“It’s not that unusual,” I said. “You may not remember, but my mother used to bring me here when I was small. She taught me how to cook.” She enjoyed food more than many vampires, and she loved preparing new dishes.
“Ah, yes, I believe I remember you two coming here in the evening sometimes.” The cook stepped backward long enough to grab a tray from a cupboard and hand it to me.
The subtle scent caught the air, and I sucked it in along with the memories of the time we’d shared them.
“Honey scones?” I asked, and the head cook waved to where a pile of them rested on a platter. “I’ll prepare her tea as well if you have a pot and can point me to the herbs.”
Soon I’d crafted something that smelled amazing. I added a napkin and a bowl of berries, then lifted the tray.
“Will there be anything else, Your Majesty?” the head chef asked, her face darkening.
I surveyed the tray, then nodded toward a small crystal vase. “Could you fill that with water while I collect something from the garden?”
She looked utterly bemused, but while she took the vase to the sink, I stepped outside and selected the perfect bloom, sliding it into the vase on the tray.
With it in hand, I dipped my head to the staff. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” they murmured as one, their eyes wide and their mouths agape.
Moments later, I carried the tray up the winding stairs to the tower room, a single white daisy standing in the vase. I didn’t trust anyone else to carry something meant for my wife. My court would call this spoiled indulgence. Kings had been ruined for less.
The humming grew louder as I approached.
I paused partway up the steps, wondering if this was a mistake. Was this too domestic or presumptuous?
Too late now.
I continued up the stairs, taking care not to spill the tray.
The tower room had been transformed. When I’d started to prepare it, it had been empty except for a large table, bookshelves, and tall windows that let in more light than anywhere else inside the castle. Now it brimmed with life. Plants crowded the windowsills, most flowering in impossible colors. Glass jars lined the shelves, filled with herbs, dried petals, and things I couldn’t name but had been recommended to me by Cyrene’s grandmother.
She’d added her own things. A perch for Quandary, books filling one of the shelves, and lanterns…
I’d mourned the loss of the lantern I’d bought six years ago when it finally failed, taking its joy along with it. The remnants were still tucked inside my office in a box I’d built myself from mystwood. Too many times, I’d pulled the box out of the drawer and opened it, gently touching the fragments before tucking it away again.
Books lay open on every surface, some hovering a few inches above the table.
Cyrene stood in the center of it all, her back to me, her hair twisted into a knot on the top of her head. She wore a light blue dress, and her feet were bare. Her hands moved in delicate patterns above a bowl ofliquid, which reflected her movements in ripples of golden light.
She was magnificent.
Her humming stopped mid-note, and she turned, her eyes widening.
“Kieran.” She smoothed her hands down her dress. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You were busy.” I lifted the tray. “I brought you breakfast.”
Her gaze flicked from my face to the tray and back again. “You brought breakfast?”
“You need to eat.” It was ridiculous, really, this urge to make sure she ate, to see color in her cheeks. But I’d tasted that joy once, and now I wanted to feed it, guard it, claim it as mine.
A smile tugged at her mouth. “That’s sweet of you.”
Sweet. No one had ever called me that before.
“I’d assume something like this was beneath a king’s dignity,” she said with a sparkle in her pretty eyes.
I set the tray on the one clear corner of the table. “There’s very little beneath my dignity when it comes to my queen’s well-being.”
