him, but Leanna had known even then that he did not do much to get more out of life. He preferred to complain about it instead.

“Hello there!” Francis Lowen was a tall man with a handsome smile and ebony-colored hair.

Her mother put on her most practiced and preening smile, the one Leanna had seen her use at the butcher’s to fetch a more finely cut piece of meat. “Good morning, sir. My husband and I have come to welcome you and your lovely family to the neighborhood. I’m Regina, and this is my husband Robert. And of course our only daughter, Leanna.”