Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
“You’re baking?” Vaskel asked once he was inside Lira’s kitchen. “Aren’t you worried about Cali with Marina?”
“Of course, I am.” Lira slid him a severe look as she stirred something dark in a small copper saucepan. “But you know baking calms me and helps me think.”
Vaskel eyed her signature apple cider cake and the pans of cut-out scones waiting to go in the oven before breathing in the scent of fruit scones already baking.
Crumpet was scooping flour from a burlap sack, and Bramble was washing ruby-red cranberries in a bowl of water.
“If that’s the case, then you must have come up with a hundred brilliant solutions already. ”
Lira made a face at him. “That’s not how it works. I don’t get more ideas the more things I bake. Sometimes the process takes a while.”
A while was exactly what Vaskel did not have.
But he tempered his impatience, reminding himself that he should be grateful that Lira was helping him with his problem.
Considering he’d made this deal with Marina years before he’d even met Lira, he had no right to demand she drop everything to save him.
But now it wasn’t just him who needed saving.
“I’m not shocked Thrain fell for Marina’s ways,” Vaskel admitted. “But I didn’t think she’d get to Cali.”
Lira pressed her lips together as the contents of her pan bubbled, sending up clouds of sweet, fragrant steam. Then she looked up and met Vaskel’s gaze. “Cali wants the same things all of us do. She wants to be valued and desired just as much as Thrain, even if she might seem less of a target.”
Crumpet chattered something, and Lira hastened the pan off the heat. “You’re right. I don’t want to scorch the chocolate.”
Vaskel tried not to be unsettled by Lira talking with an enchanted woodland creature. Besides, he’d seen more astonishing things over the years than a team of wee beasties, as Sass called them, working as kitchen assistants.
“Do you think Cali’s been lonely?” Vaskel asked. “Do you think she was an easy mark for Marina because we’ve been too busy running the tavern to spend as much time with her?”
Lira swept the back of her hand across her forehead. “I honestly don’t know. I do think we’re assuming a lot. All we saw was Marina asking Cali to teach her to shoot a bow.”
“Which she knows how to do,” Vaskel added. “Quite well, I should say.”
“So we know Marina was lying, and it’s probably safe to say that her intentions aren’t on the up and up, but we can’t be sure Cali will fall for it like Thrain did.”
“It’s hard to imagine Cali being as lovesick as the dwarf.”
Lira tapped her wooden spoon on the side of the pan, and melted chocolate oozed down it. “Have we ever seen Cali lovesick?”
Vaskel ran a hand down his short beard, thinking back to their crewing days. “There was that pretty librarian in Frostmoor. I always had a feeling they bonded over more than romance novels.”
Lira smiled at the memory. “I forget her name, but she was nice. It was a shame we had to move on.”
“We were always moving on back then.”
Lira nodded. “None of us put down roots or made deep connections since we were always going from one bounty or quest to the next.”
“Except for Rog. He always went home to Rosie.”
Lira chuckled. “We just didn’t know that that home was a brandy wagon.”
Vaskel warmed at the thought of his gnome friend and his wife, happy that they’d ended up in Wayside with the rest of their crew. All except two, he reminded himself as the warm feeling faded.
“Speaking of…” Lira reached for a small jar of Rosie’s apple brandy and removed the cork with a pop before glugging some into the melted chocolate.
Vaskel eyed the pan. “Are you making…? Is that…?”
“The recipe I want to add the potion to?” Lira met his gaze. “It is. I want to do a test run before we add the potion.”
Vaskel nodded, his chest suddenly tight. Did his future really hinge on chocolate brandy cookies?
“This might be my fault,” Lira said as she whisked the brandy into the chocolate.
Vaskel stared at her. “The soul bind? Marina?”
“No.” She whisked faster. “Cali. I’ve been so distracted by the ridiculous wedding plans that I haven’t been spending as much time with her.”
He reached for her hand and stopped her whisking. “It’s understandable. You also moved in with Korl and have been working at the tavern every day on top of having a wedding to plan.”
Lira frowned. “Being a bride is no excuse for ignoring your friends.”
“You’ve hardly been ignoring anyone.” He squeezed her hand. “I promise.”
She gave him a grateful smile. “Is to too late to elope?”
He laughed at this. “Don’t ask me. Hellkins don’t even bother with weddings.”
Lira’s grin faded. “Even if I haven’t been the most attentive friend, I like to think that Cali is too clever to fall under Marina’s spell. For all we know, she was merely being helpful.”
Vaskel wanted to believe that, but he also knew just how cunning Marina could be, especially if she knew Cali was important to Vaskel and that she could be a valuable member of a crew. “There’s one person who has been spending more time with Cali than any of us.”
Lira leveled her dripping spoon at him. “Iris!”
“Cali is always in her back room borrowing books. Almost every time I pop in, she’s there to talk about pirate romance or kraken romance or whatever it is she likes to read.”
“Pirates,” Lira said as Crumpet dumped a cup full of flour into the chocolate and brandy mixture. She cocked her head at the hellkin. “How often are you popping in to Iris’s, Vask?”
Although his red skin couldn’t flush, his face warmed. “No more than is normal.”
Crumpet huffed out a breath and took the spoon from Lira, taking over mixing as she eyed Vaskel.
“Since I know that hellkins rarely get sick, is it normal for you to pop in to the apothecary’s at all? It isn’t like you’re into reading pirate romance.”
He spluttered, the words tripping over his tongue as he tried to explain himself. “Iris and I are friends just like she and Cali are friends, so it’s perfectly normal for me to visit her.”
This only seemed to widen Lira’s smile. “Somehow I don’t think it’s the same as Iris and Cali’s friendship, do you?”
He opened his mouth then clamped it shut, realizing too late that his tail was flicking nervously behind him. Lira knew him too well for him to get much past her, and her eyes went straight to his tail.
“I think I’ve been too distracted by the wedding to notice quite a few things,” she said with a smug grin.
“We’re talking about Cali,” Vaskel reminded her, “and trying to make sure she doesn’t get taken in by Marina.”
Some of the smugness in Lira’s smile vanished. “You’re right. You’re also right that Iris has been spending more time with her than anyone. If someone might know Cali’s state of mind, it would be her.”
Vaskel paused. “You don’t think Cali would tell Marina what’s in the castle dungeon, do you?”
Lira’s oven-warmed cheeks paled. “Why would she? She wants Malek to stay locked away as much as we all do.”
Vaskel nodded, wanting to believe her. Wanting to believe that Marina would never get that information from Cali.
“I can talk to Iris. I should check on the potion anyway,” Vaskel said, changing the subject and taking care not to meet Lira’s shrewd gaze. “I can tell her what we know about Cali and Marina and see what she thinks.”
“I’ll keep working on the cookies. If the potion is done later today, I’d like to get them made by this evening.”
“Then all I have to do is convince Marina to eat one.”
Lira opened the oven door, leaning back as steam billowed from inside. She used her knitted oven mitts to retrieve two pans of golden-brown scones and set them on the wooden worktable. The potent aroma of cinnamon drenched the air, and even Vaskel’s stomach growled.
“It will work, Vask,” Lira said as she waved an oven mitt over the scones. “Who doesn’t love baked goods?”