Her feet stay planted.
"That's the panic talking. I've seen you carry a shield you couldn't lift. I've seen you drive a van with no windshield at seventy miles an hour. You don't quit."
Her breath hitches.
"But I've never--"
"Walk, baker."
Something in the word snaps her head up. Baker. Not hobby. Not pretend. I see the impact land behind her eyes. Her throat bobs on a hard swallow.
I increase the pressure on her back by one degree. Her feet unstick from the floor. One step. Two. I steer her past the ash pile, past the weeping bride, past the maintenance dwarf, and through the double doors into the secondary prep kitchen that adjoins the main one. Smaller. Cleaner. Two functional ovens. A wide stainless steel prep table. Undamaged.
I set her bag on the table. Unzip it. Pull out tools one by one and line them up with the same care I use when laying out weapons before a contract. Offset spatula. Bench scraper. Pastry brush with a worn wooden handle. A copper whisk with a slight bend in the neck. The big copper bowl with the dent, which someone retrieved at speed.
Magnolia's tools appear on the steel surface. Her breathing changes. Slower. Deeper. Her hands uncurl.
I place the last item on the table. A notebook, flour-dusted, spine cracked, pages swollen with handwritten recipes and dried batter stains and margin notes in purple ink. It falls open naturally to a page near the middle.
Elderflower Vanilla Bean. Mom's original. Don't screw it up, Mags.
Her fingers land on the page. Trace the handwriting.
"That's your mother's recipe?"
"My grandmother's. Mom doesn't know I have it. She thinks Grandma's recipe box got lost in the move."
"Did it?"
A ghost of a smile. "I stole it. Age twelve. Hid it in my pillowcase for three years."
"Tactical acquisition. Respect."
The smile gains substance. She squares her shoulders. Picks up the copper whisk and turns it in her hand like a soldier reacquainting herself with her blade.
"I need those ingredients in this room in the next hour," she says. The command returning, but rooted deeper this time, growing up through something older than panic.
"Done."
"And I need you to do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you, no questions."
"I am under contract."
"I'm serious, Dash. When I say fold, you fold. When I say stop mixing, you stop. If you overmix my buttercream, our deal is off and it doesn’t matter how many griffins you've killed."
I set my feet. Pull the dress shirt taut across my body. Present myself for inspection.
"Awaiting orders."
Magnolia Jenkins ties her hair back with a strip of kitchen twine, flips to a clean page in her grandmother's notebook, and picks up a pencil.
"First. We scale the recipe by twelve."
The first batch comes out of the oven golden. Perfect. Magnolia pulls the sheet pan with bare hands, hissing at the heat but refusing to set it down until she's got it centered on the cooling rack. She bends close. Sniffs. Presses one finger into the sponge's surface and watches it spring back.
"Good crumb," she whispers.
The second batch goes in. I crack eggs. Forty-seven so far. The shells crumble like eggshell-thin armor in my grip and I've learned to moderate the pressure so precisely that my fingers ache from the sustained control. Magnolia measures elderflower cordial into a glass pitcher, and the kitchen fills with a smell like summer rain on white flowers.
