Chapter 8 #2
“Practical,” he returned, unoffended. He set the butter in the center of the rolled dough. “You wrap the détrempe around the block like a present, then you roll it out to a long rectangle. Here.”
He handed her the pin. Their fingers grazed. It was nothing—except her skin apparently hadn’t gotten the memo, because heat chased along her knuckles. She pretended to be fascinated by the grain of the rolling pin.
“Even pressure,” he said. “Don’t smash it. Coax it.”
The dough yielded with a faint sigh. She could feel the butter as a cool, pliant layer beneath the surface—resistant, then giving, the way grief sometimes let you out for errands before dragging you back inside.
She rolled it into a long rectangle. Wesley watched her hands, not correcting, merely tracking.
“Good,” he said. “Now, fold: bottom third up, top third down. That’s a letter fold.”
She folded it; he turned it a quarter. “Then rest,” he said, lifting the packet onto a sheet tray, setting it aside. “The gluten relaxes; the butter chills.”
“Like naps.”
“Exactly like naps,” he said, dead serious, which she did not need to find charming. He pulled forward another chilled packet and slid it to her. “Again.”
“Repetition,” she said. “How thrilling.”
“Order,” he said, matching her tone. “How scandalous.”
She pressed the pin again. The room felt oddly patient, the nerves she’d grown accustomed to—hers and the shop’s—smoothed by the rhythm.
Roll. Fold. Turn. Rest. When she worked magic these days, everything inside her buzzed and spiked and came out feral.
This? This was a meditative insult. She might even like it, which was unacceptable.
“Do you do everything like this?” she asked, because silence made her fidget.
“Like what?”
“In steps,” she said. “Exact. Measured. If someone moved your scales an inch to the left, would you riot?”
He huffed a laugh. “I might sulk. But…yeah. To an extent. The shop’s better if I build the day the same way—mix at dawn, first prove by the time the kettle whistles, laminations by second bell.
” He shrugged, eyes on the dough. “When there’s noise, you can either wave at it or give yourself a railing to hold. ”
A railing. She pictured the night Bailey didn’t come home and the weeks after, when she’d worked by muscle memory because thinking hurt and not thinking was worse. It had felt like drowning in a room with windows. No railing. No anything. Just water.
“Mm,” she said, which was less a word and more a noncommittal grunt with emotions she refused to unpack tied to it like baggage.
He slid a third packet her way. “Last turn for this set. Then we chill the stack, start a fresh slab, and give the first one a chance to settle.”
“Fine,” she said, like she was put-upon. She wasn’t. It was almost…soothing.
She rolled. The pin whispered. He asked for the scraper; she handed it to him without looking. The small transactions stacked up into something that felt suspiciously like ease.
When the dough had been turned and rested, he tapped the bench. “You want to try something?”
“I am trying something,” she said, but he shook his head, amused.
“I mean…try weaving your magic through the fold.”
A hundred responses presented themselves, all with teeth. She chose the least defensive one that still sounded like her. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Probably,” he agreed, “but this room stops buzzing when we do this. You noticed.”
Of course he’d noticed that she’d noticed. Annoying. She lifted her hands, then dropped them. “If I blow up the bakery again, you’re explaining it to Veyne.”
“Deal.”
“And Mrs. Haddingham.”
“Absolutely not. She scares me.”
Against all better judgment, she bent over the cool slab. “You’re going to be insufferable if this works.”
“I’m already insufferable,” he said, eyes kind, voice easy.
She exhaled a slow, thin breath. The rune she chose was minor—binding, basic, something safe enough to test on a cowardly day.
She shaped it with two fingers over the dough’s surface, not speaking aloud, just forming the lines in thought, the angles she’d traced since she was small enough to stand on a stool to watch Bailey draw them in salt.
The air at the edge of the bench hummed.
She pressed the rune into the fold—not on top, but between the layers. Butter, flour, bind. The magic spread like melted wax, slipping through the seams, coaxing the layers to cling where they should have torn apart. It took a breath, and held.
No lurch. No crackle-back. No flaring jars or offended runes—a hum, then quiet.
Her throat went tight. She blinked suspiciously. “Again.”
He didn’t say I told you so. He didn’t say anything at all, which might have been the smartest thing he’d done all day. He turned the dough. She drew the rune and fed it into the next fold. The glow softened into the layers, steady as tidewater, and nested.
“Oh,” he said softly. Not triumph. Not surprise. Awe.
She snorted because she was constitutionally opposed to sincere moments. “Don’t get poetic.”
“Too late,” he murmured. “You found the groove.”
“It’s your groove,” she said, hating the way the words warmed something under her breastbone. “The shop listens when you count.”
He tipped his head, thinking it over. “Maybe it’s not listening to me,” he said. “Maybe it’s listening to the metronome.”
“Now you’re insufferable and mystical,” she muttered.
He grinned, small and a little shy, which was unfair. “Roll.”
She rolled. They folded. With each repetition, she fed a thin line of her magic into the seam—keeping it low, disciplined, like leading a wolf on a short leash.
The wolf…behaved. It flowed where she pointed, settling into butter and flour alike, tightening each fold until the layers felt locked, resilient.
It liked the warmth of the butter, the compression of flour, the predictability of the turn. Saints help her—her grief wanted rules.
They stacked the packet on its tray. He slid it onto the chill shelf over his proving drawers. The glass fogged briefly, then cleared. The room felt like it…exhaled.
“Again,” she said, already reaching for the next slab.
His mouth quirked. “Bossy.”
They fell into a rhythm that felt perilously close to comfort.
He dusted; she rolled. He turned; she folded.
When the parchment stuck, he nudged it free with the scraper; when the butter threatened to break through, she patched it with a cold fingertip and a muttered line.
She could feel the shop tracking them the way deer track the wind—ears flicking, then settling.
Several times the chandelier tinkled, as if startled to find itself un-startled.
By the second chill, her shoulders had loosened. Not relaxed. Never that. But less tautly strung. She flexed her fingers and felt the absence of ache, which startled her: normally magic left her humming with residual voltage, as if she’d swallowed a storm. This left her…centered.
“If you tell anyone that my magic plays well with butter, I’ll hex your eyebrows into retirement.”
“Never,” he said solemnly. “Your fearsome reputation is safe.”
Maude gave him a sidelong glance. Maybe he wasn’t a bastard after all. Maybe ‘idiot’ was the promotion he deserved.
Wesley pulled down the first tray to begin shaping. Lamination flashed in delicate strata along the cut edge—thin, precise layers like pages in a book. The rune was invisible now, but she felt it inside the fold.
He cut a long strip; she watched his hands. When he handed her a piece to shape, he stepped back to give her space, which she noticed and pretended not to.
She shaped the pastry and set it on the tray.
The tiny rune nested inside the layer clicked into place with its neighbors, as if they recognized one another, and the dough sighed again.
Together they built a tray of crescents and layered squares, nothing too fussy, then slid it into the proving drawer where low warmth and a whisper of steam would wake them.
“Now we wait,” he said.
She hated waiting. She propped a hip against the counter and pretended she wasn’t vibrating—then realized she, in fact, wasn’t. The usual itch to control every atom had been replaced by a cautious quiet.
“You’re scowling,” he observed, leaning beside her.
“I’m thinking,” she said. “It looks the same from the outside.”
“You could patent that. Weaponized contemplation.”
She let the corner of her mouth move half a millimeter, which for her was hysterical laughter.
“Bai—” Bailey used to say. The sentence almost stepped into the room without knocking.
She froze, nostrils flaring. “I’ve heard that magic needs a container,” she said at last. “Body to hold mind. Intention to hold force. That it frays if you let it go unshaped.” She cleared her throat.
“I hated that. I wanted it to do what I told it because I told it.”
“How old were you when you decided that?”
“Six,” she said. “I was short and furious. Still am.”
He made a small sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and wasn’t pity either. “Maybe he was right.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, but there wasn’t any heat in it.
They watched the drawer. Dough lifted from itself, layers taking breath.
The shop’s temperature eased into a sweeter place; the chandelier’s tiny prisms went still.
On the shelf behind them, a jar that had been vibrating imperceptibly since the curse abruptly settled, as if grudgingly convinced to behave.
“You’re doing it again,” he said, not unkindly.
“What? Being excellent?”
“Counting all the ways it could go wrong.”
“Useful habit.”
“Sometimes,” he allowed. “Sometimes it keeps you from seeing when it’s going right.”
She turned to say something biting and discovered he was closer than she’d clocked.
Not looming, not crowding, but warm in that annoying way he specialized in.
Lantern light drew copper from her hair and gold from his.
For a second, the whole room felt paused, like the space between inhale and exhale when you’re about to laugh or cry and haven’t chosen yet.
The timer chimed.
They both exhaled and moved at once, grateful for motion.
He slid the tray from the proving drawer; she held the oven door like a priestess holding a portal.
Heat breathed out—clean, good, carrying a faint mint of rosemary from her side and the butter-fat prayer from his.
He slid the tray in. They stepped back, shoulder to shoulder, bathing in warmth like cats.
They didn’t talk for the first few minutes.
It felt sacrilegious, somehow, to put words on top of the visible chemistry: the water flashing to steam, lifting layers; the butter basting from within; the delicate brown drawing like dawn across each ridge.
The faint line of the rune moved—no, that wasn’t right.
It didn’t move. It persisted. It held quiet in the middle of unfolding.
When the crescents were done, he pulled the tray.
The room filled with the most unfair smell on earth: warm butter and proof that she had done at least one thing correctly.
He set the tray down; she leaned in to inspect: laminated layers, clean lift, no butter bleed, no curse shimmer.
She could feel her rune under her teeth, a hum that said here, here, we’re holding.
He tore one in half to check the interior. The layers parted with a sigh, steam brandishing the scent in her face like a dare. He held half out to her. “Taste.”
She took it, bit down, and the outside shattered. The center was honey-laced and tender. The magic didn’t spark on her tongue; it sank. Carefully. Gentle as a hand over a frantic heart. She hadn’t realized how bitter everything had tasted for months until it didn’t.
“Well?” he said.
She chewed and swallowed and considered. “It’s…fine,” she said, and then, because the joke felt too small for what was happening in her chest, she added quietly, “It’s steady.”
He let out a breath that landed like a laugh that hadn’t found voice yet. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
She stared down at the half in her palm, at the clean line of layers.
A scandalous thought arrived uninvited and sat down: maybe she couldn’t force her magic to stop mourning.
Maybe she couldn’t un-grief her grief. But she could give it steps.
She could hand it to a process that knew how to repeat itself until the noise became muscle memory.
She knew this should make her furious. That it made her relieved felt like betrayal.
Silence stretched again, but it had changed shape—less the echo of a crypt, more the hush of a sanctuary. He looked at her hands—flour-grazed now, rune-warm—and then at her mouth, probably debating whether he had earned the right to say the thing forming behind his teeth.
“Say it,” she said. She hated dithering.
“I think…your magic likes the way mine counts.”
She should have bitten him for that. Instead, she set her half-crescent on the tray, pressed her palm to the cool bench, and gave a single nod. “Maybe. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“It already lives there,” he deadpanned. That made her snort, which made him grin—like someone she could accidentally trust.
They made another tray.