Page 18 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

Ark popped the remaining bite into his mouth. “My Chosen made them.”

Caius stilled. Rhodes froze, hand already halfway to another cake. Both turned to look at him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Since when do you have a Chosen?”

Ark sighed. He knew they wouldn’t let that slide.

Caius shifted to face him fully. “You better start from the beginning.”

He kept it brief. After he finished, Caius turned another cake over between his fingers, studying it like an artifact of particular interest. “Does your fake Chosen know she’s got this kind of talent?”

“She’s a Kitchen Witch who owns a bakery. I assume magic is a tool of the trade.”

Rhodes let out a low whistle. “If she can bake like this, you might want to keep her around.”

Ark shot him a flat look. Caius sighed. “So—now you’re entangled with a Kitchen Witch, a group of orphans, and Alderrath’s growing irritation.”

Ark stretched lazily, flicking off a crumb. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Rhodes grunted, finishing his third cake and already reaching for a fourth. “He’s stooping to a new low, kicking out a handful of orphans. Nothing surprising, though. It’s standard Agmon playbook. Find a vulnerable property on a magically significant site, acquire it, demolish it, build something profitable right over the convergence point. Harvest the Land Magic while the new structure turns a profit.”

Ark nodded. It made sense—business as usual. Alderrath would never care about collateral damage as long as someone else paid for it, and a prime convergence point under a vulnerable building was exactly the kind of opportunity he’d seize.

“What will you do next?” Caius asked.

“I’ll visit Starlight myself. Do a survey. Familiarize myself with the project.”

Ark exhaled, glancing toward the moonlit sky. A visit. He could survey the property, read the Land Magic, and give Cassia a clearer sense of what she was up against. All sensible enough.

He reached for the last cake before Rhodes could snatch it, then hesitated.

Somewhere between one bite and the next, a realization crept in: he was looking forward to seeing her again.

The thought caught him off guard. It settled somewhere unfamiliar, and it took him a moment to recognize it for what it was.

Anticipation.

5

ARK

He woke to the familiar pull of morning light at the edges of the blackout curtains—enough to know the night was over. Two days of near-total darkness had done their work. His power hummed beneath his skin, steady and restored.

For a Nocturne Demon, true restoration wasn’t found in sleep alone, but in the absorption of deep shadows—the profound, silent dark where his power could pool and knit itself back together. The sun was already up, but he’d had enough dark to feel like himself again.

He sat up and raked a hand through his hair. The familiar scents of parchment and embers grounded him. The transition to wakefulness was a deliberate process of reasserting order. Chaos frayed the edges of Nocturne power, made their connection to the void unstable. The precise placement of every object in his townhouse wasn’t just aesthetic. It was a grounding ritual, a network of calm, controlled points that kept his own potent power from turning inward.

His gaze swept the room—hearth swept clean, papers aligned, curtains drawn with precision. Books organized by height. Inkwells capped. Pens parallel. Even the fire was banked, not left to burn out. Everything was in its place.

Except for one thing.

His gaze flicked to the box from The Witching Flour he’d placed on a sideboard—a silent, persistent anomaly in his otherwise perfectly ordered world. Empty. Nothing inside but crumbs Rhodes couldn’t pick over. He had meant to toss it out. A minor oversight, nothing more.

He put his robe on and moved past it, but not before his eyes tracked back to it one last time.

The kitchen smelled like pine. The wards, attuned to his morning preferences, had already steeped the fresh pine needles in hot water. He poured himself a cup. The first sip was clean, brisk, laced with a subtle bite. Warmth seeped into him, the pine’s earthy energy settling into his limbs, sharpening his senses, steadying him.