Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
The rain had set in over Bloomhaven that afternoon.
A soft, companionable sort of rain that pattered against the windows and gentled the light to pewter.
Inside The Honeycomb’s kitchen the hearth sprites were dancing among the flames, coaxing them higher and brighter against the cool, damp afternoon, and Balthazar was curled on his cushion beside them.
At the central worktable, Lucie was rolling marzipan.
She leaned her weight in, lifted, turned it a quarter, rolled again.
Then she held it up to the window. Not thin enough.
A petal had to be near translucent if she meant to enchant it open, and this marzipan was destined to become flowers—dozens of them, small and delicate, blooming across the showpiece while it turned.
She lowered the marzipan and rolled again.
It would have been a great deal easier to concentrate without the distraction of what she considered a deeply precarious arrangement on the other side of the kitchen.
Kazrian was lying on the floor. Directly beneath the ovens. Which he had raised a short distance off the floor with an enchantment he’d assured her was “entirely safe” and “extremely common in this line of work.”
Entirely safe. She would remember that when she was explaining to Lady Rivenna how her grandson had been flattened.
After their day off, Kazrian had spent three days working on the ovens, much to his frustration.
He had thought the repairs would take a single afternoon.
Then a full day. Then he had begun muttering to himself in a way that suggested the ovens were winning, and Kazrian was not accustomed to losing arguments with inanimate objects.
Eventually he had discovered that part of the lumyrite lattice connected not only to the backs of both ovens but ran beneath them as well, threaded through the stone floor where it had tangled with the residual magic of an old floor polishing enchantment, and the two were refusing to cooperate.
Which meant, apparently, that the only way to access both the lattice running through the ovens and the conflicting enchantment beneath them was for Kazrian to get under the ovens themselves.
Three days of this. Three days of Kazrian beside—and now underneath—the ovens, and Lucie moving between the worktable, the counters, and the cooling cabinets, the two of them working around each other with a rhythm that had begun to feel almost practiced.
She would not use the word comfortable. But it was as close to comfortable as possible when working in close proximity to the man she was not supposed to still be in love with.
Her hands froze on the rolling pin.
No. Definitely not still in love with. Where had that ridiculous thought come from?
She had merely retained certain … complicated feelings.
Feelings that happened to include an awareness of his voice, his hands, and the way his brow furrowed when a problem refused to yield to him.
But that was proximity, not love. That was simply what happened when you shared a kitchen with someone for hours on end.
She resumed rolling with somewhat unnecessary force.
“Have you had any more ideas for the launch?”
Lucie startled and pressed down too hard, tearing through the edge of the marzipan. “What was that?”
“The showpiece.” Kazrian’s voice came from beneath the oven, slightly muffled. “Have you had any more thoughts?”
“Oh. Yes, actually. I have been refining the concept.” She lifted the rolling pin and smoothed the tear at the edge with careful fingers. “I think I have a clearer picture now.”
“Would you … tell me?” A pause. “If you would like to, that is.”
She hesitated, and then found that she wanted to.
She described the framework first—a structure that would turn slowly, driven by an enchantment she’d already been working on for the shop’s window displays.
Over this framework she would spin sugar into impossibly fine threads, a web of glistening filaments that would catch the light and settle over the structure as it turned.
And then the dozens of marzipan flowers, each one enchanted to bloom in sequence, unfurling petal by petal while the whole thing spun.
They would come from … somewhere. She had not decided that part yet.
And there would be beams of honey light woven through, so that the entire piece glowed amber and gold.
And the honey light would serve an additional purpose, of course.
It would be infusing the qualities of whichever variety she decided to use into the marzipan flowers.
“And then,” she said, and she could hear the excitement building in her own voice despite her best efforts at restraint, “I would like the entire structure to open. The sugar threads, the flowers, the framework. And inside—rising up from … somewhere—a beehive. A structure made of honeycomb candy, with little chocolate bees enchanted to fly out and circle the display.”
She paused. She had not described the full vision aloud yet, and saying it made it feel terrifyingly ambitious.
“And then … well, at the end, each guest will receive a plate with all the pieces. Everything from the display, artfully arranged, of course.”
Silence from beneath the oven.
A long silence.
Her confidence wavered. Perhaps it was too much. Perhaps she had described it poorly, or—
“That sounds incredible,” Kazrian said.
Lucie ducked her head over the marzipan and felt a flush fill her cheeks.
“There are still a number of details to work out, of course. Flavor combinations for the flowers, all the different enchantments, that sort of thing. And I do not know about the initial structure. The framework for spinning. I have sketched several ideas, but I’m not sure what materials would—”
“I could make something for you.”
“Oh. No, you do not have to—”
“It is no trouble at all. That is precisely the sort of thing I enjoy.”
Of course it was. She could hear it in his voice. “Well,” she said, “if you are certain it would be no trouble.”
“Entirely certain.”
The rain went on against the glass. Lucie set down the rolling pin and began cutting petals with a small blade. A kitchen pixie drifted down to inspect the marzipan, found it not yet interesting, and drifted up again.
“I should confess something,” Kazrian said.
Her blade paused.
“When I first arrived here,” he said, “I did not know anything about honey light. I had never heard the term before.”
She blinked. “Oh?”
“My grandmother did not tell me. And then—well, it was mentioned in a way that suggested I should already know of it, so I asked Rosavyn. And then I felt too awkward to say anything to you, because by then it seemed I ought to have known all along. But I cannot let it go on without commenting on it. It sounds extraordinary, Lucie. The whole concept. Capturing light, weaving it into confections, giving people something they can taste and feel. It is … yes. Amazing. And I look forward to—well, if you ever have anything spare—or I could place an order—”
“You do not need to place an order, Kaz—ah—that is … Lord Rowanwood.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, grateful he was half hidden beneath the ovens and could not see her embarrassment at having stumbled over his name yet again.
Although … had he not just called her Lucie? Without a pause, as if he had not even noticed that he’d—
SCREECH.
The sound was enormous. A shriek of iron against stone as the great dark mass of the ovens dropped—toward Kazrian—and her own voice tore out of her in a gasp. The blade fell from her hand. The ovens halted, juddering, a bare few inches above the floor, one canted at an odd angle.
“Kazrian!” She was off her stool and across the kitchen before she knew she had moved, down on her knees on the cold stone, bending to peer into the dreadful narrow dark. “Kazrian—answer me—”
“I am fine! All is fine!” His voice was strained but steady. “Well—perhaps not. I am … I would not say trapped, exactly, however …”
“However?”
“The oven that has tipped is pinning down part of my trouser leg. Just fabric. I am in no danger whatsoever.”
Lucie sat back on her heels, still kneeling on the cold stone.
Her hand found the ring on the chain at her throat and closed around it.
She shut her eyes, her heart slamming hard enough to hurt.
He was not crushed, he was fine, and the relief that surged through her turned, in the space of a breath, into something a great deal more like fury.
“How,” she said, opening her eyes and finding Balthazar pacing alongside her, ears flat and sparks flickering along his purple-blue markings, “how could you attempt something so unutterably reckless—”
“It was not reckless. It was very well calculated, I assure—”
“You said it was safe.”
“It is safe. The enchantment held. It merely held a few inches lower than intended, which is a calibration error, not a—”
“You were nearly crushed!”
“I am perfectly fine, I assure you.”
“You are trapped beneath an oven!”
“Pinned,” he corrected mildly. “There is a meaningful distinction.”
She released the ring and pressed her hands to the floor as she bent to get another look beneath the oven. “I told you not to attempt this ridiculous spell!”
“Did you?”
She paused. “I thought it very loudly.”
A brief silence, in which she could almost feel him deciding not to laugh.
“Well, I shall simply … free myself,” he said. “If I adjust the enchantment, I can lift the ovens a marginal amount, and—”
“Absolutely not.” She shifted forward on her knees until she was right at the edge of the ovens, close enough that Kazrian’s boots extended past her head.
“You will not so much as think about that spell again. If you lift the ovens and they drop a second time, you will not be making jokes about your trousers. You will be—”
She could not finish that sentence.