Lucie released the quill, which gave a pleased little pirouette in midair, as though congratulating itself on a task well done, before settling back to hover primly beside the list, and turned back to the kitchen.
Kazrian was kneeling beside the enchanted cooling cabinets, one hand pressed flat to the paneled front, the other resting lightly on the stone floor. He had been there all morning, and the cabinets—which had, for the past several weeks, alternated between frosting their contents into solid blocks of ice and abandoning the pretense of cooling altogether—were now holding at a steady, even chill.
“I think that’s done now,” Kazrian said, drawing his hand from the cabinet and flexing his fingers. “The cabinet was pulling magic from an older enchantment relating to the insulation of the building rather than solely from the newer lattice. I’ve separated the two so the cooling enchantment should function as designed now.”
He rose to his feet and stepped back, brushing the knees of his trousers. Lucie opened the nearest cabinet door and held her hand inside. Cool. Steady. She checked the tray of chocolate truffles she had placed there that morning as a test. They sat firm and glossy, each one perfectly intact.
“Oh, that is wonderful,” she said, and meant it entirely. “Truly. Thank you.”
He gave a small nod, and for a moment something warm and quiet passed between them. The simple satisfaction of a thing that had been broken and was now mended, and two people who both understood, in their different ways, what that was worth.
“Of course, we should wait a few hours, perhaps a day or two, to confirm,” Kazrian added. “But there is no reason for the cabinets not to hold steady now.”
“Right, yes.”
“I have also begun a slow counter-enchantment on the staircase,” Kazrian continued, moving to the stone basin set into the counter to wash his hands. “It needs time to settle on its own. Two to three hours, I should think, while the old magic beneath it adjusts. I would rather not do anything else until that process is complete, since any additional magical work nearby might destabilize it.”
“Of course,” Lucie said.
“Which means I should hold off on addressing whatever magic is interfering with the ovens.” Kazrian dried his hands and rolled his sleeves down.
Keep your eyes up, Lucie Fields, they are merely forearms.
“But I did notice,” Kazrian went on, “while I was examining them yesterday, that the heat regulator on one of the ovens is worn. The small enchanted disc that sits behind the flue. It is not part of the lumyrite lattice, just a standard component, but it is affecting the way magic flows through the oven. I need to replace it.”
“Ah. I see.”
“There is a shop on Winding Row that sells enchanted components.Hargrave & Daughter. The old man who runs it—well, his daughter runs it now, I think, but he is always there—used to let me come in when I was a boy and take things apart.”
“Oh, yes,” Lucie said before she could stop herself. “You used to mention it all the time. You were there often during the Season.”
Kazrian paused. Something shifted in his expression—surprise, perhaps, that she had held onto this small detail from long ago. Then a quiet laugh. “Yes. I have not been back since I returned to Bloomhaven, and I confess I am rather looking forward to—” He caught himself. Paused. “Sorry, you do not need to know any of that. I shall go and fetch the part and be back later, likely after the shop is closed.”
She nodded. “After the shop is closed.”
“If that’s no trouble. I have a key, so you needn’t wait.”
Yes, she knew he had a key. How else could he have let himself in before her three mornings in a row now? “No trouble at all,” she said. “That sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“Right. Yes. Well.” He crossed the kitchen and removed his coat from the row of pegs beside the door. He pulled it on and gave Lucie a small, slightly awkward nod. “Good day, Lu—Miss Fields.”
“Good day, Lord Rowanwood.”
The back door closed behind him, and the kitchen settled.
Lucie exhaled. The space felt different with him gone. More manageable. When Kazrian was in the room, something in her was always occupied with where he was, what he was doing, what his hands were doing. It was like trying to read a recipe while someone played music in the next room. Not unpleasant, precisely, but impossible to ignore entirely.
Now there was quiet, and space, and the comfortable presence of the hearth sprites tending the fire and two kitchen pixies arranging the afternoon’s orders along the section of counter Lucie was not using.
And it did not matter, she told herself, if Henry came by today. Open days were exactly the sort of occasion Henry might appear—he visited Georgiana, that was all, and it was perfectly natural for a brother to call on his sister at her place of work. If he happened to wander into the kitchen to say hello to Lucie as well, that was simply Henry being Henry. Friendly. Attentive. Present.
She had been half listening for him since the morning. She would havepreferred he did not come. Not because of anything in particular—simply because she was busy. There was too much to do before the launch, too many confections to finalize, and the showpiece still existed only as rough sketches and a growing sense of dread in the pit of her stomach. She did not have time for conversation today.
That was the reason. The only reason.
She pulled her stool into position, climbed up, and opened her recipe book to the page where she had been working on ideas for her showpiece. A batch of licorice dreams sat cooling on the rack beside the stove, not yet ready for honey light, and until they were, she might as well use the time to press further into her ideas for what she would present to Lady Rivenna’s guests at the launch. The more concrete the vision became, the less room there would be for the dread to occupy.
She worked. Through the wall, she could hear the murmur of Georgiana’s voice and the occasional reply of a patron. The steady, reassuring rhythm of a shop doing what a shop should do.
