Chapter 19
Nineteen
The sign at Sugar High Bakery still smelled faintly of frosting, even at the late hour. Maude stood on the stoop, arms folded, cobblestones under her boots tacky with what looked like a toffee spill. She had brought a thank-you. If it could be called that.
Balanced in her hand: a paper cone stuffed with roasted chestnuts she’d hexed to squeak “ow” every time you bit one. Juvenile. Petty. Wesley would love it.
She knocked with her boot. The door swung open, steam curling out, and Wesley leaned against the frame, hair askew. He blinked at her, then at the cone.
One eyebrow climbed. “What…is that?”
“Chestnuts. Obviously.” She thrust them at him like a weapon. “Eat one.”
He plucked one free, popped it into his mouth, bit—
“OW!” the nut squealed in falsetto.
Wesley choked and nearly spat it back across the doorway, laughter folding him in half before it broke free.
Maude smirked, satisfied. “Thank-you gift. You’re welcome.”
He wiped at his eyes, still grinning. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Speaking of ridiculous,” she said, folding her arms. “My door doesn’t scrape anymore.”
That grin faltered, hesitation flickering through. “Right. Uh. I may have…fixed it.” He shrugged. “The hinge was driving me mad. Figured you’d rather hex me later than listen to it forever.”
Maude blinked at him. He said it like a man confessing to a crime, waiting for judgment. Saints—what had she done to him, that fixing a hinge made him look ready for the gallows? Still, it was one less task off her endless list—handled without her asking, just because he’d noticed.
Her grip on her arms loosened. “Thank you.”
The words felt strange on her tongue. His eyes flicked to hers, searching, and for a moment he looked almost disarmed.
She cleared her throat, brisk again. “Anyway. I’m taking you up on your offer. For help.”
His grin returned. “Good. Give me ten minutes. I’ll change, and then we’ll head out.”
His apartment above the bakery was smaller than she’d expected.
Narrow stairs led up to a space that smelled faintly of soap, undercut by something spiced—cardamom, maybe, and lemon.
A narrow bed pressed against the far wall, sheets askew.
A desk cluttered with scraps of parchment, half-finished recipes, and a jar of fountain pens with teeth marks in the caps.
And everywhere—books. Stacks of them teetered like precarious towers.
Charcoal sketches hung on the wall above his desk. Not professional, but careful. Pages pinned in a patchwork of recipes and the pictures that went with them—loaves swelling mid-rise, sugared tarts like small suns, the curve of a cat’s tail curling across the margin.
Maude’s chest tightened. It was nothing like her cottage, which always felt like it belonged to someone older and wiser from whom she was merely borrowing it. This was…Wesley.
“I’ll be quick,” he said, grabbing a shirt and vanishing into the bathroom.
The moment the door clicked, Maude drifted toward the shelves like a thief.
She scanned the spines: treatises on fermentation, tomes of folklore, a stack of plays—and then she squinted. A pile of lurid romances with covers so garish she snorted. The Duke and the Dough Boy? Really?
She flipped it open. A lonely duke, weary of court intrigue. A humble dough boy, risen from the flour bins of destiny.
Maude laughed, her gaze snagging on the gift card lying beside it: From Oli.
Of course it was.
And then—her breath hitched.
There, nestled in the middle of the shelf: The Verdant Trials. Her favorite book series. She leaned closer. Not just one set. Three.
The first: battered paperbacks, spines cracked, pages underlined in pencil. The second: leather-bound, gilt-edged, collector’s edition. The third—she reached out reverently—was the limited pressing, forest green with silver embossing. The one she’d tried, and failed, to win at auction.
Her fingers brushed the cover as if it might vanish.
Behind her came the faint scrape of fabric, the whisper of cloth sliding over skin. She glanced back—and instantly regretted it.
Wesley stepped out of the washroom, damp hair curling against his forehead as he tugged a clean shirt over his torso.
The motion pulled long lines of muscle across his chest and arms—lean but solid from years of kneading, lifting, carrying.
He wasn’t bulky—no, worse. He was compact strength, shoulders broad enough to make the room feel smaller, jaw shadowed and severe in the lamplight.
His forearms were bare, corded, veins running down to strong hands she suddenly couldn’t stop imagining pressed against her.
One brow lifted, slow as a drawstring pulled taut, his grin tilting. “Find something interesting?”
Heat shot up her neck. She snapped her gaze back to the shelf. “You have three sets of The Verdant Trials.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish. “I…like them.”
“You hoard them.”
“I appreciate them.” He moved closer, still damp, still warm, smelling of soap. “Let me guess—you’re one of those book snobs who swear paperbacks are the only real editions because they smell like actual trees?”
“Coming from someone who looks like they read cookbooks for the plot.”
He laughed, low and rich, and it did nothing to help her. Then he plucked the green edition from her hands. “Which one’s your favorite?”
Her arms crossed tight over her chest, mostly to keep from wringing them. “The fifth. Mirror maze. When Branna betrays them.”
He groaned, running a hand through damp hair. “Don’t. I’m still convinced she’ll redeem herself in the last book.”
“You’re delusional.”
“Optimistic,” he corrected. “Which, granted, might be the same thing.”
“You probably cry when the talking owl gives speeches.”
“Only twice,” he said with mock offense. “And once was allergies.”
She caught herself smiling before she could strangle it. His shirt clung damp at the collar, eyes bright with laughter.
Saints. He was pretty. There was no other word for it. Pretty and warm and standing too close, looking at her like she was the only thing in the room.
Her pulse tripped. She turned toward the door. “Come on. We’ve got work.”
“Running away already?” His voice followed her, teasing, but when she risked a glance back, his eyes weren’t mocking. They were steady. Warm. Curious. Like he saw more than she wanted him to.
Her chest tightened. She spun faster, muttering, “If you’re not ready in thirty seconds, I’m leaving you here with your romance novels.”
“They’re not romances!” he called, laughing.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
She stalked out before he could see the flush blooming hot across her cheeks.
South Gate wasn’t quiet. It never was—especially not the week before Samhain.
Lanterns strung from stall to stall burned in fat, honeyed orbs, glamour-flames flickering like fallen leaves caught in midair.
A puppet stage clacked at the far end while a trio of teenagers practiced sword choreography near the fountain, their wooden blades colliding with the conviction of people who’d never actually been hit by anything sharp.
The air smelled of roasted chestnuts, wet stone, cinnamon, damp wool, and the faint coppery thrum of the ley line that ran straight under the old bronze wyvern perched on the fountain’s lip.
This spot had been Mistwood’s first well. The bricks still showed where the mouth had been sealed and dressed as a fountain centuries ago—blue and amber tiles cracked into a star around the wyvern’s clawed feet. The ley sang through it, soft and insistent, like a heartbeat under blankets.
“Here,” Maude said, and knelt.
She unloaded the third loom’s pieces: ironvine circlet; blackthorn shards cut thin as claws; the parchment sigil she’d inked with rosemary steep and yarrow ash; a wax-sealed shadowbell bloom; a vial of glasswort resin; a folded strip of night-apple peel still glimmering faintly in the shade; a measured scoop of heartmire salt; and, tucked in a cloth, a chalk of wolfsbone—petrified marrow that looked like a sliver of moon.
Wesley crouched beside her, one palm braced on a cobble, the other shading his eyes to watch the lanterns shiver. “So this is the one.”
“This is the one,” she said. “The fountain mouth sits dead center on the line. Everything feeds to it. If this holds, the rest of the street will stop…forgetting what it is.”
He cut her a look. “You mean ‘slowly merging into a patchwork nightmare’?”
“That, too.”
She pretended she didn’t feel the warmth of him at her side and bent to lay chalk: a clean circle around the star of cracked tile, four small dishes at the cardinal points—salt to the north, ash to the south, thistledown east, water west. A knot of kids drifted closer, then drifted back when Maude looked up.
Her glance said, Try me. They tried her from a safe distance instead.
“You never actually told me,” Wesley murmured, “why what we did the first time didn’t work.”
“The curse doesn’t break—it moves,” she murmured, ring finger steady as she finished the circle.
“Bailey left a note: unspooled interlocks like to collect in a pool. The Weftmark at my cottage is a pool. But the pulse is bigger than one drain. We need three more to keep Mistwood from drowning.” She slid the ironvine ring into place and felt the hum rise through her palm.
“Congratulations. You’re standing at drain number three. ”
He went quiet—watching, weighing. He did it the way he baked: measuring time, gauging heat, knowing when something was ready without checking twice. Always waiting for the exact moment things turned.
“What do you need?”
“Resin,” she said, handing him the vial of glasswort. “A thin line along the inner rim—clockwise, slow. Count with the ley. Don’t rush. It steadies volatility like a truce: both sides stand down, no one wins, no one loses. It only holds so long as nobody breaks it.”