“Good,” he said. “Now, fold: bottom third up, top third down. That’s a letter fold.”
She folded it; he turned it a quarter. “Then rest,” he said, lifting the packet onto a sheet tray, setting it aside. “The gluten relaxes; the butter chills.”
“Like naps.”
“Exactlylike naps,” he said, dead serious, which she did not need to find charming. He pulled forward another chilled packet and slid it to her. “Again.”
“Repetition,” she said. “How thrilling.”
“Order,” he said, matching her tone. “How scandalous.”
She pressed the pin again. The room felt oddly patient, the nerves she’d grown accustomed to—hers and the shop’s—smoothed by the rhythm. Roll. Fold. Turn. Rest. When she worked magic these days, everything inside her buzzed and spiked and came out feral. This? This was a meditative insult. She might even like it, which was unacceptable.
“Do you do everything like this?” she asked, because silence made her fidget.
“Like what?”
“In steps,” she said. “Exact. Measured. If someone moved your scales an inch to the left, would you riot?”
He huffed a laugh. “I might sulk. But…yeah. To an extent. The shop’s better if I build the day the same way—mix at dawn, first prove by the time the kettle whistles, laminations by second bell.” He shrugged, eyes on the dough. “When there’s noise, you can either wave at it or give yourself a railing to hold.”
A railing. She pictured the night Bailey didn’t come home and the weeks after, when she’d worked by muscle memory becausethinking hurt and not thinking was worse. It had felt like drowning in a room with windows. No railing. No anything. Just water.
“Mm,” she said, which was less a word and more a noncommittal grunt with emotions she refused to unpack tied to it like baggage.
He slid a third packet her way. “Last turn for this set. Then we chill the stack, start a fresh slab, and give the first one a chance to settle.”
“Fine,” she said, like she was put-upon. She wasn’t. It was almost…soothing.
She rolled. The pin whispered. He asked for the scraper; she handed it to him without looking. The small transactions stacked up into something that felt suspiciously like ease.
When the dough had been turned and rested, he tapped the bench. “You want to try something?”
“I am trying something,” she said, but he shook his head, amused.
“I mean…try weaving your magic through the fold.”
A hundred responses presented themselves, all with teeth. She chose the least defensive one that still sounded like her. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“Probably,” he agreed, “but this room stops buzzing when we do this. You noticed.”
Of course he’d noticed that she’d noticed.Annoying. She lifted her hands, then dropped them. “If I blow up the bakery again, you’re explaining it to Veyne.”
“Deal.”
“And Mrs. Haddingham.”
“Absolutely not. She scares me.”
Against all better judgment, she bent over the cool slab. “You’re going to be insufferable if this works.”
“I’m already insufferable,” he said, eyes kind, voice easy.
She exhaled a slow, thin breath. The rune she chose was minor—binding, basic, something safe enough to test on a cowardlyday. She shaped it with two fingers over the dough’s surface, not speaking aloud, just forming the lines in thought, the angles she’d traced since she was small enough to stand on a stool to watch Bailey draw them in salt.
The air at the edge of the bench hummed.
She pressed the rune into the fold—not on top, but between the layers. Butter, flour, bind. The magic spread like melted wax, slipping through the seams, coaxing the layers to cling where they should have torn apart. It took a breath, and held.
