a snippet from Black Heart

in this scene, Tiana (female MC, and mother to Jessa from Eldala) is having a heated discussion in her kitchen with Kieran (MC from Eldala and her son-in-law) and Arathor (male MC and Kieran's father). and yes, there's tea.

Arathor’s impatience rolled off of him like the steam from the whistling teapot. Let him steam. Tiana wasn’t going to change her mind.

She put the tea ball into her cup and poured the boiling water over the mint. Once the tea had steeped, she removed the ball and picked up the cup, hoping the pungent aroma would calm her growing anxiety.

“I know this is hard,” Kieran said. “For reasons we still don’t understand, Dorinda didn’t give us the answers. But she did say you would have them.” He gave her a sad smile. “We need your help.”

As desperate as Kieran and Arathor were for answers, some part of her—a very small part—wanted to help. The other part wanted nothing to do with this problem, especially if it meant looking at the purple stone again

With as much conviction as she could muster, she said, “I can’t help you.”

“Of all the damned things…” A muscle in Arathor’s jaw twitched. The dangerous look in his eyes made her flinch, but no matter how angry he was with her, she couldn’t do what he’d asked. After what seemed like an eternity, he stormed out of the kitchen. She flinched again when he slammed the front door shut, hard enough to rattle the windows in the sitting room. 

None of it seemed to bother Kieran. “Will you at least translate the book for us?” he asked.

Her hands started to shake. She set the cup down and put both hands to her knotting stomach. There wasn’t enough mint tea in Teleria to settle it now.