Chapter 38 #2
She shook her head. “They were orphans themselves. They never found their parents.”
Her stomach dropped as the words left her mouth. She figured Kassenor must’ve sensed she was Untethered, but he was now learning just how Untethered she really was. But the Daemar simply studied her before turning his gaze back to the piece in his hand.
“You do puzzles often?” Cassia asked.
“When I want to think,” he replied. “Or stop thinking.”
Cassia nodded and fitted a corner piece. “And which one is it today?”
“I haven’t decided.”
They worked a little more, the rhythm of searching and placing becoming oddly calming.
Then, without looking at her: “Do you enjoy puzzles?”
She glanced at him sidelong, a little smile on her lips. “Is that a test?”
“It is a question,” he said. “Puzzles aren’t about putting things together. They’re about figuring out what’s missing. Some people hate that kind of uncertainty. Others make it their whole life.”
Cassia tilted her head, fingers sifting through the pile. “I like knowing how things work. Why they come apart. What holds them together.”
He gave a small grunt of approval. “Useful trait. Tedious, in excess. But useful.”
Another moment passed. Then he pushed a piece toward her side of the board. “That one belongs to the southern quadrant.”
She took it. Fit it into place.
“Why didn’t you tell the nurse you were a family member?” he said after a while.
She stiffened.
He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You are my future daughter-in-law, aren’t you?”
Cassia’s hand faltered over the next piece. She kept her gaze fixed on the puzzle, but her voice gentled. “Ark and I were never engaged. We didn’t even know each other three weeks before the Daemaris’s ball.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his brow arch, but he said nothing.
She scratched her cheek, suddenly chagrined. “You see, Ark concocted the whole bargain to annoy the Daemaris. I went along with it to save Starlight Orphanage, but it was never real. It’s already been called off.”
She offered a small smile. “So you don’t need to worry about scandal or succession or whatever it is noble fathers worry about. Just focus on getting well.”
He said nothing for a long moment. Only moved a piece into place with a soft finality. “Why do you do it?”
Cassia looked up. “Do what?”
“All this,” he said, motioning to the puzzle, the broth, the space between them. “Why are you being kind to me? I’m hardly an innocent party in the world that’s made your life so difficult.”
She let the question sit. Let it sting. Let fury rise. And then, slowly, she reached for another piece.
“I wondered the same thing,” she said, voice soft. “There were days, especially when things felt impossibly unfair, when I imagined storming into one of your meetings just to shake the table. Just to remind you that some of us really need your help.”
She looked down at the puzzle piece resting in her palm—a slender sickle of a moon, silver-edged and surprisingly cool to the touch. It didn’t belong to the stars yet, but it would. It just needed the right space.
“But I cannot hate you,” she murmured, the truth arriving fully formed. She leaned forward and set the crescent moon into place. It settled with a soft, definitive click.
She looked at the proud, weary demon in his bed. “Because the one I love, loves you. Hurting you would be a second-hand way of hurting him.”
He didn’t look at her, but his fingers paused briefly over the next piece.
They didn’t speak again for several minutes. The puzzle came together—slowly, stubbornly, just like people.
When the final piece was placed, a detailed map of the winter night sky lay completed on the tray. Cassia carefully arranged the box and closed the lid. Under Kassenor’s silent, watchful gaze, she packed her basket.
“I need to go now,” she said, looking back at him. “I have a rather heavy day ahead of me. But I’ll come again. I’ll bring more broth. We can start a new puzzle, if you like.”
His brows lifted slightly, but he gave a single, slow nod. It wasn’t thanks, not in any language she knew. But it was acknowledgment.
It was enough.
Outside her house, a red balloon bobbed mockingly above the ‘For Sale’ sign, its false cheer a stark contrast to the grief tightening Cassia’s throat.
The plan was a simple, brutal arithmetic.
Her house—its walls steeped in the potent Memory Magic of Love and Joy—was a coveted asset.
Where young couples and aspiring families sought instant heritage, a home with good bones, good energy, and a ready-made soul was worth a small fortune.
Its sale was the only way she could generate the funds required for the substantial, long-term lease on a building large enough to house all of Starlight’s children.
She unlocked the door and stepped into the staged stillness.
The house had been scrubbed and curated, her life packed away into labeled boxes.
Only impersonal, appealing fragments remained on the shelves—a hollow pantomime of a home.
The lemon-scented air couldn’t mask the truth: She was preparing her past for a stranger’s inspection, so its spirit could pay for someone else’s future.
The real-estate agent she’d hired arrived not long after, a young elf couple trailing behind him. The wife was visibly pregnant, probably six or seven months along. The husband looked happy and proud, ecstatic to purchase their first home.
Cassia stood off to the side, cradling Anuck in her arms as the couple cooed over the original crown moulding. Their voices floated around her—charming craftsmanship, restoration potential, so much light, do you feel that amazing aura?—but she wasn’t really listening.
Anuck blinked up at her with his intelligent yellow eyes, then tucked his face into the crook of her elbow with a heavy, put-upon sigh, as if he, too, found all the fuss exhausting.
Where are we going to live? he seemed to ask.
She pressed her lips into the soft fur between his ears.
“You’d love the attic above the bakery,” she whispered. “We’ll convert it from a storage room into an apartment. It’s large enough for the two of us. There’s sunlight in the mornings and warm floorboards in the evenings. It’ll be cozy. And it will always smell like biscuits.”
Her voice wavered. She paused, swallowing thickly.
“You’ll be able to perch in the windows and judge everyone who walks by. You’ll enjoy that.”
Anuck gave a quiet purr and nudged his head against her cheek—a soft, grounding weight. As if he understood. As if he was comforting her. Cassia shut her eyes for a moment and let him.
Just breathe, she told herself. Let them imagine their lives. Let them walk the hallways and dream. This is what people do when they’re buying a house.
She was the one choosing to let go. The least she could do was be gracious about it.
“Darling,” the wife called from the next room, “look at this woodwork. The wainscotting is original, I think.”
Cassia turned and said, “My father did those himself back in the 80s.”
The husband made an impressed noise. “Craftsmanship like this is rare these days. We could refinish it, lighten the stain—”
Cassia kept her eyes on Anuck, and the cat slowly winked at her.
It’s fine. They want it lighter. Everyone wants lighter colours nowadays. More modern. More airy.
She adjusted her hold on the cat and walked to the edge of the front parlour, standing quietly as they moved through her family’s home. The wife ran her fingers along the trim, nodding, already halfway into renovation plans.
“It has good bones,” the husband said cheerfully. “Traditional, but we can fix that.”
Cassia bit the inside of her cheek and smiled, just barely.
Then he asked his wife, “What about the kitchen?”
She wrinkled her nose. “A bit dated, isn’t it.”
Cassia’s breath caught. She turned toward the doorway, toward the narrow hall that led to the kitchen—the same one her mother used to disappear into with her sleeves rolled up, trailing cinnamon and clove.
The same one where Cassia first learned to bake bread.
The same one where her father danced her mother around the table after the Summer Solstice festival, laughing like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Cassia had been jealous after and insisted she had a turn.
Her father let her stand on his feet and taught her the steps.
That same kitchen was still lined with old spice jars, some labeled in her mother’s faded hand. The same crooked drawer that stuck every time it rained. The same worn wooden spoon that stirred healing broth for Cassia when she had fevers so high her magic hummed.
If they renovated it . . .
Her chest tightened, suddenly and without warning. She couldn’t breathe right—like her lungs had forgotten how to draw in air.
This wasn’t just a kitchen. This was the epicentre of her mother’s world.
The place where, exhausted and stretched thin, her mother had performed the ultimate act of love.
She had stood right there, between the stove and the pantry, and woven the multiplication spell that fractured her own lifespan, costing her thirty-five years to maintain the bakery, the orphanage, and a stable home for Cassia.
But Celestia’s magic hadn’t just vanished after her death; it had seeped into the very grain of the wooden countertops, lingered in the scent of the herbs, baked into the floorboards by the warmth of the oven. If they renovated it . . .
The smell of dried herbs would vanish. The warmth would be scrubbed away, sealed under new finishes.
They wouldn’t just be tearing out cabinets; they would be scouring away the tangible echo of that sacrifice, erasing one of the final physical places where her mother’s love was still a palpable force.
Her pulse picked up, uneven, thudding hard behind her ribs. The room swam. Her gaze blurred. She held Anuck a little closer. He stirred uneasily.
“It’s fine,” she whispered, except no one had asked. “It’s fine. It’s just a kitchen.”