Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The warmth had not come back. The atmosphere had been off all day—something in the air between himself and Lucie that Kazrian could not quite name, though he knew precisely where it had come from.
The careful ease they had built over recent weeks, the steady, hard-won rhythm of two people learning to work alongside one another, had retreated.
In its place was something brittle and watchful.
And the source was Henry Stratton.
There had been a fraction of a second during which everything had appeared normal.
Kazrian had come in, his gaze sweeping the room, cataloguing the state of things as he always did.
And then his mind had caught up with what his eyes were seeing: Henry’s hand.
Lucie’s arm. The negligible distance between them.
And Lucie, moving away from Henry so swiftly she had practically fled to the far counter, the bag of flour clutched to her chest like a shield.
Kazrian had set the box down. He had been civil.
He had smiled, because that was what one did, and he had navigated the conversation with the sort of diplomacy that came from years of watching his grandmother manage people she would rather have set on fire.
He had covered for Lucie when Henry had said, with that pleasant, pointed warmth of his, that he understood Kazrian’s grandmother had forced Lucie into visiting Dreamland the night before, because Lucie’s brief, panicked look had told him he needed to.
She had lied. Or rather, she had allowed Henry to believe a version of events that bore only a passing resemblance to the truth, because Henry, Kazrian had very quickly come to understand, was not pleased that she had been there.
Or rather … was not pleased that she had been there with someone who was not him.
Even after Henry left, the wrongness had lingered.
Lucie had disappeared into the pantry, Kazrian had taken the box upstairs, and when they had both returned to the kitchen, neither of them had spoken of it. They had simply continued, as though the morning were any other morning, as though nothing at all had happened.
Except it did not feel like any other morning. It felt like the first day Kazrian had arrived at The Honeycomb, when she had barely looked at him and he had not known where to put his hands.
The hob, at least, gave him something to do with them.
He turned his attention back to it. The oven itself, mercifully, was in perfect working order.
Whatever temperamental impulses the building harbored toward its occupants, it had apparently decided, after Kazrian’s initial repairs, that sabotaging the baking was a step too far.
The enchantments held steady, the heat distributed evenly, and the lumyrite threads running through the iron pulsed with the quiet, rhythmic hum of magic doing precisely what it was meant to do.
Kazrian was grateful for that, at least.
The hob on top of the oven, however, was another matter. It had taken to heating itself without provocation. No command, no touch, no activation of the enchantment that governed it. It would simply grow hot, silently and without warning, which was more than a little dangerous.
Two days ago, one of the kitchen pixies had landed on it, and the shriek had been instantaneous and terrible.
Kazrian had crossed the kitchen in a few quick strides, scooped the pixie up, and taken it straight to the basin.
He’d conjured cool water from the tap and applied an additional enchantment to the burn salve—which he’d located in the drawer Balthazar had suddenly and insistently begun pawing at—before his mind had entirely caught up with his body.
For that, he could thank three years of befriending a prince whose hobbies involved creatures that breathed fire.
He crouched before the oven now, one hand on the iron casing, his fingers spread wide, his magic attempting to determine if everything was truly fixed now.
The lumyrite threads running through the iron were steady.
No erratic pulse, no variation in temperature.
He moved to the wall and pressed his palm flat against the stone, reaching deeper, past the surface and into the lattice.
The threads there hummed evenly beneath his touch, just as they had two days ago when he had fixed this particular problem.
And then the irregularity had returned. It reminded him, unpleasantly, of the thread that made the shelf misbehave.
He returned to the front of the oven and held his hand above the hob again, testing. Still cool. For the moment, at least. He had several more diagnostic enchantments he could apply to be certain.
Behind him, Lucie was working on something delicate.
Something that involved a rolling pin, a sheet of marzipan, several small bowls of unidentifiable ingredients, and some dark things Kazrian suspected were vanilla pods.
Two kitchen pixies hovered close, one holding a tiny sieve aloft, another with a spoon larger than itself.
For the most part, Kazrian had not been watching her, but he could not help looking over every now and then.
On the surface, this was the same arrangement they had maintained for weeks.
Kazrian at his work, Lucie at hers, the two of them occupying the kitchen in a shared quiet that had, until today, felt almost companionable.
A remark here. A question there. A cup of tea left wordlessly by one for the other.
But beneath the surface, something simmered that neither of them was willing to name.
Lucie made a small, frustrated sound. Kazrian looked around to see her shaking a slender glass bottle, tilting it toward the light, then lowering it to the worktable.
“The moonglow essence is nearly finished,” she said, more to the room than to him.
“I had not realized it was so low. Mr Clave is the only supplier who carries it.” She wiped her hands on her apron.
“I shall have to leave early this afternoon to get some more.”
“I can collect it,” Kazrian offered, “if you write out the order. I am going that way this afternoon.” He was not going that way, but it would be no trouble.
“Oh. Thank you.”
Silence settled once more. Still the wrong kind.
Kazrian returned his attention to the hob and the layered sequence of diagnostic enchantments he was still running. Behind him, he heard Lucie sifting something. Flour? Confectioner’s sugar? It was a fine, whispered sound.
“Did you try that charm again for the chocolate bees?”
“No,” she answered. “I have not had time.” She sounded faintly annoyed that he’d asked. Very well, then. He would file that firmly under topics not to be raised again until she raised them herself.
More silence. The hearth crackled softly. Two brownies were hauling a sack of sugar between them across the far side of the kitchen.
Kazrian rose and moved to the wall again. The lattice still hummed evenly beneath his hand. Good. That was good. But he could not be certain yet if he trusted it.
A clatter sounded behind him, and then a small sound of pure exasperation.
He turned to see Lucie crouching beside a small metal bowl and a dusting of golden powder across the floor.
She picked up the bowl, then swept at the mess with the side of her hand, too quickly, too hard, as though the gold had insulted her personally.
She stood, set the bowl down with a decisive thud, pressed both palms to the worktable, and stared straight ahead.
Kazrian opened his mouth.
“What you saw this morning,” she said before he could speak, her attention still directed forward and nowhere near him. “It was nothing. Henry is … affectionate. He is a demonstrative person by nature.” She brushed her hands against her apron and picked up the rolling pin. “That is all it was.”
Kazrian’s hand went still against the wall. He considered his response carefully before speaking. “His affection,” he said at last, “should not make you uncomfortable.”
Lucie’s head came up, her hands freezing halfway through pushing the rolling pin across the marzipan. “It does not make me uncomfortable.”
Kazrian held her gaze and said nothing. He did not need to. They both knew what he had seen that morning. The way she had put the length of the kitchen between herself and Henry, the way she had gripped that bag of flour as though it were the only solid thing in the room.
Lucie looked away first. She turned back to the rolling pin and the sheet of marzipan, pressing it thinner with short, brisk strokes that had rather more force behind them than the delicate work likely required.
“You do not know Henry,” she said. “You have been here a matter of weeks. He has been a fixture in my life for considerably longer, and I assure you, he is perfectly—”
“I saw your face, Lucie.” The words left him before he could weigh them, and he heard the edge in his own voice. He had not meant to say it that way. He had not meant to say it at all, in fact.
She froze again. “My face.”
Well, the words were out now. He may as well finish the thought. “When he touched your arm. You did not look as though you welcomed it.”
The laugh that came out of her was high and sharp. “I welcomed it perfectly well, thank you. You saw what you wished to see, and now you are making something from nothing.”
Making something from nothing.
Now that landed like a punch to his chest, whether she had meant it to or not.
Had he not spent years making something from nothing where she was concerned?
Reading signals that were not there. Interpreting warmth that was only courtesy.
Perhaps he was doing it again, reading something into Henry’s actions and Lucie’s reactions that did not actually exist. He was convinced he was not wrong this time, and yet …
he had been convinced three years ago, and he had been spectacularly wrong then.