Page 153 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

He didn’t wait for her to answer. “You are my future daughter-in-law, aren’t you?”

Cassia’s hand faltered over the next piece. She kept her gaze fixed on the puzzle, but her voice gentled. “Ark and I were never engaged. We didn’t even know each other three weeks before the Daemaris’s ball.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his brow arch, but he said nothing.

She scratched her cheek, suddenly chagrined. “You see, Ark concocted the whole bargain to annoy the Daemaris. I went along with it to save Starlight Orphanage, but it was never real. It’s already been called off.”

She offered a small smile. “So you don’t need to worry about scandal or succession or whatever it is noble fathers worry about. Just focus on getting well.”

He said nothing for a long moment. Only moved a piece into place with a soft finality. “Why do you do it?”

Cassia looked up. “Do what?”

“All this,” he said, motioning to the puzzle, the broth, the space between them. “Why are you being kind to me? I’m hardly an innocent party in the world that’s made your life so difficult.”

She let the question sit. Let it sting. Let fury rise. And then, slowly, she reached for another piece.

“I wondered the same thing,” she said, voice soft. “There were days, especially when things felt impossibly unfair, when I imagined storming into one of your meetings just to shake the table. Just to remind you that some of us really need your help.”

She looked down at the puzzle piece resting in her palm—a slender sickle of a moon, silver-edged and surprisingly cool to the touch. It didn’t belong to the stars yet, but it would. It just needed the right space.

“But I cannot hate you,” she murmured, the truth arriving fully formed. She leaned forward and set the crescent moon into place. It settled with a soft, definitive click.

She looked at the proud, weary demon in his bed. “Because the one I love, loves you. Hurting you would be a second-hand way of hurting him.”

He didn’t look at her, but his fingers paused briefly over the next piece.

They didn’t speak again for several minutes. The puzzle came together—slowly, stubbornly, just like people.

When the final piece was placed, a detailed map of the winter night sky lay completed on the tray. Cassia carefully arranged the box and closed the lid. Under Kassenor’s silent, watchful gaze, she packed her basket.

“I need to go now,” she said, looking back at him. “I have a rather heavy day ahead of me. But I’ll come again. I’ll bring more broth. We can start a new puzzle, if you like.”

His brows lifted slightly, but he gave a single, slow nod. It wasn’t thanks, not in any language she knew. But it was acknowledgment.

It was enough.

Outside her house, a red balloon bobbed mockingly above the ‘For Sale’ sign, its false cheer a stark contrast to the grief tightening Cassia’s throat.

The plan was a simple, brutal arithmetic. Her house—its walls steeped in the potent Memory Magic of Love and Joy—was a coveted asset. Where young couples and aspiring families sought instant heritage, a home with good bones, good energy, and a ready-made soul was worth a small fortune. Its sale was the only way she could generate the funds required for the substantial, long-term lease on a building large enough to house all of Starlight’s children.

She unlocked the door and stepped into the staged stillness.

The house had been scrubbed and curated, her life packed away into labeled boxes. Only impersonal, appealing fragments remained on the shelves—a hollow pantomime of a home. The lemon-scented air couldn’t mask the truth: She was preparing her past for a stranger’s inspection, so its spirit could pay for someone else’s future.

The real-estate agent she’d hired arrived not long after, a young elf couple trailing behind him. The wife was visibly pregnant, probably six or seven months along. The husband looked happy and proud, ecstatic to purchase their first home.

Cassia stood off to the side, cradling Anuck in her arms as the couple cooed over the original crown moulding. Their voices floated around her—charming craftsmanship, restoration potential, so much light, do you feel that amazing aura?—but she wasn’t really listening.

Anuck blinked up at her with his intelligent yellow eyes, then tucked his face into the crook of her elbow with a heavy, put-upon sigh, as if he, too, found all the fuss exhausting.

Where are we going to live? he seemed to ask.

She pressed her lips into the soft fur between his ears.

“You’d love the attic above the bakery,” she whispered. “We’ll convert it from a storage room into an apartment. It’s large enough for the two of us. There’s sunlight in the mornings and warm floorboards in the evenings. It’ll be cozy. And it will always smell like biscuits.”

Her voice wavered. She paused, swallowing thickly.