Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
I’d never had Butterfly Pea Flower tea before, but its blue color reminded me of the Moonlight.
“Much better,” Soyer said while slurping from his own cup, his eyes on me.
‘’Huh?”
“You’re smiling again. I like that much better.”
“I’m sorry I upset you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t upset me. You’re too sexy for that.”
I heard his phone vibrate, and he pulled it from his pocket.
“What is it?”
“Your bestie. ‘Dear Mr. Bennet, will you tell me the dress code for the Thanksgiving party? Amory must be quite tied up not to answer me.’”
“Oh. I forgot to respond.”
Soyer leaned back in his chair and started typing. “I got it. Casual, right?”
“Of course. Or…did you want to wear a tie?”
He met my eyes over his phone. “Do you want me to wear a tie? I’ll wear a tie for you, my heart.”
He meant that too, was totally serious.
“But ties are the devil. You told me that.”
“Sure they are. Still. I’d put one on for you.”
I sipped some more of my tea. “Keep that up and you’re going to make me cry again.”
Soyer, his text to Elias sent, put his phone away again and finished the tea. “Can’t have that. Do you want to go plate shopping with me now?”
I tossed the rest of my tea back too. “Yup. Uh, we’re buying some tea, right? We’ve been sitting here for almost an hour.”
Soyer held my gaze. “I did that. Our bag’s out front. Want to carry it?”
The fancy paper bag with the tea selection inside smelled delicious, but before long, the subtle scent of herbs and tea leaves was overpowered by cooking fumes. The underground had a street food culture, and Soyer had taken me right into the beating heart of it.
“This is called the Cauldron. It was designed to be a reversing loop, but now it’s all just food vendors.”
Soyer pointed, but I was distracted by a bird lady hawking something skewered and charred in a language I didn’t know. She was roasting things over an open fire and using her feathered hands to fan the flames.
“It’s so busy.”
“People get hungry, and the food here isn’t too bad.”
He was leading the way, though his hold on my hand was firm, almost as if he were afraid someone would jostle us and pull us apart.
Yet, this crowd was different from the crowd back at the Innovation in Business and Technology fair we’d gone to.
Here, people knew the Black Shuck, and they were giving him and, by extension, me a wide berth.
Seeing the press of the crowd and yet being apart from it thanks to Soyer made me feel seen, noted, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not. Unlike my Black Shuck, I didn’t have an intimidating reputation I needed to uphold.
A baker selling flatbreads to my left distracted me, but then Soyer pulled me in the opposite direction, toward the center of the loop. I thought he was going to take us to the edge of the road to get away from the crowd and take a break maybe, but that wasn’t it.
Hiding behind an ice cream cart and a nut roastery, there was a metal door. It had a circular sign on it—just black lettering that had been painted on ages ago and since flaked in places. The Pottery, it read.
Soyer pushed the door open, and we stepped inside, warm light and a well-ordered show space larger than anything I’d seen down here greeting us. When the door closed behind us, it effectively shut out the noise from the bustling crowd outside.
They had everything here. As far as I could tell, this store took up the whole area inside the loop.
What it had been when this was still the subway, I didn’t know, but now it was cutlery, copper pots and pans, select appliances—some of which looked futuristic—plates, and glassware.
There wasn’t an overabundance of any particular thing here, no endless variations on plates for example, but those they had were set up on their shelves, lights pointing at them as if they were pieces in a museum, not something you’d eat dinner from.
“You look like you’ve never seen dessert plates,” Soyer said.
I tore my eyes away from a set of three that were mounted like you would a painting. They were red on the outside, then white in the center with a golden dot right in the middle. “This is where you buy your plates?”
“And a lemon squeezer. Come along.”
I followed him, though all the glassware and fine plates made me hyperaware of the bag I was carrying, of how I moved.
I didn’t want to break anything. I saw two salespeople hovering while Soyer picked up a copper pan and examined it.
I looked at a set of two mugs, each with the cutest little black kitten on it.
“Do you know what you’ll be making?” I asked him.
“A stuffed pumpkin. A challenge for my oven, but I’ll just have to take a measuring tape when buying the pumpkin.”
“Oh, you mean you’re cooking it whole?”
He looked up from the pan, the copper reflecting a distorted image of his beautiful face. He glanced at the mugs I’d been looking at.
“Yes. It’s a harvest celebration, after all, a reason to feast and celebrate that the earth has provided enough to let you live through winter. It’s how you’re supposed to celebrate. You found new mugs. Good. We’re going to get a few.”
“We’d have marshmallows in cocoa when I was little. We celebrated getting the most marshmallows. Do we really need more mugs?”
He looked at me with fond exasperation. “We do. I’ll make you cocoa too, my heart. But I’ll also do unspeakable things to pumpkins.”
I leaned in. “You know, Kasey made that pumpkin soup in a pumpkin shell for the Moonlight, and it was pretty good. We sold out of that a couple of times.”
“Hah. You think I’ll let myself be intimidated by tales of your cook?”
“Sous chef. I just mean that if Vico and Chef are coming too, then… You know.”
“If my cooking fails to impress them, you’ll have to do that for me, my heart.
” He waved over the closest salesperson, a human-looking woman with her hair in a tight ponytail, wearing a spotless white blouse and a navy apron with the Pottery logo.
“I’ll take this one. I need a few more plates too, and cutlery. But show me your citrus presses first.”
I cleared my throat. “And…the juicers?”
Soyer groaned. “Yeah, fine. Show us to your juicers.”
Soyer bought a lot of stuff at that store.
I had exactly no idea what anything cost, because there hadn’t been price tags on anything, and he said something about that being because they always worked out the general human tax and the Hawthorne tax later on.
I was pretty sure it was because he’d spent a minor fortune.
Most of the things were to be delivered, except the stainless-steel lemon squeezer Soyer had insisted on taking with us right away.
He was washing that in the sink when I stretched my arms out in front of the window, looking out over the city.
We’d gotten ice cream too, and it was waiting in the freezer to become a dessert later tonight.
Outside, Newstaten was as busy as ever, cars down below already flashing their headlights. Clouds had rolled in, light gray winter clouds, and they’d brought more than an evening chill with them.
“It’s started snowing again.”
“It has. You know, that means the roads will be bad. You should stay in today, let Thaeros take over for you.”
I looked back over my shoulder. “You are the worst. Wednesday is mine, and so is Thursday. Are you going to come by later?”
“Yes. Are you going to save me some pie?”
“Of course.”
He turned, leaving his new gadget in the sink, his hands still wet when he leaned against the counter.
“I’m looking forward to that. To getting my dessert.”
I hesitated, though not for long. Soyer’s want came in the form of a hint, an indirect question that I could choose to answer or not. The choice was always mine.
I turned my back on the window and walked over to him, then wrapped my arms around his middle. “Yeah?”
His eyes were beautiful black pools. “Yes.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. “I’d like to give you a sweet treat. Should I… Is that what I say? You know I’m not good at this.”
He cupped my cheek. “My heart, you know that doesn’t matter. Can I kiss you?”
“Only if you promise not to make me late.”
He groaned. “You’re too damn responsible. Fine. I’ll make sure you’re at the Moonlight on time.”
“Okay. Then…should we go upstairs?”
“I’d like that. You?”
That made me smile. “Are you ever not going to check and check again?”
“Probably not. Why would I? Well, if you start acting like Elias, I might have to, but I don’t really see that for you, my heart. So then, why would I stop making you tell me that you want to fuck me? It’s the sweetest thing a man can tell another.”
I cackled. “There are people who’d disagree with you.”
“Fuck them. Come on, take me to bed, hmm?”
I nodded and held out my hand for him to take, much like he had on that night I’d given him his name.
He followed me, wanted to follow me, so I took the lead up the winding staircase and to our bedroom.
I chuckled when I saw that he hadn’t made the bed—something he usually did without giving me the opportunity to help or do it for him.
“Did you plan this?”
“Who, me? Amory, I know you think I can read your mind. Do you also think I can see the future now?”
“Well, would you tell me if you could?”
He huffed with laughter, a much more melodic sound than I could’ve ever made.
“Why would I tell you a secret that keeps me mysterious to you? You’re not easily impressed, and I have to make sure I don’t lose my edge.
Don’t think I don’t see you making big eyes at the world and looking like candy anyone would enjoy putting in their mouth. ”
“You’re not anyone.”