Chapter 22
ARK
Ark eased the door open just enough to let the cold slide in. Shadows spilled over the threshold. Stillness met him, a silence so complete it felt unnatural.
Then—motion. Anuck darted through the gap like a streak of black smoke, gone before Ark could react. No sound, no hesitation, just a blur of fur and muscle vanishing into the dark. He swore under his breath. Power sparked to his fingertips, ready to lash out.
He turned. Cassia stood framed in the firelight, but the soft, pleasure-rumpled woman from the sofa was gone. She was already shrugging on her coat, then tugging on her boots, her movements jerky. Her expression was all sharpened focus and ferocious determination.
“Stay inside,” he told her. “I’ll investigate—”
“No.” The word was absolute. “I need to check the bakery. To make sure.”
“Cassia—”
“That bakery and Starlight are my mother’s legacy.
” Her voice cracked—raw, desperate, a sound he’d never heard from her before.
“She poured her life into them. I’m already losing one.
I’m not staying here if something’s happening to other.
” She rose to full height, her burning gaze locking with his. “I’m coming with you.”
He held her stare, then nodded. “Let’s go.”
They stepped out into the cold. Ark murmured a spell under his breath as they crossed the yard. A protective barrier flared to life over Cassia’s house—not Caius’s level of craftsmanship, but enough to hold until they returned.
They let the night take them. Cassia moved beside him, a tense, silent force.
Panic radiated from her in waves—a focused, terrifying dread that made her breaths shallow and her steps too quick.
Her entire world had narrowed to the path leading to The Witching Flour.
Anuck’s pawprints were clear in the fresh snow, leading from the doorstep and down the street.
They moved swiftly, the night pressing in thicker with every step, their breaths misting in front of them.
The walk felt like hours, though Ark knew it couldn’t have been more than five minutes.
Little Mineola’s main shopping street—usually bustling with shoppers and gossiping vendors—felt suspended.
The wooden shutters were drawn, the hanging signs swaying, the sound creaky in the hush.
They rounded the corner and skidded to a halt.
A shape slumped on the pavement outside The Witching Flour—a large black-and-white bird, wings bent at awkward angles, magic barely clinging to its ruined form.
They hurried. Ark crouched beside it, recognizing the same feathers.
But beneath the Agmon sigil on its chest, a second glyph pulsed with a sullen red heat. A bolt of fury lanced through him.
He looked up at Cassia, the words like ash in his mouth. “It’s Agmon’s.” He pointed to the maker’s mark, then traced the line down. “This is new. A destruction glyph.”
Colour drained from her face. Her breath caught. “He sent it to destroy the bakery.”
But the magpie hadn’t made it far. It hadn’t even touched the window before a larger predator crushed it against the pavement. His gaze lifted, catching on a pair of yellow eyes gleaming from beneath a chalkboard easel that still read ‘All Baked Goods Half-Price After 2PM.’
Anuck’s tail was coiled primly around his paws. The cat blinked, slow and unimpressed, as if taunting him: ‘And you just got here?’
Anuck then proceeded to clean himself. One paw lifted. Lick. Lick. Pause. Lick again.
Ark murmured, “Hello, you.”
The cat looked directly at him, then yawned wide and licked his mouth. Not in a cute, ‘post-nap’ kind of way, but in a ‘finished-my-meal’ kind of way.
Ark kept staring. He hadn’t heard a fight, hadn’t sensed the use of magic. Whatever had happened, Anuck had dealt with the apparition with swift, silent, and lethal precision.
As the Construct’s remains dissolved into the cobblestones, his attention returned to Cassia.
Her gaze was locked on the bakery’s door.
She rushed past him, a key appearing in her hand.
The violent shake in her fingers sent a jolt of alarm through him.
This was more than fear; this was a tremor in her very foundation.
“Cassia?” He moved close.
“I need . . . I need to see,” she choked out. “I must see.”
The door swung open, revealing the dark, silent sanctuary within.
The scent of flour, butter, and sugar—the very essence of her life’s work—hung in the air.
She hurried inside. Her hands went to the clay jar of sourdough starter first—fingers pausing on the lid as if feeling for a heartbeat.
Then her eyes closed, and she breathed in deeply—not just smelling but sensing, testing the air for the magic woven into the foundations.
Now, in the absence of daylight and customers’ chatter, he sensed it clearer than ever: the Memory Magic. Her mother’s magic. She was checking to ensure it was still intact. Had the Construct entered the bakery and destroyed it as it meant to, all traces of that energy would’ve been burnt away.
His fists tightened. His burn flared. He didn’t care.
Her inspection complete, the strength seemed to leave her at once.
She deflated, leaning heavily against the wooden counter as if it were the only thing keeping her upright.
A single, ragged sound escaped her, quickly stifled by a palm to her mouth.
She pressed her forehead to the counter’s edge, shoulders trembling.
Ark rushed to her. Every instinct screamed at him to shield, fix. “It’s safe,” he murmured, his hands on her shoulders. “Nothing’s been touched.”
The words felt impossibly thin, a blanket offered against a blizzard. When she finally looked at him, her eyes were glazed. The vulnerability in them was a blade twisted in his gut.
“After my father died, the lean years hit us hard,” she told him, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “The bakery, the orphanage, the house—there was never enough food for all of us. So my mother did something forbidden.”
He waited, watched as her chin trembled.
“She used . . . multiplication spells on the pantry ingredients,” Cassia continued. “A handful of flour became enough for a week’s worth of bread. A single sack of grain fed the orphanage for a month. Milk, butter, beef, everything.”
She swallowed, her tearful eyes lifting to meet his. “But you know magic like that doesn’t come free. Thirty-five years, Ark. The spells cost her thirty-five years of her life. She died young because she chose us over herself.”
He couldn’t find the words. All of them were useless, hollow things that couldn’t touch the weight of what she’d just laid bare.
Instead, he pulled her into his arms, as if he could shield her from decades-old grief through sheer proximity.
She came willingly, her face pressing into his chest. One hand cradled the back of her head, the other wrapped tight around her waist. He held her there in silence as she trembled, his cheek against her crown, his hand rubbing her back.
He couldn’t change what had happened. But he could embrace her while she grieved her mother’s passing all over again.
A soft mrrrp from the doorway broke the moment.
Anuck sat there, tail-tip twitching, his yellow eyes fixed on Cassia.
He sauntered in and wove a figure-eight around her ankles.
Without a word, she scooped him up and tucked him inside her unbuttoned coat, cradling him against her chest. She rested her chin on his head, drawing a comfort from his warmth that Ark knew he couldn’t offer.
He was witnessing the ecosystem of her survival.
The bakery was the sanctuary, the cat its guardian, and she was the resilient heart at the centre of it all, protecting and being protected in turn.
He had never felt more like an outsider, yet more determined than ever to earn his place within these walls.
Yellow irises blinked back at him—unbothered, calm, watching. Whatever else he might be, Anuck certainly wasn’t rattled.
A stalwart guardian, Ark thought. One that took his duties seriously.
Still, how strange it was to have to reconcile this soft, purring creature with the blur of silent, devastating precision that had taken down a Construct like it was little more than a wind-up toy.
“How did you say your mother found Anuck?” he asked.
“She found him in the alley by that back door, years ago,” she said, wiping her cheek. “He was bleeding and barely breathing. She nursed him back to health, and . . . he just stayed.”
Anuck looked up at him and slowly blinked, as though confirming the story.
It made sense, more than he expected. If something ancient had once been broken and bound to this family by gratitude, by loyalty, then of course it would stay. Of course it would protect Cassia now. She was the inheritor to the debt it owed her mother.
There was more he could say. Things he could speculate, questions he could raise.
But instead, he said simply, “He’s done extremely well tonight.”
Cassia looked down at the cat in her arms. “He’s always been a character,” she admitted. “But never dangerous.”
Only to those who seek to harm you, he thought.
“He’s very devoted,” Ark agreed.
Anuck flicked his tail, then tucked his head beneath Cassia’s chin with the air of a creature who expected affection after hard work. She obliged, stroking his fur with obvious fondness.
Ark watched them for a beat. “I think he’s earned a second dish of cream. I’ll even pour it.”
Anuck trilled with approval.
Cassia pressed a kiss on the cat’s head and asked, “Will Alderrath send another bird?”
He thought for a moment. “I don’t believe so. Anuck dealt with his Construct with overwhelming efficiency, and he’ll think twice about sending another. But I will set up protective wards around the building. Just in case.”
She nodded, and they stepped outside. The solid click of the lock as Cassia turned the key did little to settle the unrest in his blood.