Chapter 26 Magical Treatos and Warm Embraces
twenty-six
Magical Treatos and Warm Embraces
Magic-infused cookies were not a thing I thought I’d be making when Grandma said she wanted to have treats for the rune-painting party, but I suppose it makes sense.
No one else has magic—that we know of—other than me and Nai Nai since I can’t get Rhaz involved.
If the others are going to help us, they have to have some magic flowing through them.
So, the dough was scored with protection and power runes before baking, and now I’m adding designs for increased energy—maybe, if my hand would stop shaking—in red icing. My fists were clearly made for destruction, not arts and crafts.
“It just takes practice!” Lacey says when I groan at my fifth failure cookie.
She scoops up the piping bag from me and traces the runic shape perfectly on the next peanut cookie. I dust my hands off and step back.
“Obviously you’re more suited for this,” I say.
“Jiahui! Stop trying to get out of your work,” Nai Nai says as she pulls another batch from the oven.
“But elder Feng, Lacey can do it much better than me.”
I want to get back out to the front of the café, cleaning up glass and repainting. I told them to leave the giant splashes of black and just cover them in star speckles. I think it adds to the aesthetic, and also, I’m not going to let that asshole think he ruined anything when he comes in here.
“Giggle Sprite is not a mage!” Nai Nai says sharply. “She cannot infuse the cookies with anything but good looks. It needs your hand, and your magic.”
I grimace, accepting the icing bag as Lacey hands it over. “You’ve got this. Steady pressure, slow movements, push down and release when you want a line to stop.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” I say. “Is Jamie still coming later?”
“I think so,” she says.
“And she’s been…prepped?”
Lacey giggles nervously. “Uhh, yeah sorta.”
“Cool. Let’s just hope ‘knowing’ helps dampen the reaction to ‘seeing for herself,’” I murmur as I turn back to the counter.
I scowl down at the five I’ve done next to the perfect execution by Lacey. I want to erase them…
I take one of the cookies with a dilapidated rune and shove it in my mouth. It practically melts on my tongue and I moan. The salty sweetness is perfectly balanced with the rich, fatty peanut flavor.
Nai Nai smacks my arm. “No eating the product. These are for your friends so they can use your magic to help us ward the shop!”
“But ’at one waz roond,” I say with my mouth full of delicious cookie.
She plucks another one of the rejects off the tray and pops it in her mouth. She chews, concentrating hard, and then swallows.
“There is some magic to it. Your intensions are strong, but your execution must be stronger. Focus, Jiahui.”
“Yes, elder,” I say, but I feel like I’m already doing my best.
All I can think about is whether this is going to work, and what happens if it doesn’t. And of course, wishing Rhazan were here to help us. To hug me. To sing his calming song so my hands don’t shake while I draw the designs.
His song…
It’s worth a try.
The music comes to me easily and I begin to hum. I draw the next rune slowly and deliberately, pushing down and easing on the pressure to stop each line. There’s a little blop at the end, but it’s much cleaner than the previous five.
With every note I hum, heat fills my body and surges through my veins. It’s almost enough to make me sweat, but it keeps me right at the edge of uncomfortably focused. Orange light glows beneath my palms as I move to the next cookie and I gasp.
As soon as I stop humming, the glow disappears. I begin again, and Rhazan’s magic comes to me. I execute the next symbol with even better precision, and when the final line is down, the cookie bursts with golden sparks and the icing melds into the surface.
“There it is. Your secret strength,” Nai Nai says, and pride swells in my gut. “Perfectly done, granddaughter. Now, again.”
I hum and draw, altering the song as I get lost in the work. It’s not so sad anymore, but hopeful, wistful even. It whispers love in my ear and warms my soul. Cookie after cookie bursts with magic, and by the end of the second tray, it feels like my body has been emptied.
“I think I need a break,” I say, swaying on my feet.
Yep, definitely need a break.
There’s a burst of smoke beside me and I’m not on my feet anymore, but in Rhazan’s arms. It’s happened so many times now my immediate reaction is to cling to him, and I kinda like that.
“I’ll take you to rest,” he says.
“Hello, Rhazan,” Nai Nai says with a bright grin. “Good of you to come take care of her.”
“A lot of magic has flowed through this little vessel,” he says. “She needs taking care of.”
“I am not little,” I say, despite being second shortest of everyone in the shop.
Rhazan curls me against his chest and whispers in my ear, “My little Firecracker.”
Heat spirals down my body to my gut and I shiver.
His.
I like the sound of it. It feels right.
“I’ll bring her back in thirty minutes,” he says, then dips his head to my grandma.
“Take all the time you need,” she replies, and her tone carries a hint of suggestion that makes that warmth in my belly turn into squiggling worms.
I bury my face in his chest, hiding from the awkwardness. He walks toward the stairs, and I sigh, closing my eyes.
“So what, you just been hanging around, watching us like a creep?”
“Mhmm,” he hums. “I wasn’t going to intrude, but when you started singing my song, I couldn’t stay away. It was too beautiful.”
“Sorry, I changed it some.”
“I noticed.”
“Don’t sue me.”
He chuckles. “You couldn’t pay, anyway.”
I blow a lazy raspberry. “I could pay.”
The stairs whine in protest, and Rhaz has to duck to fit in the passageway, but we make it up to the apartment. He carries me to my room and nudges my bedroll with his foot until it unfolds enough for him to set me down. I pull him to the floor with me and curl into him closer.
“It felt happier,” he says.
I nod. “It did.”
“It felt like…sanctuary.”
The admission knocks the air from my lungs. It’s such a huge word, to make something so important for someone. I gave him a safe place just by singing. He’s done it for me, too.
I nestle into him deeper. “You’ve helped ground me through panic attacks, so I guess you’re my sanctuary, too.”
He sighs deeply, his fingers grazing along my scalp, then down my neck to my back. Tension eases out of my body at the motion, and he repeats it again, and again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call for you. I didn’t want you to get in trouble,” I say, drowsiness pulling out my thoughts.
His lips ghost over the crown of my head in a gentle kiss.
“I know.”
“How long until you’re free?”
“Not long,” he murmurs. “I have a parole hearing in twenty days.”
I look up on a gasp. “Days!”
He hushes me, kissing my eyelids and holding me tighter. He looks at ease. At peace. Like nothing can touch him.
Just under three weeks isn’t long. If he’s released, we could be together anywhere.
“Do you need help?” I ask.
I want to be part of the solution for him. I want him to be free of the chains that bind him to this place, even if he has made it his home. Maybe he wouldn’t want to “go out,” but I’d like to take him anyway. There are just too many things to see and do out in the world to be trapped in one place.
He strokes my hair. “I’m well prepared.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
He chuckles. “You can rest.”
“But, I mean, for your hearing?”
“You have your own worries right now, Firecracker. You need to take care of yourself, and your family.”
“But…”
You feel like family.
“No buts, Jiahui, or I will spank yours,” he says.
I giggle like a silly girl and I know for sure I’m beyond exhausted. I let my eyes close and I breathe him in. His heat is a balm against the chilly fall air that seeps through the frame of the old window. It’s like slipping into a hot bath after a long, cold day.
He begins to hum. Not his sad song, but the happier one I created from it. I tuck my arms against my chest and place my hands on him, soaking up more of his heat and easing into the vibrations of his soul. This is how I want to fall asleep for the rest of my life.
“You have nothing to fear,” he says.
And despite there being so many things for me to fear right now, I believe his words so deeply that my muscles surrender the last of their tension. I’m at the edge of unconsciousness when he murmurs something I don’t understand.
“I will always protect my mate, no matter the cost.”
But I’m too far gone to ask what he means before warm darkness whisks me away.