Chapter 15
CASSIA
Cassia leaned her back against the door. The scent of him—smoke and cedar, warm spices—clung to the air. It curled around her like a question she didn’t dare answer.
She went to her bedroom to change out of the evening dress.
On the nightstand sat a small green pouch.
She picked it up and opened it. Ark’s hair caught the light, the lock he’d cut to seal their bargain.
She toyed with the strands, wondering why she kept it so close to her bed.
There was no real reason. Not one she was willing to admit.
This was ridiculous.
He was a means to an end.
A powerful, sharp-jawed, maddeningly handsome means to save Starlight.
And yet . . .
She shook her head sharply, as if she could physically dislodge him from her thoughts. It didn’t work.
Still, she couldn’t sit here forever, drifting in his aftermath.
She placed the pouch back on the nightstand and stepped out into the golden hush of the kitchen.
The lamps had dimmed on their own, responding to the quiet in the room.
The fire had gone low. Even Anuck had retreated to his perch by the window.
She needed motion. Familiarity. Ritual.
Cassia lit the oven. The flame caught easily now, but it hadn’t always.
In grade school, fire had terrified her.
It was unpredictable, too quick to turn from gentle to destructive.
The other elements—water, wind, earth—answered her call easily.
Fire didn’t. Every time she reached for it, it slipped away or flared out of control. She’d nearly failed the fire module.
She thought back to the day she’d come home from school, no older than twelve, on the verge of tears over her fire-summoning test. Her mother hadn’t just comforted her. She’d stood with her in front of this very oven and taught her the skill in a way she could finally understand.
Her teacher had always tried to teach her to use anger to summon flames. But that day, her mother had shown those same flames could be summoned with warmth.
With love.
As the oven warmed up, she opened the pantry and reached for the flour. The recipe was already in her hands—not on paper, but etched into muscle memory.
Flour. Yeast. Salt. Honey. Elderflower. Warm milk.
The trick, the little secret that had clinched her win twenty years ago: dried elderflower steeped in milk for exactly thirteen minutes.
One of the judges had said the bread carried ‘a memory of something lost and found.’ As a ten-year-old girl, she had nodded solemnly, even though she hadn’t quite understood it herself, foot tapping with impatience.
At the time, there was no other thought than winning the competition and taking the prize money.
Tonight, thirty-year-old Cassia measured the elderflower, letting it steep while she gathered the rest of the ingredients.
She combined yeast and honey in the steeped milk, waiting until it bloomed.
Then she sifted flour and salt together, murmuring softly under her breath.
Magic stirred the flour in midair before it drifted down like slow, lazy snow.
When she mixed the wet and dry ingredients, the dough came together stubbornly, clinging to the spoon, then her fingers.
She grounded herself in this ritual—just like that day.
Her hands were smaller then, callouses not yet earned.
Tonight, her palms pressed in. Folded. Turned.
Pressed again. Her mother used to say cooking needed a mortal’s touch.
Magic could assist, but certain steps required the warmth of her hands and a bit of elbow grease.
As she kneaded, she felt a warmth that wasn’t fire—a presence, like the steady hand of ten-year-old Cassia at her back, watching, guiding. By the time the dough had risen—round and pillowy—the kitchen smelled of yeast, heat, and something sweeter from the steeped elderflower.
She punched it down, then scattered a generous handful of toasted nuts and seeds across the surface and folded them in with quick, deliberate turns until they were evenly distributed throughout the dough.
She shaped it deftly, scored it once down the centre, then added small slashes in a leaf pattern before sliding it into the oven.
An hour later—she never used magic to speed this up—she removed the loaf and cradled it in a linen cloth. The crust was burnished gold, crackling softly as it cooled.
She carried it to a weathered wooden hutch tucked between the kitchen and sitting room. Kneeling, she opened the doors, revealing what most would never guess was hidden behind them.
Inside, beneath the glow of enchanted candles, sat two framed photographs—her father, smiling with a watering can and dirt on his nose; her mother, caught mid-laugh, arm slung around a younger Cassia, both dusted with flour.
She set the loaf gently on the wooden board before them. Their faces smiled at her through time, achingly familiar and impossibly distant.
“I made it again,” she told them. “It came out beautiful tonight. I wish you could taste it.”
Looking at the loaf, she could still remember the exact moment the judges announced her name—a ten-year-old girl in flour-dusted boots, beating bakers four, five, six times her age.
It had only been a small-town competition, but when they handed her the trophy, she felt like she’d conquered the world.
The cheque they gave her was crisp, larger than expected.
Someone whispered the townspeople had pooled together to add more—old friends of her parents, neighbours who’d known her since she was a baby.
She’d wondered if they’d let her win out of pity, but she hadn’t cared enough to question it aloud.
And she certainly wasn’t proud enough to turn it down.
Even now, she still remembered the specific sensation: the crisp, unyielding paper of the cheque clutched so tightly in her small, damp hand that it left a red mark.
She ran all the way from Unity Station to the hospital, breath burning in her lungs, heart galloping with hope so bright it felt like a star going supernova.
The sun had been blinding that day, rare for the winter season.
She sped along the sick ward’s sterile corridors, counting the doors.
Just a few more steps, and she could tell him: They finally had the money.
But before she even reached the room, her mother’s anguished cry echoed through the quiet corridor. Cassia skidded to a halt, her chest still heaving from the exertion. The cheque crinkled within her clammy grip as she listened to her mother’s sobs.
Adult Cassia closed her eyes. Twenty years later, it still hurt. She could still feel the ghost of that crumpled cheque in her hand, that dying star in her heart. She’d been so focused on winning, she didn’t even get to say goodbye.
And for what?
The prize money, it turned out, couldn’t even shave a sliver from the hospital debt, let alone fund the experimental surgery the doctor had suggested for her father. It couldn’t save him, or bring him back.
It was just paper.
She opened her eyes and smiled at her parents’ photographs. “I met someone.”
Her fingers raked through her hair, the curls bouncing, and she let out a shaky laugh.
“I’m not sure what we are, or what he really wants.
But he’s kind. Infuriatingly clever. He doesn’t smile often, but when he does, it feels like being let in on a secret.
” Her voice caught. “He says things like he means them.”
She paused, pressing her fingers to her lips.
“And tonight, when I needed someone, he was there.”
Cassia reached out, her fingertips touching the wooden frame of the photographs, the glass, the smiles frozen in time.
“I think you’d like him.”
The room was silent, just the sound of her own breathing and the faint crackle of the bread crust settling.
Her eyes landed on her mother’s photograph.
Celestia had been a natural-born Kitchen Witch, self-trained in Starlight’s halls.
As a young widow, she had shouldered the orphanage, the gruelling effort of starting a bakery from scratch, and a grieving daughter.
Cassia still remembered the deep, unnatural fatigue that clung to her mother in those difficult years.
She hadn’t understood what was happening—not until it was too late.
“You never let us go hungry. You never turned a child away. You continued doing it, knowing what it’d do to you.
” Her voice softened. “I used to wonder why you tired so easily, why you’d smile through supper and then excuse yourself, barely making it down the hall.
” She traced the edge of the shelf. “Now I know. You were paying a terrible price for every meal.”
A single tear traced down her cheek. “You made me promise never to do the same. And I’ve kept that promise so far.”
She looked from her mother’s face to her father’s. “Now I’m making a different kind of bargain with a demon to save the home you both loved. I just hope . . . I hope it’s enough.”
Cassia stayed there, knees tucked to her chest, arms wound around herself like a shield she couldn’t quite hold up anymore.
The grief came soft at first—an ache in her ribs, a tightness in her throat—but it deepened with every breath until the tears slipped free.
Silent. Unstoppable. She pressed her forehead to her knees, curling inward as if she could fold herself around the hollow space they’d left behind.
She knew this hollow intimately. She had long since learned to inhabit it.
But it never quite got easier.
Eventually, the tears slowed. The shuddering breaths evened out. With a final, shaky exhale, she wiped her face with her hem and carefully closed the hutch doors, sealing the altar and its ghosts back into the silence.
Afew hours later, Cassia stepped out into the pre-dawn dark. The air was cold and damp, the kind that seeped into bones. Little Mineola slumbered beneath fog, cobbled streets slick with melted snow. She wrapped her scarf around her neck and headed to the bakery.
Inside, The Witching Flour smelled of sugar and spices, the counters clean and cold. The space hummed with the quiet anticipation of another busy day—the kind of morning that felt like a promise. She lit the oven with a flick of her wrist, blue flame catching beneath the metal.
The sourdough starter had bubbled overnight, its surface domed and ready.
She scraped half into a mixing bowl, added flour and water, and stirred until the dough began to tighten.
She worked through the ache in her shoulders, the familiar drag of too little sleep.
Spice jars floated down from the shelf as she reached for them.
The honey spoon hovered, waiting for her to dip it.
Her hands moved through the familiar rhythms—measuring, kneading, shaping—and slowly, with each task completed, the tightness in her chest eased.
By the time the sky blushed pink over the rooftops, her back ached and her knuckles were raw, but a dozen loaves proofed beneath linen. Scones cooled on the rack. Cinnamon rolls puffed up inside the oven, filling the bakery with the smell of butter and yeast and sugar caramelizing.
She poured herself a cup of tea and took a roll from the tray. The first bite was still too hot, the sugar sticky on her fingers.
The memory of last night surfaced without permission.
Ark in her sitting room, cradling the mug.
Ark staring at her while she bandaged his hand—lashes lowered, expression unreadable.
A line had been crossed. A door left open.
They hadn’t spoken it aloud—maybe because it was only in her head, just the performance bleeding into real life.
But beneath it all, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed.
She finished the roll and set down her cup.
Part of her wanted to retreat—step back behind the easy sarcasm, the teasing Flora Notes, the wry smile that said this doesn’t mean anything, not really. Because if she didn’t pull back now, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to.
And they had a bargain to fulfill.
Cassia pushed off the counter and reached for her Flora Note tin. She plucked a delicate paper shaped like a tiger lily and tapped a pen against her chin.
She would send a light message. Familiar, but not too much. Just enough to remind them both where the boundary used to be. A casual banter with no openings for sentiment.
Good morning, fellow early riser,
I sincerely hope your hand remains intact. I hear coat buttons are dreadfully unsympathetic to the one-handed.
Thank you again, for last night.
She tapped the note once. It shimmered and vanished in a soft spiral of golden ink and a trail of cinnamon sugar. Cassia watched it flicker out of sight, then turned back to the counter.
She had things to do. Things that didn’t involve watching the window or obsessing over whether she’d overstepped with the message.
When a raven shimmered into existence a few minutes later, landing on the edge of her kitchen shelf with a rustle of inky feathers, her breath caught.
She ran to it. At the gentle tap of her finger to its beak, the raven dissolved into a ribbon of curling letters.
The hand is still intact, albeit mildly resentful.
You were a gentle healer. Thank you for tending it, and for the rest.
P.S. If cinnamon-scented flowers become a pattern, we may need to discuss appropriate compensation for the sudden hunger you cause. Preferably edible.
She stared at the words—the floating, curling spell-smoke in the air, carrying that same dry charm that made it so damn difficult to keep her distance. A small smile tugged at her lips before she caught herself.
It shouldn’t have mattered. It was just a message—a polite acknowledgment, a bit of banter, nothing worth getting excited about.
But the way he’d said thank you, like he actually meant it, stayed with her longer than it should have. She couldn’t quite shake it, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to examine why.
She hadn’t expected kindness, certainly not from someone like Ark. It had been easier when he was just a mysterious demon with a mysterious reputation—someone she met for cold, awkward, perfunctory events purely for the sake of the arrangement.
But now, he was also the man who’d noticed her pain and didn’t push for answers. Who’d let silence sit between them without trying to fill it.
A flutter rose in her chest, but she squashed it down.
A message that smelled of woodsmoke wasn’t affection. It was charm, a skill she knew he possessed in abundance. The kindness in it was a luxury, one she lapped up like a stray in the rain, but she couldn’t afford to mistake it for a permanent home. It was smoke and mirrors. An illusion.
And illusions, no matter how convincing, always dissolved.
She knew that.
She just had to make sure her heart knew too.