“And all of this,” said Lady Rivenna, “every enchantment, every confection, every drop of honey light, is owed to the skill of one remarkable young woman. Our confectioner. Miss Lucie Fields.” She let the name settle over the garden. “I will tell you plainly: The Honeycomb would not be what it is without her. Indeed, there would be no Honeycomb at all. She is its heart, and its hands, and the whole of its considerable magic.”
Lucie’s face went hot. Out in the garden, heads were turning, seeking the woman being spoken of.
“Miss Fields has consented,” Lady Rivenna continued, “to give us a small demonstration of her art. I would advise you all to watch closely. You will not have seen anything like it before.” She turned toward the kitchen, and her voice lifted, warm and certain and ringing across the whole bright garden. “Miss Fields. Please join us, my dear.”
This was it.
Lucie drew one last breath. Beside her, Kazrian’s hand found the small of her back—just for a moment, the barest pressure—and he said, “She is right about all of it.”
And she stepped out into the light.
The applause met her at once, and the garden opened up around her, dozens of faces turned her way, the flowering trees overhead and the faelights strung between them, and waiting at the center of it all, her showpiece. The broad pedestal that concealed the honeycomb beehive and chocolate bees within. The curved pieces of silver wood rising and tapering inward, almost hidden beneath countless marzipan flowers in soft pinks, ivories, and lavenders, tiny leaves tucked between, so that only glimpses of the luminous wood showed through.
She crossed to it, took her place beside it, and waited for the noise to die away.
She swallowed.
She breathed.
Then she placed her hand carefully against the back of the pedestal, directed her attention to the ring on her finger, pulled gently at the magic within its lumyrite stone, and whispered the first enchantment.
The whole structure began, slowly and gracefully, to turn.
A murmur ran through the garden.
Lucie bent and reached into the back compartment Kazrian had created, where the saucepan of golden syrup, preserved at the moment it had cooled to just beyond the hard-crack stage, waited for her. She removed her saucepan and her special whisk with its many tips, and straightened.
Another breath, and she began.
She dipped the whisk into the sugary syrup and drew the first arc. The motion was steady and practiced, a flick of the wrist, back and forth above the turning structure, so that the impossibly fine filaments of sugar fell in delicate, glittering arcs, catching the afternoon light as they settled over the flowers like morning spider silk strung with dew.
Another arc. Another. The structure turned, and the sugar fell, and the garden was utterly silent.
Then Lucie returned the saucepan and whisk to the back compartment and removed the bottle of honey light.
It wasGolden Hour, deep amber shot through with the particular quality of light that made a person feel, for just a moment, as though they were experiencing the most beautiful moment of the day. She uncorked the bottle and began to pour.
She poured it slowly. Steadily. Tilting the bottle so that the golden light ran out in a thick warm ribbon and sank down over the whole of the structure as it continued to turn. Every flower, every spun sugar thread, even the silver wood itself began to glow, amber and warm, as though the entire thing had swallowed a small and gentle sun.
The garden had gone completely silent.
Lucie began the second enchantment.
Slowly, as the honey light’s glow settled and the pinks and lavenders and ivories became visible again, and the structure continued to turn, the little marzipan flowers began to bloom. The petals unfurled, first at the very top of the tapered structure, then spreading downward in a slow cascading wave, blossom after blossom, until the whole thing seemed to burst into slow and silent flower before their eyes.
A hushed murmur spread through the garden.
And then the final act.
Her palm was against the back of the pedestal again, the third piece ofmagic set in motion. The central panels that had been closed over the top of the pedestal released outward, curving open like the petals of some great flower themselves, each one fitting precisely into the spaces between the tapered pieces above. And from within the opened pedestal, rising slowly on its spindle into the afternoon light, came the beehive.
Honeycomb candy, golden and delicate, dozens of pieces carefully shaped and fitted together into the form of a beehive. And as it rose, the little chocolate bees woke up and spiraled out from within the pedestal, circling the whole display in lazy, delighted loops, until they finally came to rest on very precise positions Lucie had chosen among the marzipan flowers.
Do not fall off, do not fall off, she silently repeated, hoping the final piece of magic would hold.
It held.
The structure slowed and came to a stop.
