Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
We took a cab home, but it was a short ride, barely long enough for me to rest my head on Soyer’s shoulder. When we walked into his apartment—our apartment—he stopped me from taking off my jacket, kissing me in the hallway.
“What’s that smell?” I asked when he let up and peeled my jacket off me.
“I baked. You wanted bread, and I was bored, so I baked.”
My eyes widened when he carried my jacket into the near-empty walk-in closet and put it on a hanger there before stripping out of his own coat.
“You did? Oh, I have to see that.”
I toed off my shoes and headed toward the kitchen. I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised. He’d told me he could bake, but knowing something and seeing it were really different.
The sight that greeted me was both stunning and wonderful. Soyer had turned our kitchen into a small bakery, the fruits of his labor spread out on the island in a mouthwatering display.
There were buns and a shiny golden loaf with a braided crust. The buns had little five-pointed star marks in their centers, and their crust shimmered just as prettily as the bread’s did.
Everything also smelled divine, like cinnamon and other spices, the aroma of the cooling morsels making my mouth water.
“Try one of the buns,” Soyer said from right behind me. “They’re filled.”
I pointed. “Is that challah? Did you make challah?”
“Not quite.” Soyer walked around me to his knife block.
“It’s called a Hefezopf. Similar, but sweeter, richer.
” He pulled out a serrated knife. “I might’ve messed it up.
It’s probably better if you try it now.” He frowned when I was staring at the baked wares as if this were Christmas morning. “What?”
I giggled. “Have you been waiting to feed me this all day? You’re trying to keep your cool, but I can tell. You want me to eat your bread.”
Soyer’s favorite hobby, as far as I could tell, was cooking, and it seemed to be particularly joyful for him when he could feed me whatever he’d made in order to get my honest opinion.
He’d made multiple batches of baba ghanoush on more than one occasion, claiming the perfect recipe was elusive, and he needed my help to find it.
He seemed to have approached the breadmaking in the same way.
Shrugging, he got a cutting board from a drawer. “I promised to bake for you months ago, that’s all.”
I moved closer to the kitchen island. “So much happened. I didn’t think you’d bake a sweet bread.”
He moved it from the cooling rack to the cutting board and sliced into it, the shiny crust parting in a neat line. “I realized I needed a levain, and I didn’t want to make one. I ordered some, but the delivery isn’t here yet. That’s why you have to eat sweetmeats instead.”
He held out a slice of the bread to me. Not even the end piece, but a nice, even middle slice. It looked pretty; soft and creamy white on the inside, like something you’d buy from a store.
Soyer was watching me. I was very used to that, but he normally just did it when I was working. That meant this was important to him, which meant it mattered to me.
I bit into the bread. It was delicious. Rich, yet not overly so, and only slightly sweet. It didn’t taste like anything from a store at all. It had more substance to it, and it was flavorful without being overpowering.
“This is really good,” I told him, covering my mouth while still chewing in between my words.
A small smile slipped past Soyer’s often guarded expression. “Good. I might add raisins to the next one.”
I pointed while taking a second bite. “What’re these filled with?”
He took one of the buns and sliced it open on his board so I could see. “Raisins, nuts, figs. Spices, of course.”
He handed me half the bun and took the other himself. That meant I was eating his sweet bread and the bun at the same time, which was him putting me on the spot.
The buns, as it turned out, weren’t better than the bread, but different.
Of course they were excellent. The richness of them was layered with the flavors of the dried fruit and nuts.
I was pretty sure there was cardamom in there too, and while the whole thing looked deceptively simple, it was a flavor explosion.
“Oh. Are we going to sell these at the Moonlight?”
Soyer looked up from eyeing the bun critically, chewing his own bite.
“You want to put me to work because I’m forcing you to take your vacation time? Amory, I’m not sure that’s fair.”
I shrugged, stuffing the rest of the sweet bread into my mouth. “It might be.”
Soyer pushed off the kitchen island, stalking toward me like a hungry wolf. I stepped back, laughter already bubbling up from within me, and that was as far as I got.
He hooked his arm around my waist, spinning me, guiding me, and before long, he plopped me onto the couch, then followed.
“Are you happy, Amory?” He propped his elbow on the back of the couch so he had an easier time looking at me as I ate another piece of the bread roll.
“Of course I am.”
“Anything you’d change? Anything you want?”
The light mood faded. The question was serious. His expression reminded me of the way he’d looked at me after the witch, when he’d woken me from a dream and told me I was safe.
I thought about it longer than I normally would have, knowing he wanted an honest answer.
I almost told him to be nicer to people, but then, he wasn’t ever really rude.
He just liked being scary more than anything, and because he liked it so much, calling him out for it or even asking him to tone it down would be mean.
It would be me asking him to change who he was, and I didn’t want him to be different. I just wanted him.
I pulled my legs up onto the cushion and settled against the armrest.
“I sometimes wonder. About your past, you know. I don’t want you to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me, but…you’ve seen so much.”
He snorted. “Well. I should be glad you didn’t ask me for your shifts back.”
I cocked my head. “That was an option?”
“Obviously not.” He was grinning like some comic book villain.
“It was an option, wasn’t it?”
Soyer shook his head. “Not without upsetting Dwayne. And you don’t want to upset Dwayne and make him worry about safety standards and whatnot, do you?”
“You’re enjoying this way too much. You know, there are people who work a lot more than I do. Plus, you make Rae and Ben work as much as I do. Please tell me they’re getting vacation time too.”
“Sure they are.”
I nodded. “Good. Ben needs it. For the writer.”
He leaned in. “You know, I could get someone to follow them around. Watch them. Take photos. Report back to you. You’d not miss anything.”
“Very funny. Seriously, though. Ben doesn’t need to follow me all the time.”
He pulled his legs up too, moving closer so that we were touching. “He doesn’t. He had most of today off. What do you want to know? About my past?”
I opened my mouth to protest on Ben’s behalf, but the possibility of answer was too tempting.
Soyer could be almost annoyingly taciturn about anything that had to do with his own past. He’d barely ever told me anything unprompted, and I didn’t want to push him into memories that maybe he didn’t want to revisit.
At the same time, I couldn’t not be curious about him.
My gaze fell to the ring on my finger. “Were you ever married?”
“No.”
“Did you ever think about it?”
“Think about it how?”
I looked up from admiring the bird etched into the metal, those blue gemstone eyes sparkling.
“You know…think about getting married. How many ways to think about it are there?”
“Oh, so many. I did consider marrying an older widow a long time ago, but that wouldn’t have worked out well.
She understood, in the end. Careful, my heart, or your eyes will fall out.
It’s not like marriage equality was universal, you know.
The primary purpose of the arrangement, as it was once explained to me, was always to obtain an heir-producing servant you wouldn’t have to pay to keep house for you. ”
“I’m not sure you realize this, but if you keep talking like that, everyone will soon realize that the Black Shuck is totally a warrior for social justice.”
He huffed. “Hardly. Did you mean to ask whether I ever loved anyone? Enough that I’d have offered marriage to them if it had been an option?”
“I guess. I do wonder…was there ever someone you wanted to spend the rest of your life with?”
“No.” He paused, but I could tell he wasn’t done. “I have been alive for a long time. You know there were other people. But by the curse mark that haunts my skin, I have never loved anyone like this. There has never been anyone like you.”
In his unblinking eyes, there was a plea for me to believe him.
I did. Perhaps it was the magic that had called for another firebird to build a home on my skin, perhaps it was my imagination, but regardless, I knew somewhere deep in my heart or mind, deep in my blood, that Soyer had given himself to me.
That with or without the ring on my finger, we were a pair.
“All right.” I paused until I saw him relax and blink again, then said, “Did you keep count of the people you dated?”
He raised a brow and opened his mouth. Then closed it. “Feisty after all the cocktails, aren’t you. How about you, Amory? Any crushes you hoped would turn into more?”
I let my head fall back so I could look up at the ceiling high above us. “Not really. Nothing that was ever more than me noticing a person was good-looking. Hey, that widow you mentioned, the one you almost married. Who was she?”
“Just a rich aristocrat with about as much money as curiosity. A good conversationalist. More opinions than sand in the desert, which I liked and her contemporaries loathed.” There was a pause, and I looked over at him.
He had a faraway look in his eyes. “You’d have liked her.
She was fun. She’d quote Homer in one breath, then tell a dirty joke in the next. ”
I cocked my head. “You liked that widow.”
He shrugged. “She was fun. That means for most of our interactions, she didn’t bore me to tears or outright annoy me. I wouldn’t necessarily say I liked her.”
My Soyer. Sometimes he wasn’t telling the truth, only I wasn’t sure if he even realized when it was happening. “I’d have liked to meet her.”
He chuckled. “Oh, she’d have eaten you alive. Imagine Elias, but with the absolutely ruthless and conniving mind of a master chess player.”
“I think you’re trying to compliment her.”
He gave me a flat look. “Seems like her ghost is speaking through you to put me in my place. Fine. She was a fine conniving mastermind. Happy?”
“I’m just glad you met some cool people before me, you know? But I’m also glad you didn’t marry her.”
He clicked his tongue. “How the fuck did we get here, hmm, Amory? I asked if you were happy.”
I finished the last of the bread roll. “I’m happy knowing you had friends.”
“Conjecture.”
I chuckled. “Hey, I think I should’ve asked this right after I burned, but how many are there? How many people like us?”
Soyer’s mouth thinned. “Exactly one each. There is no one who bears a curse quite like mine, and you are the only pawn to have been created by this curse.”
“Yes, but…people who can’t die. I know Elias, Simeon, and Valentin are vampires. And you said Vico can’t die either. Are there a lot of immortal supernaturals running around? Do you know them all?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What, now you want me to tell you about our secret society?”
“You’re making fun of me, but wouldn’t that be cool? A group of people messing with history because they’re immortal and powerful and have nothing better to do.”
He rolled his eyes. “That sounds extraordinarily boring, but if you’d like to try something like that, I’ll bake the coffee cake for your meetings.”
“So nothing like that exists?”
“No, but there are people you’ll keep running into. Like Elias.”
I sighed. “I have to let him take photos of me.”
“If he says so.”
I thought about that—not the photos, which just made me feel awkward, but the idea that we’d know each other for…
well, forever. I wondered how long Elias would try to get me to give him a chocolate milkshake.
And I wondered if anything would ever change between me and Soyer.
If he would ever wake up one morning, look at me, and realize he couldn’t stand me anymore.
It hurt, thinking that. Soyer was perhaps the kindest person I’d ever met. He’d given me so much—love, confidence, trust—and I didn’t want to turn into someone he couldn’t love anymore, not ever.
At the same time, the feeling that came over me, or tried to, when I did think like that was like being back in that cold room in the witch’s house.
That was how I knew the doubt was a remnant of whatever magic the witch had done to me.
It made it easier, knowing that. Made it easier to trust in us.
“Worrier. If you keep doing that, you’ll get wrinkles.” He brushed his fingers over my forehead, the gesture as tender as his voice. “How about we go upstairs? It was a long day.”
“Hmm. Do you want—”
“No, I just want to hold you.” The heat in his voice, the desire to simply be with me that he didn’t even try hiding, made me happy.