The Spellshop

When revolutionaries overthrow the emperor and set the Great Library of Alyssium ablaze, librarian Kiela escapes through the burning city's canals on a small library sailboat with her sentient spider-plant assistant Caz and several crates of forbidden spellbooks she refuses to abandon. Homeless and friendless, she sets a course for Caltrey, the remote northern island of her childhood, hoping she still owns her late parents' cottage.

The cottage is overgrown but intact. On her first morning, she is startled by Larran Maver, a tall, kind neighbor who runs a nearby merhorse farm. Though she rebuffs his help, hoping to remain hidden, his persistent small kindnesses—a welcome basket, an unclogged chimney, a cooked omelet—chip at her isolation. A trip into the village reveals Caltrey impoverished and storm-battered: the baker Bryn explains that the emperor has withdrawn the sorcerers who once balanced the islands' weather, soil, fish, and merhorse births, leaving them to slowly die.

Out of food and money, Kiela makes a fateful decision: she will use one of her smuggled spellbooks. She casts a plant-acceleration spell on her seeds and produces a bounty of tomatoes. Realizing the islanders need help she alone can provide, she conceives the idea of a disguised spellshop fronted as a jam shop selling "remedies." Bryn enthusiastically agrees to a partnership, supplying sugar and wax in exchange for a share of the profits.

Kiela and Caz catalog the books, experiment, and develop slow-release enchanted pine cones that revive dying fruit trees without looking obviously magical. Their first customers—Bryn, the centaur Eadie, the four-armed harpist Ulina—form what becomes the Pine Cone Society, a small coven of women who help make remedies and accept Caz's cover story that the spell's magic syllables are merely a sentimental family tradition. Meanwhile, an experimental spell creates an ambulatory sentient cactus, later named Meep, who joins the household.

Kiela's bond with Larran deepens through shared work and quiet revelations: he secretly raised an orphaned foal in her family's cove as a boy, with her unwitting help, and his harsh upbringing contrasted with her loving parents. When the forest spirits—cloud bears—flood her garden, they beg her to heal sick trees, leading her to revive an ancient sycamore and glimpse a unicorn. A desperate mermaid drags her storm-sick merbaby to Kiela, who successfully casts her first major healing spell.

The threats begin to close in. A violent magical storm strands Kiela at Larran's house, where they nearly kiss before he rescues a foundering boat carrying an unconscious red-haired stranger named Radane. When Radane wakes, she announces a revolution has succeeded, the emperor is dead, and the library is gone. She then reveals herself as an imperial inspector hunting a rogue sorcerer on Caltrey—triggered by Kiela's own miracle of restoring the dry town fountain.

The grumpy villager Fenerer accuses Kiela publicly. Bryn cleverly redirects Radane's search into her bakery, buying time. Larran helps Kiela hide her crates of spellbooks in a concealed sea cave full of ancient magical paintings, guided by the mermaid. Kiela returns alone to face Radane's search; the inspector confiscates Kiela's beloved cookbook as suspected coded spellwork.

Sleepless and afraid, Kiela resolves to flee, but the Pine Cone Society urges her to stay, sharing Larran's tragic past—an abusive father, a murdered mother, a drowned guardian. When Kiela goes to say goodbye to Larran, she instead kisses him and confesses everything: she is the rogue librarian Radane is hunting. Larran reframes her actions as bravery and asks her to stay.

Returning to the cave, Kiela finds Caz and Meep have captured Radane attempting to cast a stolen invisibility spell. Radane's true identity emerges: she is Ravandil Etra L'sari, a distant sixteenth-in-line cousin of the dead emperor, fleeing both loyalists who want a figurehead and revolutionaries who want her dead. The empire is no longer politically hunting Kiela. Bryn offers Radane sanctuary in plain sight as her bakery assistant, sharing her own painful history of being protected by Caltrey when hunted by an enemy clan.

For four days, Larran builds floor-to-ceiling bookshelves while Radane uses her university training to help Kiela adapt a fertility spell for the merhorses. They successfully cast it on Marri, the healer Ivor confirming success and revealing his own hidden magic. Their joy is shattered when an imperial warship arrives, captained by Varrik—the man Radane's parents wanted her to marry, who will recognize her on sight.

Kiela buries her cottage in vines and brambles using a growth spell, while the cloud bears hide Radane by absorbing her into a tree. Posing as Larran's wife in town, Kiela faces the search. Captain Varrik, ambivalent about his mission, deliberately calls off his soldiers by inventing a poisonous-berry warning. Larran secretly moves the incriminating library boat. Kiela cleverly invokes imperial law to have the troublesome Fenerer banished to Alyssium.

As Varrik's ship sails into a magical storm, Kiela proposes the unthinkable: cast a coven spell from On Storms to save the warship. Despite Radane's warnings, the Pine Cone Coven—now expanded to include Larran, Ivor, Caz, and Meep—gathers in Bryn's bakery and chants the spell. The storm dispels, and flowers rain over Caltrey. Captain Varrik returns, recognizes the magic, but, after Caz's passionate confrontation and reassurance that Radane is content, publicly credits a traveling sorcerer and sails away.

Four months later, Kiela's spellshop thrives. The coven meets twice a week, compiling a spellbook of Caltrey's magic. When four merhorses give birth simultaneously in her cove, the coven chants a birthing spell while Larran midwifes and Kiela applies enchanted paste. All four foals arrive safely. As the sun sets, Larran proposes, and Kiela accepts—finally home.