“Well. You know. The sort of thing one says. ‘I shall help with that.’ And then one does not, in fact, help with that, because it was a pleasantry and not a commitment.”
“I do not say things I don’t mean.” The confusion had not left his face. “Why would I offer and not follow through?”
Because people did. Lucie had been planning to ask her father to craft something, though he had quite enough on his hands with his own commissions, and his back had been troubling him again besides. She had not yet found the right moment to ask without feeling she was adding to a burden he would never admit to carrying.
“I—well. Thank you,” she said to Kazrian. “Truly.”
“Of course.”
They stood for a moment in the kitchen’s quiet warmth. Then Lucie said, “I should also thank you for shortening the worktable. That was—yes. Thank you.”
“Oh, that’s—” Something that looked almost like embarrassment crossed his face. “It was nothing. A simple adjustment.” He glanced toward the worktable, where the saucepan sat cooling on one side. “I was wondering—if you had a moment now, I could show you what I had in mind for the structure. But if you are in the middle of—” His gaze returned to the saucepan and the tray waiting beside it. “I can see you are busy.”
“Oh, no—now is perfectly fine,” Lucie said. “The mixture has to cool before I can do anything further with it, so I am quite free. For the moment.”
“Oh.” A smile surfaced, tentative and pleased. “All right, then. Good.” He gave a small nod, as though confirming this with himself. “Good.”
They both moved to the other end of the worktable, where Lucie’s recipe book lay open. She picked up her pencil and turned to the pages of showpiece sketches she had been refining. Rough drawings, mostly. The framework that would spin. The sugar threads. The marzipan flowers. The beehive at the center.
Kazrian leaned over the sketches, studying them with the attention he gave to anything that presented itself as a problem worth solving. Then he held out his hand. “May I?”
She handed him the pencil.
Do not watch his hands. Do not?—
He drew quickly, cleanly, a framework rendered in a few precise strokes. “If it is to turn and then open,” he said, pencil moving, “you’ll want the two motions from separate mechanisms. A central spindle for the turning, and the opening can be a separate spell entirely, triggered when you choose, thepanels releasing outward like—” a swift series of curving lines, petals falling open “—like this. I could craft the pieces from silver wood? It is lightweight and holds enchantment beautifully.”
“Silver wood,” Lucie repeated. “From the Shaded Lands?”
“It takes enchantment more readily than any material I have worked with. And it has a natural luster. It would reflect the honey light rather than absorb it.”
“Oh that sounds perfect,” Lucie said, leaning in. “Yes. That’s?—”
“And the hive can rise on the same spindle, if we set it on a tier below, so that when the panels open it simply ascends, through the center?—”
“Through the center, yes, exactly. Though—can we make this piece larger?” She pointed to the part the hive would rise through.
“Yes, certainly.”
“And what if—” She took the pencil from him, aware only after the fact that she’d brushed his fingers with her own.Do not dwell on it!“What if these outer pieces tapered up more like this …”
They bent over the page together, trading the pencil back and forth, and the sketch grew under their hands into something neither of them could have drawn alone. Lucie had almost forgotten what this felt like—creating a thing beside someone whose mind ran alongside your own, who caught your idea before you’d finished it and handed it back better than you’d left it. She had not experienced it since working with Mama Saffron in The Charmed Leaf kitchen.
“You know,” Kazrian said, sitting back slightly, “it really is beautiful.”
She looked up, but his eyes were no longer on the sketch. He was looking at the honey jar, at the light falling through it and spreading its golden pattern across the counter.
“The light,” he said. “I can see how you looked at that and wondered whether it might possess magical qualities.” He turned back to her. “The honey itself—does it matter what kind? Or is it simply … honey?”
And because there was no surer way to undo Lucie Fields than to ask her a sincere question about honey, she was off before she could stop herself.
She told him about Mr Thornbury, the human beekeeper who lived just outside Bloomhaven and had supplied The Charmed Leaf since before she was born. How, when she’d begun her experiments, she had gone to himwith question after question until the poor man stopped treating her like a child underfoot and started treating her like a colleague. How she had tested one honey after another, holding each to the light, watching how some were too dark and swallowed the gold and some too pale and let it pass through barely tinted at all, until she’d landed on dew blossom honey. It was light amber, warm enough to give a rich gold but clear enough to let the light truly pass. The very honey in the jar this moment, delivered fresh by Mr Thornbury’s cart.
“And I use it in the baking as well, of course,” she went on, gesturing toward the pantry. “Not only for the honey light. Dew blossom has a lovely floral quality that pairs beautifully with almond and citrus. But for heavier things—gingerbread, dark fruit confections—I use a buckwheat honey, which is far too dark for honey light but has the most wonderful depth of flavor. And there is a wildflower variety Mr Thornbury brings in late summer that is exceptional in caramels. Those are all in the pantry, in their own jars, and I keep them quite separate from the honey light stock, because?—”
She stopped. She could hear herself, rattling on with that breathless enthusiasm she fell into whenever she forgot that the rest of the world did not lie awake at night thinking about the relative merits of different honeys. It was exactly the thing Kazrian did, the way he would explain some theory or mathematical principle in such thorough detail that his siblings’ eyes would glaze over and someone would eventually interrupt him.
Her face went hot. “I am so sorry. I’ve gone on. You asked a simple question and I’ve delivered an entire lecture on honey, of all the dull?—”
