Chapter 10 #2
“All right. All right.” His voice gentled. “No spell. But I cannot pull free. The fabric’s caught fast. I don’t suppose you have kitchen shears to hand? If you cut part of the trouser leg away, it should be easy for me to slide out.”
Shears. A plan. Something she could do.
She was across the kitchen before he had finished speaking, wrenching open the drawer where the kitchen shears lived.
She dropped back to the floor beside the ovens, bent down, and reached beneath the tipped one, stretching until her fingers found the pinned fabric, caught tight where the oven’s iron edge pressed it flat against the stone.
“Hold still.”
“I am not going anywhere.”
She worked the shears into position, angling awkwardly in the narrow space. The fabric gave way with a satisfying snip, and her next fear was immediate.
“Oh, stars, did I—”
“No, no. I am quite all—”
“What if I cut your—”
“Lucie, you will not cut my leg,” he said calmly. “I have pulled it to the far side of the trouser leg. If you cut close to the portion that is caught, there is nothing but fabric.”
She allowed herself a slow and steadying breath before snipping again. She felt the moment the fabric released, the shift of movement as Kazrian pulled his leg the other way.
She scurried backward and stood, heart still hammering. “There. Move. Carefully.”
Kazrian shifted beneath the ovens, working himself side to side in a series of ungainly movements until he emerged, feet first, on the open side of the kitchen in a slightly dusty but otherwise unharmed state. He sat up and brushed dust from his hands and sleeves.
“There. All good. Nothing to it.”
Lucie took a few uncertain steps backward, met the counter’s edge, and sat down right there on the floor, exhaling a long and shaky breath. Balthazar was at her side immediately, pressing his warm, solid weight against her ribcage. She dropped a hand to his fur.
Kazrian looked across at her, frowning. “Are you all right?”
A laugh that sounded embarrassingly close to a sob came out of her. “Am I all right? You very nearly died, and you ask whether—”
“I did not nearly die. I was, at most, mildly inconvenienced about the trousers.” He considered her a moment, then gathered himself and came to sit beside her, close, but not too close.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I did not mean to scare you. It was … a momentary lapse in concentration. But I caught hold of the enchantment the moment I lost it.” He hesitated a moment longer, then added, “Now that everyone is safe, do I have your permission to end the spell and lower the ovens the final distance?”
“Well, you are certainly not going back beneath them,” she said, her voice still unsteady, “so yes. You may as well lower them properly.”
Kazrian rose swiftly and crossed back to the ovens.
Lucie watched from the floor as he placed one hand against the wall beside them, and a brief flare of blue-white light traced the base of the ovens before they began to lower.
There was a moment—a horrible, scraping lurch as iron caught against the stone wall—and the screeching sound tore through the kitchen again, sharp enough to make her flinch.
But it was brief. The ovens settled, heavy and final, against the floor. Kazrian stood there a moment, hand still on the wall, then returned and sat beside her again, leaving the same careful distance between them.
For several moments, neither of them said anything. Outside, the rain went on.
Then a rustling sound registered. Lucie looked up to see several kitchen pixies approaching in careful formation, two carrying between them a golden bottle, the others carrying a small wooden bowl with a lump of marzipan. The bottle’s handwritten label read Gentle Calm.
Another laugh escaped Lucie, this one sounding marginally less like a sob. “Yes,” she told them. “Yes, I think I’d better.”
She uncorked the bottle and poured a thin stream of golden light over the marzipan, aware, at the edge of her vision, that Kazrian was watching her. The honey light sank slowly into the marzipan, turning it a warm, luminous gold.
Then she held the bowl out toward Kazrian. “You did say you wanted to try some.”
For a moment, he only held her gaze. Then he took the bowl, broke off a small piece of marzipan, and handed it back. She watched him study the marzipan—its altered color, the faint luminosity—before he ate it.
Lucie placed a piece on her own tongue and let it dissolve.
The effect, when it came, was quiet. Not a rush but a release. The slow, deliberate opening of a fist you had forgotten you were clenching. Beside her, Kazrian let out a low, wondering laugh.
“I feel … it is as though I was carrying something immensely heavy,” he said, “and I have just been given permission to set it down.”
Lucie smiled, leaned her head back against the cabinet door, and shut her eyes.
Perhaps it was the overwhelming relief, knowing that Kazrian was fine, or perhaps the calming effect of the honey light had something to do with it, but either way, the walls she usually kept around her memories had come down without her permission.
As she sat there with her eyes closed and Balthazar’s rumbling purr vibrating against her side, she could see it clearly: the last time she and Kazrian had sat on a kitchen floor together.
She could almost hear the hum of conversation and laughter, could almost smell the dried tea leaves and blossoms stored in the pantry at The Charmed Leaf.
She did not usually work in the evenings, but it had been Lady Rivenna’s annual tea leaf reading.
The same event that had sent Lucie into a breathless panic at fourteen, when Lady Rivenna had unexpectedly asked her to show the guests something not long after she had begun working there.
But two years later, at sixteen, that same event had found her sitting on the pantry floor with her feet tucked to one side, laughing until her stomach ached as Kazrian recounted some absurd tale of Rosavyn attempting pegasus riding while they were at Rowanhill over the winter.
What had she and Kazrian told Evryn when he’d walked in on the two of them?
Discussing the inventory? Quality control?
The open bottle of sparkleberry wine was innocent enough—a drink that was safe for fae and humans alike, even children—but their guilty expressions likely told an entirely different story.
Still, Evryn had merely backed away with a knowing smile and told them to continue.
Their conversation had turned to quieter things after that.
Lucie had told him about something that had happened at her mother’s shop a few days before, on her day off from The Charmed Leaf.
She had been helping with a fitting and knocked a tray of pins and pearl buttons to the floor.
She had managed to gather them all up before anyone noticed, slipping the scattered pieces back into their compartments while the fae ladies carried on their conversation above her head.
She had laughed as she told Kazrian. “That is the advantage of being human,” she had said lightly. “People look right past you without even seeing you.”
Kazrian’s gaze had held hers for an immeasurably long moment before he spoke. “I see you.”
Lucie’s face, already warm, had burned hotter. But—as she’d been reminding herself since she first realized she was falling for the boy with the earnest voice and the bright, searching eyes who seemed endlessly fascinated by everything she did—he was fae and she was human, and she knew her place.
So she had laughed and pretended to misunderstand him. “Well of course you do. I am sitting right in front of you, silly.”