The kitchen doors swung open, and Lira emerged with Crumpet perched on her shoulder, the flutterstoat’s white fur dusted with what looked suspiciously like cinnamon. The half-elf’s auburn hair had come loose from its bun, wisps of it decorated with flour, and there was a buttery smudge on her cheek.
“Tomorrow morning’s crumpets are ready,” she announced, stretching her arms overhead with a satisfied groan. The winged stoat chittered, his tiny wings fluttering as he groomed flour from his whiskers.
“About time you emerged from your baking cave,” Cali said, as she helped flip chairs on top of tables, the pantheri’s tail swishing languidly. “I was beginning to think you’d been buried under an avalanche of dough.”
“Nearly was,” Lira admitted with a laugh, making her way to the fire. She sank onto Korl’s lap with obvious relief, and Crumpetimmediately relocated to her lap, curling into a contented ball. The orc wrapped his arms around his fiancé, comforting her without saying a word.
Sass finished her sweeping, wrapped up the sea shanty she’d been humming, and propped the broom against the wall before joining them and pulling up a chair. “You know your wedding is all anyone’s talking about.”
Lira sighed. “It’s turned into a village project.”
“You can’t blame them, love,” Iris said. “Two of Wayside’s own getting married? One of whom vanished for years before returning.”
Lira rolled her eyes but snuggled against Korl. “I didn’t vanish, and I did come home.”
“Even though the entire town is excited about your wedding,” Iris said, as she swung a finger between Lira and Korl, “it’s still yours.”
“Is it?” Lira asked with a weary exhale that Vaskel suspected came from more than hours in the kitchen.
Iris crossed to Lira and rested a hand on her shoulder. “It is, so if it’s turning into something you don’t want, we can fix that.”
Lira looked up at the woman, her lips quirking. “We as in…?”
Cali joined Iris and threw a gray striped arm around her shoulders. “All of us.”
Lira laughed. “It might take all of you to talk Pip out of a five-tier cake.”
“Who said the cake was a bad idea?” Sass asked, jutting out one hip. “Dwarves can eat a lot of cake, and now there are two of us.”
“So one tier for you and one for Thrain?” Cali asked.
Sass smiled wryly. “If it’s Pip’s cake we’re talking about, that sounds about right.”
Even Korl laughed at this, and Vaskel grinned from the bar, glad to see Lira smiling about her wedding plans. Maybe she wasn’t as nervous about it as he and Cali had suspected.
He listened to their continued wedding talk with half an ear as he polished the bar top, the familiar motion soothing even as the marks on his arm seemed to seethe beneath his flesh. He’d avoided thinking about them for the past hour, losing himself in the routine of closing work, but now that he was almost done, it was hard to ignore the burning sensation.
Crumpet’s snores carried all the way to the bar, making Vaskel glance up.
Cali laughed as she stretched her slender arms overhead. “He has the right idea. I should head back to the inn before the snow starts again.” She glanced at the window where frost had crept up the glass in delicate patterns. “You coming, Vask?”
“I have to do a few more things. You go without me.”
Cali shrugged, then slipped out into the night, letting in a flurry of frigid air that made the fire flicker and its shadows lap the ceiling. Sass yawned enormously, not bothering to cover her mouth.
“Right then, I’m off to bed too,” the dwarf announced as she stood. “I should save my energy for the wedding festivities.”
“It’s a wedding, not a bacchanal,” Lira said.
Sass brushed a loose brown curl from her eyes. “Dwarf wedding celebrations last days, and the hangovers last even longer.”
“Good thing we aren’t dwarves,” Korl said, his words rumbling low and husky.
“You should be so lucky,” Sass called over her shoulder as she headed for the stairs to the second floor of the tavern and her bedroom. “’Night all. Don’t stay up too late.”
That left Lira, Korl, Iris, and Vaskel in the quiet tavern. Lira carefully transferred the sleeping Crumpet from her lap to Korl’s as she stood.
“I should give the kitchen a final once-over before we go,” she said, though her movements were slow and her voice laden with exhaustion.
