“I see Evryn has not been yet,” he added when his eyes fell on a section on one side of the hearth. “In all fairness, I did only ask yesterday, and he is wholly occupied with making certain Dreamland is ready to reopen next week.” He glanced at Balthazar. “Or perhaps the messenger pixie I sent was not the most reliable. I shall follow up.”
Balthazar, seemingly done with this conversation, closed both eyes.
After confirming that every thread of the lumyrite running behind the ovens hummed exactly as it ought to, Kazrian crouched and pressed his palm to the floor beside the oven’s base. On his cushion, Balthazar lifted his head.
“I am not going beneath them again,” Kazrian said. “You have my word.”
Balthazar’s ears remained skeptically angled, but he did not hiss.
The enchantment Kazrian had removed—the old floor-polishing magic that had been tangling with the lattice—was still gone. It had not somehow reassembled itself in the days since, which was a relief, because at this point Kazrian would not have been entirely surprised if it had.
Good.
He rose and crossed to the cooling cabinets, pressing his hand to thewalls there, listening to the magic flowing through it. The enchantment here was clean as well.
He exhaled and stepped back. So the essential things—the instruments upon which Lucie’s work depended—remained sound. She could continue with her work, at least, while Kazrian contended with the building’s more theatrical complaints.
Which brought him to the shelf.
The one that had, until recently, confined its objections to items of a blue nature, and which had now apparently decided it did not like yellow. As far as Kazrian had been able to determine, the shelf’s hostility was the residual side effect of an old dust-repelling enchantment. Someone, at some point in the building’s long history, had laid a charm intended to keep the shelves clean, and when the charm had degraded, it had left behind a faint, purposeless impulse toreject, which it had then decided to direct at all things blue.
Kazrian had been certain he’d removed it entirely.
He placed his hand against the wall beside the shelf, fingers spread, and let his magic seep slowly into the stone. Then he waited, patient and still, as he listened to the hum of the lattice moving through the walls.
His gaze drifted, almost of its own accord, to the worktable.
Lucie’s recipe book was there, still open to the page with the sketch they had worked on earlier, the framework drawn in two hands—his precise lines and her looser, more expressive ones layered over and between each other. Something squeezed in his chest at the sight of it.
His attention had been torn the entire time between the genuine pleasure of the work and the devastating nearness of her. The way she leaned over the sketch with her lower lip caught between her teeth when she was concentrating. The brush of her fingers whenever she took the pencil from him. The faint scent of something warm and sweet that clung to her always. He could have remained all day at that table with her.
“She is remarkable, is she not,” he said quietly. His hand remained on the wall, his magic still reaching through the stone. Balthazar did not open his eyes, but one ear rotated in Kazrian’s direction. “But you already know that,” Kazrian added with a small smile.
The kitchen was very quiet. The amber light had deepened to copper,and in the stillness Kazrian could hear the faint, rhythmic tick of his father’s watch in his waistcoat pocket.
“Would you dislike me even more, Balthazar,” he said, “if you knew that I sometimes find myself wishing I could stay?” He was quiet for a moment, his fingers pressed to the stone, his magic moving slowly through the wall. “I know I should not. I know she does not want me near. And yet I find myself caught up in … inher. In simply being near her. I find myself wishing that my work here would not come to an end.” He exhaled. “You needn’t worry, though. I would never intentionally prolong the work simply for the sake of feelings that are not returned. I would not do anything that would harm the launch or the operation of this place. Whatever is going wrong now is not my doing, and I shall endeavor to fix it as swiftly as possible.”
A thread pulsed beneath Kazrian’s hand.
He went still. There—in the lattice running through the wall beside the shelf. A single thread of lumyrite, pulsing brighter than the others. It was not damaged, exactly. More … agitated.
He frowned. The shelf’s original misbehavior had been unrelated to the lumyrite lattice, so this appeared to be a new problem. Hadheperhaps inadvertently caused this? In smoothing one problem, had he introduced a new one elsewhere?
He closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath through his nose.
Well. At least he knew what it was now. And unlike the storeroom door, which had defied him with a stubbornness that bordered on the personal, this was a problem that should, in theory, be simple to fix. All he needed to do was smooth out the irregularity in that particular thread of lumyrite.
He settled his hand more firmly against the wall and began. As he worked, his eyes drifted to the worktable again, and this time the memory that surfaced was less pleasant.
Henry Stratton, arriving in the doorway.
All the warmth and ease of the morning—the laughter, the shared work, the nearness that had felt so natural—had vanished in an instant. Lucie’s expression had shifted and she’d pulled away from him immediately, as though the simple act of laughing beside Kazrian was something that required an immediate correction.
“Is there … an understanding between them?” Kazrian asked. “Lucie and Mr Stratton, that is.”
Balthazar’s head snapped up. His ears flattened, his lips peeled back from his teeth, and a hiss ripped through the kitchen. Magic crackled along the length of his body as his fur stood on end.
“Yes,” Kazrian said. “I am aware you do not care for the man. I confess to a similar inclination.” He shifted his hand slightly along the wall. “My sister mentioned that he pays Lucie a great deal of attention. I am merely wondering whether that attention is … returned.”
