Steeped in Quiet

She spent her life listening to everyone's thoughts. Then she met the one man whose mind was quiet. For as long as Lyrienne Sorell can remember, her family's secret gift has been both a blessing and a burden: she can hear the surface thoughts of those around her. Trained from childhood to become the perfect queen, she used that gift to guide a prince, smooth his path to power, and help him become the man everyone believed he was. Then he poisoned her. When Lyrienne wakes seventeen again, three months before her formal engagement, she does the only sensible thing: she disappears. Under a false name, she escapes to the quiet riverside town of Willowmere and opens a small tea house, determined to spend the rest of her life serving tea, keeping her head down, and never again arranging her heart around a prince's ambitions. But peace, she soon discovers, has its own complications. There is Tansy, the innkeeper, who considers gossip a public service. Maren, the seamstress next door, whose troubles are far easier to notice than ignore. A town full of customers who leave her tea house feeling strangely understood. And then there is Lord Edrant Ashford. Steady, overworked, painfully honorable, and far too observant for Lyrienne's comfort, Ashford becomes a regular presence at Second Steep. His thoughts are dry, earnest, and often unintentionally amusing. Until they begin to fall silent. As old dangers from the capital draw nearer and Willowmere becomes the home she never meant to claim, Lyrienne must decide whether quiet is something to fear, or the shape love takes when it finally feels safe. Steeped in Quiet is a cozy fantasy romance about second chances, found home, tea, healing, and a woman who stops saving princes long enough to save herself.