The Arbor's Ache

Vessandra Nyx, the Archmage who traded a dark crown for a copper kettle, thought she had finally found sanctuary in the salt-slicked caves of the coast. She was wrong. The High Reach has noted the "geological anomaly" growing in her basement, and the High Censor doesn't like anomalies. Especially ones that breathe.

Summoned to the imperial heart of the Arbor of Ash, Vessandra is forced to do the unthinkable: she's taking the shop on the road.

It isn't a normal relocation. With a silver-barked Sanctuary Tree growing through the roof of a heavy merchant wagon, a sentient Truth-Settee acting as a backseat driver, and a six-inch skeletal mouse named Pip holding the spectral reins, the journey is anything but quiet.

As they trek across the empire, Valerius struggles to keep his scones from rattling to pieces, and Elowen's sun-magic is the only thing keeping the imperial shadows at bay. But the road to the Arbor is paved with more than just dust. Malithandra's legacy is waiting in the white woods, and she's prepared a homecoming that could turn Vessandra's mobile sanctuary into a funeral pyre.

In the final installment of the Tinctures and Terror trilogy, the tea is hot, the road is long, and the stakes have never been higher.

They packed the tea. The trouble packed itself.