Chapter 1 #2
The woman herself walked in, yawning wide enough to crack her jaw. “What’s happening?” She cinched her very un-queenly robe closed.
“This… man,” I scoffed, “is in my kitchen for some unknown reason.”
Evie woke right up, smiling, eyes sparkling. Her hands flapped in excitement and my eye twitched.
“Oh, this is Javier. I got you some help. I didn’t want this to be all on you for such an important day.”
My heart sank. There would have been a time when Evie would have trusted me with her life.
I gave the woman her first job at my bakery, followed her out of our secret village into the larger Harrowlands.
I stood by her and cheered her on as she found her mate and took her crown.
She didn’t trust me to pull off a dinner for a few hundred monsters?
My arm hooked hers and I dragged her out of the kitchen, away from the prying eyes that would spread this gossip faster than a caramel burned.
We took the first turn into a room off the kitchen, which turned out to be the cold storage with the ducks.
Shutting the door, Evie provided some light with her dragon magic, holding an orb of it in her palm.
I picked the duck off the floor, gathering my wits so I didn’t yell.
We were already forty-six minutes behind and the to-do list was growing with every passing wasted moment.
“This is my dinner, Evie.”
I shouldn’t have let Lenora help. Evie somehow knew I wasn’t up for it.
She wrung her hands. “I mean of-of course it is. Uh, I didn’t mean…”
I stared at the floor as if it would draw us back together again. “Is this about Ward? I didn’t know he was teasing you about the Devil’s Bell. Okay? I only broke his pinkie.”
She blurted the rest out. “You just haven’t seemed yourself and I was worried it would be too much for one person.”
“But that person is me!” I meant it as a joke, but it came out too strangled. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t know about the Fever. It wasn't like I told anyone. What if they wanted to… help? I tried again in a more reasonable tone. “I’m going to work extra hard on this. Don’t worry.”
I held out my hands to keep this at bay before I realized that duck covered them. Evie’s face grew distinctly green. She turned away to answer.
“It’s not that, Fallon. You’re tired. You disappear for whole days at a time. When you’re not working, you look…blank.”
I startled as if she’d scalded me, my brow creasing into deep furrows. I most certainly did not! Maybe I felt a little blank when the pain was especially bad, but I just needed to catch up. Get through this night.
“I haven’t really slept for the past week getting this menu together. I’ve got this.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “I know. And Declan always helps.”
“I don’t need help or Declan. I need space to just get it done!”
“But Fallon,” she said, her face stricken.
I didn’t want to hear ‘buts’. My volume increased. “This is my kitchen and–”
A polite knock preceded Ward’s quiet menace seeping through the door. “Ladies. The discussion needs to slip down a notch if it’s going to continue.”
“Don’t mind him. He’s extra protective—”
A loud clang of a falling pot reverberated through the closet.
My fists forgot any pain left in them as my nails formed half moons in my palms. What in the seven hells is that butt waffle doing in my kitchen? I asked Declan.
“What?” Evie said, staring at the cold room door.
The door ripped open a second later and Declan poked his head in, Ward looming behind him.
“Don’t shout at me. That butt waffle is trying to use your good pot for making a braise.”
Every muscle I owned clenched in fury. “You see, Evie!”
“When did you start that?” she asked instead, pointing to her forehead.
“What, mind speaking to Declan? Since we met. All of us magic-types can do that now, right?” The last thing I needed was one of her tangents when another set of clangs rocked the kitchen.
“Oh, girl,” she said. “You can’t ignore–”
I hung my head. “Please don’t add one more thing to my plate if you’re not getting rid of that man.”
“You need him, Fallon.”
The hells I did. That man would ruin this dinner. I saw red, striding back into my kitchen to contain my temper before I said something I regretted.
I caught Ward pulling his mate out of the cold room. The intense look on his face said they were mind speaking again.
“No!” Evie’s voice rose above the chatter in the kitchen. “This requires drastic steps…”
So Evie wouldn’t budge, even as Ward pulled her deeper into the Keep until I couldn't hear them arguing anymore.
She had that way where she was gentle but somehow you ended up tripping into her bidding.
Kind of like Declan. If I had to live with an overbearing, arrogant “helper”, I would.
Any extra hands would help in theory. But I would be Goddsdamned if he was going to ruin my pots.
“Please put that down,” I asked Javier.
He surprised me by actually doing what I asked. What came out of his mouth next did not.
“Why don’t you go make some pastries, bake some bread. Maybe someday you can open your own bakery, pass out sweet treats to your neighbors or something.”
My teeth almost cracked with the pressure I put on them. A thousand retorts came into my head, each more vicious than the last. My former bakery had been terribly successful, thank you very much.
I pointed a finger straight into his face. “You take dessert. I will take the first course.”
I had ‘petty’ in me too. If I didn’t swallow my pride now, I was going to skin him alive in front of the assembly. I didn't think that was the entertainment Evie had planned for the night. I knew, without a doubt, I would outwork him and that would expose him well enough.
We divided the rest of the kitchen and the menu in half to work around each other. Time melted like butter. Except, as the brigade settled into a rhythm and Javier shouted more and more commands to my team, I could feel my magic rising to the surface.
It still didn’t sit easy under my skin. When we’d left our tiny village, my friends and I each learned we had more magic than we thought.
Which was more than none. Evie now turned into a giant dragon.
Maggie, well, she had always said she was a witch, but now she had the sigil magic to back it up.
And me. I ended up the town baker because my magic worked through food.
I assumed everyone loved my baked goods because I dosed them with extra love, but as each of my friends found their power, I discovered my food came with real magic.
And I was angry I’d settled for less. Baker was the job I was allowed to do, instead of the cooking I wanted to do.
“Don’t let those loaves burn,” the man shouted at my head baker, who had been doing this for longer than I had been alive.
“Agnes has this. Don’t let your milk scald,” I shouted back at bird-stash just as his milk happened to bubble over totally without my help.
Apprenticing with a cheese dragon had given me a lot of insight into feastweaving magic. Keeping control over it, when I had no one to teach me, was another matter.
It might have, probably, for sure, curdled Javier’s egg custard sauce. But it also put a huge smile on Declan’s face as he tasted my dandelion greens. I possibly added a dash too much as Declan’s eyes grew glassy.
As Javier started his sauce again, he watched me core and slice faerie glow tomatoes into roses.
“Don’t cut yourself,” he said in his nasal voice.
Like a jinx, the knife slipped and I had to throw away the bloody tomato.
I bit back a retort, my magic surging higher.
Declan already had my hand in the air with a scrap of rag around it, stopping the bleeding as fast as possible.
Before I even had time to ask for the bottle of unicorn plaster.
Declan painted it on my skin diligently as I described how to finish the tomatoes to the vegetable cook.
I slammed my magic into them so they would look like real roses when she finished.
Before the list was half done, the sun burst fire-glow colors into the kitchen as it set behind Declan.
He carried in the last crate of spiny dragon lobsters about to meet their doom.
They were the most difficult of the night’s items to prepare.
I tried to calm my agitation as the hour of the dinner approached.
Only my full concentration would do for the little creatures who would nourish our souls.
“We need more platters for the bread, and more pitchers for wine.”
I ignored Javier through gritted teeth. I had set those out when I first got in. We had plenty, even though the first dishes were going out.
I shook my head to clear it. My magic came to my hands, healing the minor cut on my finger, infusing the lobsters to bring out their natural briny sweetness.
Every action in the kitchen was part of the incantation.
Boiling the lobsters in the butter, laying them back in their bright purple shells, were all pieces of magic that made them more tender, juicier, and more able to summon that one memory that made the meal irresistible.
Courses went out as I whisked the salty shell broth with a light cream and Frisson berry to pour over the lobsters at the last second. I had to get this right. It would blow any of Javier’s dishes out of the water.
Every turn of the whisk brought more magic from the depths of my soul until it poured out of the bowl and across the entire kitchen. More perceptive monsters like Agnes stopped to look at what I was doing. The rest doubled their efforts as I worked harder to get the broth the right consistency.