Chapter 17 - Selene #2
Maeve seems to run the bakery the way she runs everyone, with enthusiasm and kindness.
Her daughter, Savannah, works the coffee counter, and somewhere over the last few weeks, the two of them have drawn me in without my noticing.
They adore Tom and fuss over him as soon as we arrive, setting him up in the corner as usual with his favorite coffee and cake.
I go to follow, but Savannah insists on setting me up at the counter so she can talk to me.
Savannah’s my age, quick and loud, and the person who most reminds me of my coven sisters; it’s easy to like her. “You look rough,” she laughs. “Is this a good rough or a bad rough?”
“Don’t answer that,” Maeve calls from the back. “You don’t have to tell her anything.”
“She’s my friend, and friends tell,” Savannah says, sliding coffee across and leaning on the counter, studying my face the way Emma does, the only difference being that she just says what she’s thinking. “You look like you had a fun and very long night.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “You can’t say that…”
“Just as I suspected, and you’ve gone red as a beet.” She grins, delighted with herself. “I should’ve been a detective.”
Maeve appears with a plate of something warm; she sets it in front of me without asking, because that’s what she’s taken to doing whenever I call in after I’ve been at the clinic. “Leave the girl be.”
But Savannah’s watching me, and her grin has faded into something gentler. “You don’t look happy about it, though,” she says, quieter now. “You look like it’s complicated.”
“It is complicated,” I admit, and it’s such an understatement I almost laugh.
“It always is, with the good ones,” Maeve says gently, and then they both let it drop, and I think I like them even more for seeing it but not making me explain it.
“Anyway,” Savannah says, changing the tone and pulling out a battered notebook from under the counter, dropping it in front of me. It’s covered in lists and names. “You’re just in time, actually. We need another opinion. Mom and I have been arguing about this for a week, and we’re getting nowhere.”
“About what?” I say, grateful for the chance to talk about something else.
“The winter fair,” she says, like it should be obvious, as though it’s the most important thing in the world.
“Solstice. The whole settlement throws one every year, with lights strung along the main row, a bonfire, stalls, music, and dancing till the early hours. It’s the best night of the year, and this year it’s going to be the biggest one yet. ”
“It’s going to be a lot of work, is what she means,” Maeve says, but she’s smiling into her tea.
“We can’t agree on where to put the bonfire.” Savannah taps the page. “Last year it nearly set fire to the library roof, so this year I think we should put it on the green where there’s room to dance as well. Mom says it’s too near the water and the wind will be a problem.”
“The wind will take it,” Maeve says. “I’ve watched it take it twice when folk have been burning things down there, and this will be even bigger.”
I look down at the notebook—the stalls, the food, who’s bringing what, a whole night sketched out in Savannah’s careful handwriting—and something in my chest pulls tight.
“What about the area behind the warehouses?” I hear myself say.
“Out of the wind, but there’s still room to dance.
We can string the lights from the buildings.
We did our solstice fires in a walled yard at the coven, tucked away from the weather, and they always held. ”
Savannah points at me, triumphant. “See. This is exactly why we needed another set of eyes. Write it down.”
And just like that, I’m apparently fully involved, the notebook shoved into my hands, arguing about where the lights should hang and whether there’s time to build another stall and whether the little ones can be trusted with sparklers.
Maeve says absolutely not. Savannah and I overrule her because kids love sparklers.
For well over an hour, I forget everything else—the tablet under my pillow, the magic I gave away last night, the war waiting to be fought.
I just sit in the warm bakery and help plan a party, and it’s so ordinary and so good that it takes me a while to notice it’s making my chest ache.
People are building lives here. Real lives, the kind where things are planned months in advance and good things are anticipated.
They’ve taken the harshest stretch of coast I’ve ever seen—the wind blowing all day long and the sea constantly trying to take and take—and they’ve made a home here with parties, lights, bonfires, and a notebook full of plans.
And not a single one of them is spending their days thinking about the island. Not the way Ronan does, but they’re loyal to him, for good reason, and I’m not sure he can see how wrong it would be to test that loyalty.
He’s given these people everything they wanted and needed, and they love him for it. This settlement doesn’t need a war; it wants a winter solstice.
“You’ll come, won’t you?” Savannah asks, and I realize she’s watching me. “To the fair? We could use a hand on the stalls, and I’m hoping you can talk Ronan into doing story time with the pups—they’re in awe of him.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.” And I mean it, though I’m not sure why they think I have so much sway over Ronan. If I did, I’d stop this war.
One thing I know for sure, though, is that these people deserve their party, their futures, the lights down the main street, the bonfire, and the children deserve their sparklers.
If that means I have to keep going behind Ronan’s back to defuse this war before it gets started, then I will.
This might not be my home, but it’s theirs, and that’s worth fighting to protect.
I just wish it didn’t have to be him I have to protect it from.