No lurch. No crackle-back. No flaring jars or offended runes—a hum, then quiet.
Her throat went tight. She blinked suspiciously. “Again.”
He didn’t sayI told you so. He didn’t say anything at all, which might have been the smartest thing he’d done all day. He turned the dough. She drew the rune and fed it into the next fold. The glow softened into the layers, steady as tidewater, and nested.
“Oh,” he said softly. Not triumph. Not surprise. Awe.
She snorted because she was constitutionally opposed to sincere moments. “Don’t get poetic.”
“Too late,” he murmured. “You found the groove.”
“It’s your groove,” she said, hating the way the words warmed something under her breastbone. “The shop listens when you count.”
He tipped his head, thinking it over. “Maybe it’s not listening to me,” he said. “Maybe it’s listening to the metronome.”
“Now you’re insufferableandmystical,” she muttered.
He grinned, small and a little shy, which was unfair. “Roll.”
She rolled. They folded. With each repetition, she fed a thin line of her magic into the seam—keeping it low, disciplined, like leading a wolf on a short leash. The wolf…behaved. It flowed where she pointed, settling into butter and flour alike, tightening each fold until the layers felt locked, resilient. It liked the warmth of the butter, the compression of flour, the predictability of the turn. Saints help her—her grief wanted rules.
They stacked the packet on its tray. He slid it onto the chillshelf over his proving drawers. The glass fogged briefly, then cleared. The room felt like it…exhaled.
“Again,” she said, already reaching for the next slab.
His mouth quirked. “Bossy.”
They fell into a rhythm that felt perilously close to comfort. He dusted; she rolled. He turned; she folded. When the parchment stuck, he nudged it free with the scraper; when the butter threatened to break through, she patched it with a cold fingertip and a muttered line. She could feel the shop tracking them the way deer track the wind—ears flicking, then settling. Several times the chandelier tinkled, as if startled to find itself un-startled.
By the second chill, her shoulders had loosened. Not relaxed. Never that. But less tautly strung. She flexed her fingers and felt the absence of ache, which startled her: normally magic left her humming with residual voltage, as if she’d swallowed a storm. This left her…centered.
“If you tell anyone that my magic plays well with butter, I’ll hex your eyebrows into retirement.”
“Never,” he said solemnly. “Your fearsome reputation is safe.”
Maude gave him a sidelong glance. Maybe he wasn’t a bastard after all. Maybe ‘idiot’ was the promotion he deserved.
Wesley pulled down the first tray to begin shaping. Lamination flashed in delicate strata along the cut edge—thin, precise layers like pages in a book. The rune was invisible now, but she felt it inside the fold.
He cut a long strip; she watched his hands. When he handed her a piece to shape, he stepped back to give her space, which she noticed and pretended not to.
She shaped the pastry and set it on the tray. The tiny rune nested inside the layer clicked into place with its neighbors, as if they recognized one another, and the dough sighed again. Together they built a tray of crescents and layered squares, nothing too fussy, then slid it into the proving drawer where low warmth and a whisper of steam would wake them.
“Now we wait,” he said.
She hated waiting. She propped a hip against the counter and pretended she wasn’t vibrating—then realized she, in fact, wasn’t. The usual itch to control every atom had been replaced by a cautious quiet.
“You’re scowling,” he observed, leaning beside her.
“I’m thinking,” she said. “It looks the same from the outside.”
“You could patent that. Weaponized contemplation.”
She let the corner of her mouth move half a millimeter, which for her was hysterical laughter. “Bai—”Bailey used to say.The sentence almost stepped into the room without knocking. She froze, nostrils flaring. “I’ve heard that magic needs a container,” she said at last. “Body to hold mind. Intention to hold force. That it frays if you let it go unshaped.” She cleared her throat. “I hated that. I wanted it to do what I told it becauseI told it.”
“How old were you when you decided that?”
“Six,” she said. “I was short and furious. Still am.”
