Chapter 27
CASSIA
Ark’s next missive arrived just before noon while she was piping custard into mini tart shells. A shadow raven materialized on the flour-dusted counter, then dissolved into curling script:
The wind is bitter today. Wear a scarf.
Cassia stared at it, lips twitching. After everything that had happened last night, he sent her a weather advisory.
Her reply went out on a pale pink tulip:
I always do, but thank you for your concern.
His response arrived within seconds, as if he’d been waiting.
Wear the green one. It suits you.
She smiled and shook her head, giddy inside, before continuing with her tarts.
By lunchtime, her friends had claimed their usual table at the back—Opalina with a slice of quiche, Lilibeth with a pot of dark chocolate and a fork poised over an eclair. Everything about them looked perfectly ordinary, perfectly routine.
Except they were both staring at her.
Cassia set their tea down and tried to retreat to the counter. Lilibeth’s hand caught her wrist.
“Sit.”
“I have customers—”
“Mrs. Tilly and Mr. Henley are nursing the same cup of tea they ordered forty minutes ago. Sit down, Cassia.”
She sat.
Lilibeth studied her for a long, unblinking moment. Then: “You’re glowing.”
“It’s the new face cream.”
“No face cream can make a woman glow like this.” Lilibeth turned to Opalina. “Look at her. She’s incandescent.”
Opalina had that small smile that told others she knew much more than she let on. “She’s been glowing since we walked in.”
Cassia’s cheeks burned. “I have not—”
“You hummed through an entire batch of cinnamon rolls,” Lilibeth said. “You only hum when you want to distract people into thinking nothing is going on, and—”
“Fine.” Cassia exhaled. “Ark and I . . .” She lowered her eyes and pretended to be very interested in a crumb. “We spent the night together.”
Lilibeth’s fork stilled. Opalina’s knife stopped mid-cut. The silence lasted exactly two seconds before Lilibeth whispered, “And?”
Cassia bit the inside of her cheek. “And . . . it was”—she searched for a word that wouldn’t make her combust—“significant.”
“Significant,” Lilibeth repeated flatly. “You slept with the most eligible demon in Angelene and ‘significant’ is the word you’re going with?”
“What do you want me to say?”
Lilibeth leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “Everything. Start from the door.”
“I am not giving you a play-by-play.”
Opalina set her knife down. “Then tell us: Was he gentle?”
The question was quiet, careful—and Cassia understood what lived beneath it. After Zakey. After everything.
And yes, he had been gentle. Passionate too. But toward the end, he’d stopped holding back. She could still feel the proof in the ache of her hips.
“He gave me what I needed,” she said softly. “And made me feel like I mattered.”
The room went still. Lilibeth’s hand found her shoulder. Opalina met her eyes across the table.
“Good,” Opalina said, simply.
A beat of comfortable silence settled between them. Then Lilibeth asked, a little too casually, “And the logistics?”
Cassia blinked. “The logistics.”
“You know.” Lilibeth twirled the fork between her fingers. “Precautions. The kind of thing one thinks about after spending the night with a demon of considerable”—she cleared her throat—“potency.”
Cassia’s face burned. “I took an herbal potion this morning. It’s reliable.”
“For witches and humans, maybe. But you were with a pureblood Nocturne. Their biology doesn’t always play by the same rules as yours.”
Cassia’s stomach dipped. She hadn’t considered that.
Lilibeth must have read the flicker of panic on her face, because her voice softened.
“Don’t worry. I can help.” She set her fork down and flexed her fingers, a faint shimmer of Amoret magic sparking at her fingertips.
“I can place a seal on you—a contraceptive charm. It’s common among couples in demon society.
Lasts about three months, completely reversible, and far more effective across mixed-magic pairings than any herbal remedy. ”
Cassia stared at her. “You can do that?”
“I’m half Amoret, Cass. Desire, intimacy, fertility—it’s all the same thread of magic for my kind.” A faint blush coloured Lilibeth’s cheeks. “I may not use it for its . . . traditional applications. But the knowledge is still there.”
Opalina looked up from her plate. “You never mentioned you could do that.”
Lilibeth shrugged lightly. “None of us were exactly drowning in romantic entanglements.”
“Would it hurt?” Cassia asked.
“You’ll feel a warmth here”—Lilibeth pressed two fingers gently to her lower belly—“and then nothing.”
Cassia looked at her friend—this woman who substituted chocolate for the intimacy her magic was built for, who carried her own complicated relationship with desire like a rock in her pocket—and felt a rush of gratitude.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Please.”
Lilibeth’s fingers glowed faintly—a warm, rosy light that sank through the fabric of Cassia’s apron and settled deep. It lasted only a moment. A gentle pulse, like a sigh, and then—like her friend had said: nothing.
“Done,” Lilibeth said, withdrawing her hand. “You’re covered.”
“Thank you, Lili.”
Lilibeth shrugged as if she’d done nothing of note, but her tail gave a single, pleased flick. “What are friends for?”
Opalina raised her teacup. “To the most significant night in recent memory.”
“Don’t you start,” Cassia muttered, but she smiled and raised her cup anyway.
She wore the green scarf to Starlight that evening.
The children were restless. Devlin had overheard the teachers murmuring something about the eviction, and was doing a poor job of pretending he hadn’t.
The little ones picked up on the tension.
Cassia spent the evening helping Imogen with her magic exercises and reading to the younger children, all while swallowing the dread that rose every time she looked at the walls she might not be able to protect much longer.
On the train home, she pressed her fingers absently to the mark beneath her scarf.
The warmth had shifted over the course of the day—stronger when she was in Angelene, fainter during the train ride—as if the distance between them was something the mark could measure.
She was still learning its rhythms, still startled by the intimacy of carrying a piece of someone else’s magic beneath her skin.
It should’ve felt intrusive. It didn’t. It felt like a hand resting on the small of her back in a crowded room—steadying, present, asking nothing in return.
She sent a white calla lily, its scent cutting through the cold air inside the train.
Devlin asked about you today. He wanted to know if the demon with no visible horns was coming back. I think he misses having someone to interrogate.
The raven arrived before she’d even left the station.
Tell him I’ll visit—as soon as Starlight is safe.
Her chest tightened. She tucked the words away and didn’t reply—not because she had nothing to say, but because ‘thank you’ felt too small when everything else felt too large.
The next morning, another raven landed on the rim of her mixing bowl.
Have you eaten? And by eaten, I mean something that wasn’t part of a baker’s dozen.
A golden orchid carried her answer:
I ate an entire scone while reading your message. Does that count?
That depends. Was it one of the good ones?
They’re ALL good ones.
My sincerest apologies. I forgot who I was speaking to.
She smiled at the counter like a fool and didn’t even care.
Between customers, she packed a basket of sausage rolls and sent them to Aegis & Ash with a delivery charm.
No note. She figured three men working through the night on legal filings and procedural challenges deserved to eat something that wasn’t stale bread from a corner shop.
A raven arrived twenty minutes later, but it wasn’t alone. It carried a small crimson winter poppy in its beak. The flower fell onto Cassia’s palm as the bird disintegrated into script.
Rhodes already ate four. Caius insisted he’s only had one. I’m hiding the rest inside a drawer at my desk. Thank you.
The mark flared warm as she read it—a brief, bright pulse, as though his gratitude had traveled through the bond itself. She touched it without thinking, fingertips pressing the spot where his mouth had been, and her cheeks heated at the memory of how it got there.
She twirled the poppy and began to write How’s the case?—then stopped.
At that moment, she realized: She was afraid of the answer.
Afraid that whatever he wrote back would shatter this small, soft warmth in her chest—this cozy, trivial exchange that had come to mean everything.
She wanted to hold on to the hope, to shield this fuzzy, fragile feeling from the freezing rain.
Just a little longer.
Time. That was all they had: borrowed time, stretched thin across legal challenges and favours called in.
She thought of the children setting the table for supper tonight, of Mrs. Thimble and Matilde serving food, of the Memory Wall with its generations of faces. All of it balanced on a knife’s edge.
So she deflected, wrote a joke, and tucked the poppy into her apron pocket. She carried it with her all day, right beside the little green pouch that held a lock of near-black hair.
On the day of the Yulefrost Ball, Cassia closed the bakery early. Opalina and Lilibeth arrived at her house just past noon, arms full and ready for war.
The hours that followed were a familiar campaign—pins and silk and the steady chatter of friends who knew that armour didn’t always look like steel. They’d dress her as if for battle, even if the battlefield was a ballroom.
When they finished, Cassia turned to the mirror.
The woman looking back at her was a stranger.
Frost-blue silk caught the lamplight. Opalina’s beadwork glinted along the bodice like scattered frost. Shoulders veiled in organza so thin they might as well be bare.
Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, with small crystal beads threaded through the waves.