Page 62 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

He was a means to an end.

A powerful, sharp-jawed, maddeningly handsome means to save Starlight.

And yet . . .

She shook her head sharply, as if she could physically dislodge him from her thoughts. It didn’t work.

Still, she couldn’t sit here forever, drifting in his aftermath. She placed the pouch back on the nightstand and stepped out into the golden hush of the kitchen. The lamps had dimmed on their own, responding to the quiet in the room. The fire had gone low. Even Anuck had retreated to his perch by the window.

She needed motion. Familiarity. Ritual.

Cassia lit the oven. The flame caught easily now, but it hadn’t always. In grade school, fire had terrified her. It was unpredictable, too quick to turn from gentle to destructive. The other elements—water, wind, earth—answered her call easily. Fire didn’t. Every time she reached for it, it slipped away or flared out of control. She’d nearly failed the fire module.

She thought back to the day she’d come home from school, no older than twelve, on the verge of tears over her fire-summoning test. Her mother hadn’t just comforted her. She’d stood with her in front of this very oven and taught her the skill in a way she could finally understand.

Her teacher had always tried to teach her to use anger to summon flames. But that day, her mother had shown those same flames could be summoned with warmth.

With love.

As the oven warmed up, she opened the pantry and reached for the flour. The recipe was already in her hands—not on paper, but etched into muscle memory.

Flour. Yeast. Salt. Honey. Elderflower. Warm milk.

The trick, the little secret that had clinched her win twenty years ago: dried elderflower steeped in milk for exactly thirteen minutes.

One of the judges had said the bread carried ‘a memory of something lost and found.’ As a ten-year-old girl, she had nodded solemnly, even though she hadn’t quite understood it herself, foot tapping with impatience. At the time, there was no other thought than winning the competition and taking the prize money.

Tonight, thirty-year-old Cassia measured the elderflower, letting it steep while she gathered the rest of the ingredients. She combined yeast and honey in the steeped milk, waiting until it bloomed. Then she sifted flour and salt together, murmuring softly under her breath. Magic stirred the flour in midair before it drifted down like slow, lazy snow.

When she mixed the wet and dry ingredients, the dough came together stubbornly, clinging to the spoon, then her fingers. She grounded herself in this ritual—just like that day. Her hands were smaller then, callouses not yet earned. Tonight, her palms pressed in. Folded. Turned. Pressed again. Her mother used to say cooking needed a mortal’s touch. Magic could assist, but certain steps required the warmth of her hands and a bit of elbow grease.

As she kneaded, she felt a warmth that wasn’t fire—a presence, like the steady hand of ten-year-old Cassia at her back, watching, guiding. By the time the dough had risen—round and pillowy—the kitchen smelled of yeast, heat, and something sweeter from the steeped elderflower.

She punched it down, then scattered a generous handful of toasted nuts and seeds across the surface and folded them in with quick, deliberate turns until they were evenly distributed throughout the dough. She shaped it deftly, scored it once down the centre, then added small slashes in a leaf pattern before sliding it into the oven.

An hour later—she never used magic to speed this up—she removed the loaf and cradled it in a linen cloth. The crust was burnished gold, crackling softly as it cooled.

She carried it to a weathered wooden hutch tucked between the kitchen and sitting room. Kneeling, she opened the doors, revealing what most would never guess was hidden behind them.

Inside, beneath the glow of enchanted candles, sat two framed photographs—her father, smiling with a watering can and dirt on his nose; her mother, caught mid-laugh, arm slung around a younger Cassia, both dusted with flour.

She set the loaf gently on the wooden board before them. Their faces smiled at her through time, achingly familiar and impossibly distant.

“I made it again,” she told them. “It came out beautiful tonight. I wish you could taste it.”

Looking at the loaf, she could still remember the exact moment the judges announced her name—a ten-year-old girl in flour-dusted boots, beating bakers four, five, six times her age. It had only been a small-town competition, but when they handed her the trophy, she felt like she’d conquered the world.

The cheque they gave her was crisp, larger than expected. Someone whispered the townspeople had pooled together to add more—old friends of her parents, neighbours who’d known her since she was a baby. She’d wondered if they’d let her win out of pity, but she hadn’t cared enough to question it aloud.

And she certainly wasn’t proud enough to turn it down.

Even now, she still remembered the specific sensation: the crisp, unyielding paper of the cheque clutched so tightly in her small, damp hand that it left a red mark. She ran all the way from Unity Station to the hospital, breath burning in her lungs, heart galloping with hope so bright it felt like a star going supernova. The sun had been blinding that day, rare for the winter season. She sped along the sick ward’s sterile corridors, counting the doors.

Just a few more steps, and she could tell him: They finally had the money.

But before she even reached the room, her mother’s anguished cry echoed through the quiet corridor. Cassia skidded to a halt, her chest still heaving from the exertion. The cheque crinkled within her clammy grip as she listened to her mother’s sobs.

Adult Cassia closed her eyes. Twenty years later, it still hurt. She could still feel the ghost of that crumpled cheque in her hand, that dying star in her heart. She’d been so focused on winning, she didn’t even get to say goodbye.