Chapter 30 #2
“Take it as the compliment it is, my dear.” A small, dry curl of satisfaction touched the corner of Lady Rivenna’s mouth.
“She sampled the cherry blossom petits fours we sent her, and evidently she found them accomplished enough that she could not, in good conscience, absent herself from the official opening of our little confectionery. One does not lure the High Lady across half of Bloomhaven with anything less than genuine excellence.”
Lucie opened her mouth, found she had nothing to say to that, and closed it again. “And my parents?” she managed at last. “My sister?”
“Ah.” Lady Rivenna had, at least, the grace to look faintly caught out.
“Yes. Much the same reasoning, I confess. I wished them to see what you have accomplished here. It seemed to me a thing your family ought to witness with their own eyes.” She paused.
“But I did not know whether the knowledge of their presence would settle you or unsettle you. And so, in the end, I chose to invite them and say nothing—and requested that they say nothing too—so that you might give yourself wholly to the preparations, and not spend these last days fretting over the particular terror of disappointing the people you love best.”
Lucie looked down at her hands. And then, with a rare and unguarded honesty, offered to the one person before whom she most wished to appear composed and capable and entirely without cracks, she said, “It is not only them I do not wish to disappoint. I do not wish to disappoint you.”
For a moment Lady Rivenna said nothing. Then she stepped closer, and there was something in her face that Lucie had not often been permitted to see. The sharpness set aside, the grandeur laid down, and beneath it something gentler and unmistakably fond.
“You could not possibly disappoint me, dear girl. Not if the entire structure were to collapse before our eyes, and we were reduced to flinging bottles of honey light bodily over the assembled guests.” She lifted one shoulder in the smallest and most elegant of shrugs.
“We should simply inform them that it was all part of the performance. And they would believe us, because I would say it, and I am extremely convincing.”
A startled laugh broke out of Lucie before she could stop it.
“There,” said Lady Rivenna, pleased. “That is better.” She drew back, and the grandeur settled once more about her shoulders.
“Now. We are very nearly ready to begin. I shall return to the garden and say my piece, and when the moment is right, I shall call you out. You have only to wait, and to breathe, and to remember that you have already done the difficult part. What remains is merely the showing of it.”
She returned to the garden, and the event began.
Lucie stood just inside the doorway once more—Kazrian a steady presence at her shoulder, Balthazar sitting sentinel at her feet—and watched through the gap as Lady Rivenna took her place before the assembled guests and lifted her hands. The garden fell silent.
She was born for this, Lucie thought. Every eye in the place turned toward her at once, and she held them without the smallest visible effort, as though the attention of dozens of people were merely her natural element, the air she had always breathed.
She welcomed them. She thanked them for coming.
She spoke of The Honeycomb, of how it had come to be, this small new venture born the day she had at last stepped back from The Charmed Leaf and chosen to begin something new.
She spoke of it with warmth and wit, and drew a ripple of laughter here, an appreciative murmur there, and all the while the garden hung upon her words.
“Everything you will taste this afternoon,” she said, “and everything you see displayed upon these tables, carries some manner of enchantment within it. Some small magic, woven into the making. A meringue that giggles upon the tongue. A custard kiss that warms in the palm of your hand.” A pause, precisely weighted.
“But the signature of this house—the thing some of you have already begun to know us for—is our honey light.”
A stir of interest moved through the tables.
“For those unacquainted with it,” Lady Rivenna went on, “honey light is not a flavor, though it is delicious. It is not a scent, though it is lovely. It is a feeling. A warmth. It is the particular golden contentment of a thing remembered fondly, a sunlit afternoon with nothing pressing on one’s attention, a warmth toward the person seated beside you, a moment in which one was, however briefly, entirely at peace.
Our highly skilled confectioner has found a way to bottle that light, to weave it into her creations, so that to eat them is to be given back, for a moment, a small measure of one’s own happiness. ”
Even Lucie, who had made the stuff with her own two hands and knew exactly how much honey and how much labor went into every bottle, felt her chest go warm at the way Lady Rivenna described it. As though it were something out of a story. As though it were the most wondrous thing in the world.
Perhaps, she thought, it was.
“And all of this,” said Lady Rivenna, “every enchantment, every confection, every drop of honey light, is owed to the skill of one remarkable young woman. Our confectioner. Miss Lucie Fields.” She let the name settle over the garden.
“I will tell you plainly: The Honeycomb would not be what it is without her. Indeed, there would be no Honeycomb at all. She is its heart, and its hands, and the whole of its considerable magic.”
Lucie’s face went hot. Out in the garden, heads were turning, seeking the woman being spoken of.
“Miss Fields has consented,” Lady Rivenna continued, “to give us a small demonstration of her art. I would advise you all to watch closely. You will not have seen anything like it before.” She turned toward the kitchen, and her voice lifted, warm and certain and ringing across the whole bright garden. “Miss Fields. Please join us, my dear.”
This was it.
Lucie drew one last breath. Beside her, Kazrian’s hand found the small of her back—just for a moment, the barest pressure—and he said, “She is right about all of it.”
And she stepped out into the light.
The applause met her at once, and the garden opened up around her, dozens of faces turned her way, the flowering trees overhead and the faelights strung between them, and waiting at the center of it all, her showpiece.
The broad pedestal that concealed the honeycomb beehive and chocolate bees within.
The curved pieces of silver wood rising and tapering inward, almost hidden beneath countless marzipan flowers in soft pinks, ivories, and lavenders, tiny leaves tucked between, so that only glimpses of the luminous wood showed through.
She crossed to it, took her place beside it, and waited for the noise to die away.
She swallowed.
She breathed.
Then she placed her hand carefully against the back of the pedestal, directed her attention to the ring on her finger, pulled gently at the magic within its lumyrite stone, and whispered the first enchantment.
The whole structure began, slowly and gracefully, to turn.
A murmur ran through the garden.
Lucie bent and reached into the back compartment Kazrian had created, where the saucepan of golden syrup, preserved at the moment it had cooled to just beyond the hard-crack stage, waited for her. She removed her saucepan and her special whisk with its many tips, and straightened.
Another breath, and she began.
She dipped the whisk into the sugary syrup and drew the first arc.
The motion was steady and practiced, a flick of the wrist, back and forth above the turning structure, so that the impossibly fine filaments of sugar fell in delicate, glittering arcs, catching the afternoon light as they settled over the flowers like morning spider silk strung with dew.
Another arc. Another. The structure turned, and the sugar fell, and the garden was utterly silent.
Then Lucie returned the saucepan and whisk to the back compartment and removed the bottle of honey light.
It was Golden Hour, deep amber shot through with the particular quality of light that made a person feel, for just a moment, as though they were experiencing the most beautiful moment of the day. She uncorked the bottle and began to pour.
She poured it slowly. Steadily. Tilting the bottle so that the golden light ran out in a thick warm ribbon and sank down over the whole of the structure as it continued to turn.
Every flower, every spun sugar thread, even the silver wood itself began to glow, amber and warm, as though the entire thing had swallowed a small and gentle sun.
The garden had gone completely silent.
Lucie began the second enchantment.
Slowly, as the honey light’s glow settled and the pinks and lavenders and ivories became visible again, and the structure continued to turn, the little marzipan flowers began to bloom.
The petals unfurled, first at the very top of the tapered structure, then spreading downward in a slow cascading wave, blossom after blossom, until the whole thing seemed to burst into slow and silent flower before their eyes.
A hushed murmur spread through the garden.
And then the final act.
Her palm was against the back of the pedestal again, the third piece of magic set in motion.
The central panels that had been closed over the top of the pedestal released outward, curving open like the petals of some great flower themselves, each one fitting precisely into the spaces between the tapered pieces above.
And from within the opened pedestal, rising slowly on its spindle into the afternoon light, came the beehive.