Chapter 30
THIRTY
DAHLIA
She didn’t sleep.
Instead, she wandered downstairs to the bakery kitchen, Marzipan padding along behind her. The space was dark and still, the ovens cold, the counters clean and waiting for the morning rush. Moonlight streamed through the windows, casting pale patterns across the worn wooden floor.
Dahlia pulled out her grandmother’s recipe journal—the original, hand-written, stained with decades of kitchen spills and magical experiments. She traced the faded ink, the familiar handwriting that had been gone from this world for sixteen years but still lived in every corner of this space.
Magic is love made visible, she’d told Cal, quoting her grandmother’s favorite saying. And it was true. Every charm she baked, every spell she folded into dough—it was all an expression of care. For her customers, her community, the legacy she’d inherited.
But when was the last time she’d baked for herself?
When was the last time she’d let herself want anything purely selfish, purely personal, purely hers?
Marzipan jumped onto the counter, nudging the recipe journal with her head. Dahlia scratched behind her familiar’s ears, watching those keen eyes drift half-closed with pleasure.
“You like him.” Her voice dropped low. “Don’t bother pretending otherwise. You’ve been thinking about him all night.”
Marzipan’s tail swished. He passed the test; the gesture seemed to communicate. He’s acceptable. Now stop overthinking and do a thing about it.
“I don’t know how,” Dahlia admitted, her voice small in the moonlit kitchen. “I don’t know how to want for myself without drowning in guilt. How to let someone in without being terrified they’ll disappear.”
Marzipan bumped her head against Dahlia’s palm. Figure it out, the cat seemed to say. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for. And braver. Now act like it.
Dahlia laughed—a wet, shaky sound that was half sob. “When did you become the wise one?”
Marzipan’s whiskers twitched. I was the wise one all along. You weren’t paying attention.
The moon shifted, casting new patterns across the floor. An owl hooted outside—Ember, probably, keeping watch from a nearby rooftop. The town slept around her, peaceful and unaware of the storms gathering on the horizon.
Magnus was still out there, plotting. The boundary claim still threatened everything. Cal was still fighting a battle that might destroy him before it was won.
But for the first time in longer than she could remember, Dahlia knew what she wanted.
Tomorrow, she’d tell him. Tomorrow, she’d stop hiding behind fear and start reaching for what she wanted.
But tonight, she sat in her grandmother’s kitchen with her cat and her memories and the first fragile tendrils of hope, letting herself believe that maybe—she could have it all.
Magnus had underestimated Haven Shores.
He’d underestimated her.
And when the time came, he would learn what happened when a witch with thirty-eight years of patience and a very good reason finally decided to fight for what was hers.