She hurried out of the pantry and into the kitchen. “Kazrian!”
The call came out sharper than she intended, edged with the kind of panic that no amount of composure could soften. Through the open back door she could see him crouched beside the base of the structure, and at the sound of her voice he was on his feet and through the door in a handful of strides, his eyes already scanning the kitchen for the source of the emergency.
“What is it?”
“The chocolate bees. They are not in the pantry. I have looked everywhere and I cannot?—”
A sound from the counter stopped her.
A single, pointed, remarkably authoritativemeow.
Lucie turned. Balthazar was sitting on the far end of the kitchen counter. He turned his head, very deliberately, toward a large copper tin with a hinged lid, a muslin cloth half draped across it.
Lucie stared at it. The memory surfaced all at once, vivid and immediate. She had already checked the chocolate bees this morning. She had brought the tin out of the pantry, placed it carefully on the counter, removed the lid, and checked that the little bees were sleeping peacefully within. And then—she had no memory of what had happened after that. She could not even recall replacing the lid.
“Oh,” she said. She pressed a hand to her chest and let out a breath that was half laugh, half shudder. “Oh, I am ridiculous.” She crossed to thecounter in a few quick strides and pulled the muslin away. “Balthazar, thank you, truly.”
Balthazar blinked slowly and then began washing his left paw. Lucie looked over at Kazrian, who was still standing just inside the back door, his expression caught somewhere between concern and the beginning of amusement.
“I am so sorry,” she said, her cheeks warming. She reached for the tin, wanting nothing more than to hide. “I did not mean to alarm you.” She headed straight for the pantry with the tin in her hands. “I—I moved the tin this morning and forgot about it entirely.”
“There is nothing to apologize for,” he called out, his voice reaching her through the open pantry doorway. “I am only glad they’re found.”
She set the tin back on its shelf with both hands, pressing it into place as though it might wander off again if she did not. Then she stood still, her palms flat on the shelf, and listened. His footsteps crossed the kitchen, paused briefly, and then moved back toward the courtyard. The back door frame creaked as he passed through it.
She returned to the elderflower and moonglow meringues she had just begun working on when Kazrian had called her outside to help with the framework. The pixies had finished folding the mixture in her absence, and one of them was leaning over the side of the bowl, sampling it from the tip of a tiny blue finger. Lucie had just enough time to spoon out and bake the next batch before her meeting with Lady Rivenna. She crossed to the worktable, reached for a spoon—and froze.
There, scarcely visible in the flour dusting the paper she’d laid upon the baking tray, was a single word.
breathe
She pressed her lips together, but the smile came anyway, pushing through her best efforts to stop it. She covered her eyes with one hand and allowed herself a single, quiet laugh and a shake of her head. Then she lowered her hand, took a deep breath—as instructed—and continued.
The afternoon unfolded in a steady, purposeful rhythm. She baked the meringues, which had Twilight honey light folded in, and set them aside to cool. She sat with Lady Rivenna for twenty minutes in the upstairs study fortheir daily meeting. Going through the guest list, confirming the color of the napkins, assuring her that yes, she had everything under control, and yes, she was eating properly, and yes, she would go home at a reasonable hour, and no, she did not require additional assistance.
She returned to the kitchen and began the lavender shortbread that Lady Rivenna wanted available in the shop on the day of the launch. Part of the everyday confections, the ones that would fill the display cases while the showpiece drew the eye.
She sank into the work. That was the mercy of it, that place she could fall into when her hands found their rhythm and the rest of the world grew quiet. The pixies moved around her in the familiar choreography they had perfected over months. A sifted measure of flour passed up at the right moment, a clean spatula offered before she had to ask for it, a tray received and carried to the oven with solemn, concentrated purpose. She handed off a bowl, received another full of fresh dough, passed a pastry board to a brownie who carried it to the basin, and the whole of it moved like breathing.
By late afternoon—when the rain had begun, as Rosavyn had apparently predicted—she had reached the end of her list for the day. She stood at the worktable surveying the kitchen and felt, for the first time in days, something that might cautiously be called good. She was feeling, in fact, something rather close to a high. The particular satisfaction of a day that had gone right, of a list conquered, of a body that had done everything asked of it and might now, at last, be permitted to rest.
Which was what made it even worse when, turning in the pantry just before preparing to leave, her elbow caught the edge of the copper tin of chocolate bees and sent it flying off the shelf.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Everything had beenmanageable until the storeroom door.
She had not cried about the bees. She had wanted to—rather desperately, in fact—but she had not, and that was the important thing. Nor had her mind scattered, which was the other thing she had feared. Perhaps it was the momentum of the day still carrying her, the satisfied hum of a list conquered. Whatever the reason, her mind had not broken apart at the sight of three dozen chocolate bees in varying states of ruin across the pantry floor.
Instead it had raced ahead, brisk and orderly, forming a new plan, revising the schedule, laying out the steps required to manage this latest inconvenience.
New bees. She would make new bees. She would need the molds, the chocolate, the enchantment reworked from the beginning. She would not be going home tonight. That was perfectly all right. It was not a problem. It was simply a fact.
She had sent one of the brownies to find a messenger pixie. It returned not long after with one perched on its shoulder, looking faintly put out at having been summoned in the rain. Lucie composed a brief message to her parents: she would be working late. They must not worry. She would sleephere tonight. There was a bedroom, though between the crates and the supplies and the bed frame standing upright against the wall, it was not exactly in a state to sleep in. But there was also the armchair in Lady Rivenna’s study. It would be perfectly adequate for one night.
She had made herself eat something first—Lady Rivenna would have been pleased—and then set about preparing the enchantment first: the charm that would animate the little chocolate bees the moment they were wanted, and keep them resting, sweetly and obediently, until her signal.
This was the delicate part, the part that had already gone wrong once before, and she could not afford to rush it simply because she was running out of time. She stood with her recipe book open on the worktable and carefully went through every step she had refined the first time around. The rain still drummed against the windows, hours later, when the enchantment was complete.
