Chapter 21 #3
“The chocolate bees. They are not in the pantry. I have looked everywhere and I cannot—”
A sound from the counter stopped her.
A single, pointed, remarkably authoritative meow.
Lucie turned. Balthazar was sitting on the far end of the kitchen counter. He turned his head, very deliberately, toward a large copper tin with a hinged lid, a muslin cloth half draped across it.
Lucie stared at it. The memory surfaced all at once, vivid and immediate.
She had already checked the chocolate bees this morning.
She had brought the tin out of the pantry, placed it carefully on the counter, removed the lid, and checked that the little bees were sleeping peacefully within.
And then—she had no memory of what had happened after that.
She could not even recall replacing the lid.
“Oh,” she said. She pressed a hand to her chest and let out a breath that was half laugh, half shudder. “Oh, I am ridiculous.” She crossed to the counter in a few quick strides and pulled the muslin away. “Balthazar, thank you, truly.”
Balthazar blinked slowly and then began washing his left paw. Lucie looked over at Kazrian, who was still standing just inside the back door, his expression caught somewhere between concern and the beginning of amusement.
“I am so sorry,” she said, her cheeks warming. She reached for the tin, wanting nothing more than to hide. “I did not mean to alarm you.” She headed straight for the pantry with the tin in her hands. “I—I moved the tin this morning and forgot about it entirely.”
“There is nothing to apologize for,” he called out, his voice reaching her through the open pantry doorway. “I am only glad they’re found.”
She set the tin back on its shelf with both hands, pressing it into place as though it might wander off again if she did not.
Then she stood still, her palms flat on the shelf, and listened.
His footsteps crossed the kitchen, paused briefly, and then moved back toward the courtyard.
The back door frame creaked as he passed through it.
She returned to the elderflower and moonglow meringues she had just begun working on when Kazrian had called her outside to help with the framework.
The pixies had finished folding the mixture in her absence, and one of them was leaning over the side of the bowl, sampling it from the tip of a tiny blue finger.
Lucie had just enough time to spoon out and bake the next batch before her meeting with Lady Rivenna.
She crossed to the worktable, reached for a spoon—and froze.
There, scarcely visible in the flour dusting the paper she’d laid upon the baking tray, was a single word.
breathe
She pressed her lips together, but the smile came anyway, pushing through her best efforts to stop it. She covered her eyes with one hand and allowed herself a single, quiet laugh and a shake of her head. Then she lowered her hand, took a deep breath—as instructed—and continued.
The afternoon unfolded in a steady, purposeful rhythm.
She baked the meringues, which had Twilight honey light folded in, and set them aside to cool.
She sat with Lady Rivenna for twenty minutes in the upstairs study for their daily meeting.
Going through the guest list, confirming the color of the napkins, assuring her that yes, she had everything under control, and yes, she was eating properly, and yes, she would go home at a reasonable hour, and no, she did not require additional assistance.
She returned to the kitchen and began the lavender shortbread that Lady Rivenna wanted available in the shop on the day of the launch. Part of the everyday confections, the ones that would fill the display cases while the showpiece drew the eye.
She sank into the work. That was the mercy of it, that place she could fall into when her hands found their rhythm and the rest of the world grew quiet.
The pixies moved around her in the familiar choreography they had perfected over months.
A sifted measure of flour passed up at the right moment, a clean spatula offered before she had to ask for it, a tray received and carried to the oven with solemn, concentrated purpose.
She handed off a bowl, received another full of fresh dough, passed a pastry board to a brownie who carried it to the basin, and the whole of it moved like breathing.
By late afternoon—when the rain had begun, as Rosavyn had apparently predicted—she had reached the end of her list for the day.
She stood at the worktable surveying the kitchen and felt, for the first time in days, something that might cautiously be called good.
She was feeling, in fact, something rather close to a high.
The particular satisfaction of a day that had gone right, of a list conquered, of a body that had done everything asked of it and might now, at last, be permitted to rest.
Which was what made it even worse when, turning in the pantry just before preparing to leave, her elbow caught the edge of the copper tin of chocolate bees and sent it flying off the shelf.