Magnolia
TWO YEARS LATER
The bell above the door hasn't stopped ringing since six a.m.
Saturday morning at Sugar & Slag Bakery looks like a beautiful war zone.
Three industrial mixers running at full speed.
Two apprentice bakers elbow-deep in Swiss meringue buttercream.
A shelf of cooling racks stacked six high with golden brown croissants that sell out before noon every single weekend without exception.
I pipe the last rosette onto a birthday cake shaped like a centaur and wipe my forehead with the back of my wrist. Flour in my hair. Buttercream on my collarbone. Chocolate under my fingernails.
Perfect.
The bakery takes up three full storefronts now.
The original tiny shop on the left, the expanded production kitchen in the center where the old potion supply store used to be, and the brand new café space on the right with floor-to-ceiling windows and mismatched vintage chairs I found at an estate sale in the Fae Quarter.
The sign outside is hand-painted in gold leaf.
The Yelp reviews are disgusting. Four point nine stars and the only reason it's not five is because some guy named Derek complained that the scones were "too flaky. " Derek can rot.
"Boss! The Thornberry order is ready to load!"
That's June, my morning shift lead. Pixie-cut, nose ring, can ice forty cupcakes in twelve minutes flat. I stole her from a French patisserie downtown and I will never give her back.
"Tell Dash it's the fragile load protocol. Ten tiers. Enchanted sugar flowers. If one petal cracks, the bride will literally hex us."
"He already knows. He finished his 'route reconnaissance' and just pulled the van around to the end of the block.'"
Of course he has.
I push through the kitchen's swinging door and step into the bright morning chaos of Birch Street. The Saturday farmer's market crowds pack the sidewalks shoulder to shoulder. Strollers, dogs, a wood nymph selling artisanal honey, a dwarf arguing with a parking meter.
And there, stepping out of the bakery to carry the order down to our brand new bakery van double-parked at the end of the block — midnight blue, custom suspension, reinforced steel shelving in the back, and the words SUGAR & SLAG painted in elegant cream script across the side — is six feet nine inches of dark green, heavily scarred, deeply focused Orc.
Dash wears his delivery uniform. Black work pants.
Fitted black henley with the sleeves pushed up over his massive forearms. Steel-toed boots.
The company logo embroidered small over his heart.
An earpiece in one pointed ear connected to absolutely nothing because he just likes the tactical aesthetic.
He lifts the ten-tier cake off a rolling prep cart like it's made of sleeping newborns.
Both hands spread wide beneath the reinforced base board. Fingers splayed, every tendon in his forearms standing at attention.
The cake is a masterpiece. Vanilla bean sponge with passion fruit curd filling, wrapped in ivory fondant, and crowned with hand-sculpted enchanted sugar peonies that shimmer faintly with residual baking magic.
It weighs forty-seven pounds. It took me nine hours to decorate. It costs more than my first car.
He carries it like a reliquary through the parting crowd.
People move. They always move. Not out of fear anymore, though some of the newer residents on the block still give him a wide berth.
They move because this is Dash, and Dash carries cakes through this street every Saturday, and the regulars know better than to get between an Orc and a delivery schedule.
"LEFT SIDE, PLEASE."
A man with a golden retriever steps aside. A group of teenagers drinking boba tea presses against the flower shop window. A tiny grandmother on a mobility scooter gives him a thumbs up.
He walks the entire block in a perfectly straight line without a single tremor in his hands. The sugar peonies don't even wobble.
When he reaches the delivery van's back doors, he slides the cake onto the custom shelf, locks the spring-loaded clamps into place, and closes the doors with surgical precision.
Then he turns around and looks at me.
Two years. Two years of 4 a.m. alarms and flour-dusted morning kisses and his massive frame wedged behind a van steering wheel and the scar on his ribs from the Grimjaw fight that I trace with my thumb every single night.
Two years of him learning to temper chocolate.
Two years of me learning to throw a proper right hook.
Two years of a lifetime exclusivity contract pinned to our refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a croissant.
He crosses the sidewalk in four strides. Flour on his henley from where he leaned against the prep counter this morning to steal a cinnamon roll while he thought I wasn't looking. I was looking. I'm always looking.
His hand finds the back of my neck. Massive palm, warm and rough, tilting my chin up.
"Delivery route is clear. ETA twenty-two minutes. No griffins."
"No griffins."
"No rock crawlers."
"No rock crawlers."
"One kiss for fuel."
I grab his henley with both flour-covered fists and pull him down to me.
Saturday morning on Birch Street. Sun on the windows. Croissants in the oven.
Home.