Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The enchanted quill scratched a line through white choc pistachio bonbons — third test batch — this is the one!
and Lucie felt a small, private thrill of satisfaction at the sight of it.
That was another item Lady Rivenna wanted perfected before the launch, and Lucie knew she would be pleased.
The list was getting shorter. The launch was getting closer.
The bell in the front room chimed its single music-box note, and Georgiana’s voice followed a moment later, pleasant and welcoming.
One of Lady Rivenna’s invited patrons, then.
Good. The open days had been drawing a steady trickle of exactly the sort of people Lady Rivenna wanted through the door: the kind who would leave and speak of The Honeycomb in the right drawing rooms to the right ears.
Lucie released the quill, which gave a pleased little pirouette in midair, as though congratulating itself on a task well done, before settling back to hover primly beside the list, and turned back to the kitchen.
Kazrian was kneeling beside the enchanted cooling cabinets, one hand pressed flat to the paneled front, the other resting lightly on the stone floor.
He had been there all morning, and the cabinets—which had, for the past several weeks, alternated between frosting their contents into solid blocks of ice and abandoning the pretense of cooling altogether—were now holding at a steady, even chill.
“I think that’s done now,” Kazrian said, drawing his hand from the cabinet and flexing his fingers.
“The cabinet was pulling magic from an older enchantment relating to the insulation of the building rather than solely from the newer lattice. I’ve separated the two so the cooling enchantment should function as designed now. ”
He rose to his feet and stepped back, brushing the knees of his trousers. Lucie opened the nearest cabinet door and held her hand inside. Cool. Steady. She checked the tray of chocolate truffles she had placed there that morning as a test. They sat firm and glossy, each one perfectly intact.
“Oh, that is wonderful,” she said, and meant it entirely. “Truly. Thank you.”
He gave a small nod, and for a moment something warm and quiet passed between them. The simple satisfaction of a thing that had been broken and was now mended, and two people who both understood, in their different ways, what that was worth.
“Of course, we should wait a few hours, perhaps a day or two, to confirm,” Kazrian added. “But there is no reason for the cabinets not to hold steady now.”
“Right, yes.”
“I have also begun a slow counter-enchantment on the staircase,” Kazrian continued, moving to the stone basin set into the counter to wash his hands.
“It needs time to settle on its own. Two to three hours, I should think, while the old magic beneath it adjusts. I would rather not do anything else until that process is complete, since any additional magical work nearby might destabilize it.”
“Of course,” Lucie said.
“Which means I should hold off on addressing whatever magic is interfering with the ovens.” Kazrian dried his hands and rolled his sleeves down.
Keep your eyes up, Lucie Fields, they are merely forearms.
“But I did notice,” Kazrian went on, “while I was examining them yesterday, that the heat regulator on one of the ovens is worn. The small enchanted disc that sits behind the flue. It is not part of the lumyrite lattice, just a standard component, but it is affecting the way magic flows through the oven. I need to replace it.”
“Ah. I see.”
“There is a shop on Winding Row that sells enchanted components. Hargrave their familiar exchange—and settled himself against the edge of the counter near the window.
His usual spot, close enough to talk but never in the path of her work.
“Tell me everything. What is new? What am I looking at here?” He nodded at the tray of licorice dreams.
So she told him. About the rich licorice flavor she’d infused into dark chocolate ganache before sprinkling moon-pixie dust over the resulting truffles, and about which honey light she planned to add once they were set.
About the commissions that had begun arriving from the first-wave patrons, and the cooling cabinets that had finally been repaired.
“Lady Rivenna’s grandson has been working on the building’s magical faults,” she said, as she set the kettle on.
“Lord Rowanwood. He has made considerable progress.”
Henry laughed. “How peculiar that must be—a fae lord doing repairs. That seems very unlike them.”