Page 97 of Smoke, Mirrors, & Misdemeanours

“Just as I thought,” Caius murmured, rubbing his chin. “It’s only warded against purebloods. Rank doesn’t matter.”

Ark’s brow furrowed. “You and I couldn’t enter without an invitation because we’re purebloods?”

Caius nodded. “And Starlight has always opened its doors to those Meredith casts aside.”

Rhodes grunted. “So whatever’s there is protective and selective at the same time.”

Ark said nothing. But something tugged at the edge of his thoughts as he glanced toward the window, where the light had begun to change.

Fifty years since the last renovation. The age Cassia’s mother would have been.

Was it a coincidence, or something more? He exhaled slowly, pressing his palm against the wall. The house was quiet beneath his hand—peaceful, waiting. He couldn’t make sense of it.

“We’ll focus on securing this place first,” he decided .

Caius patted his pockets then muttered, “Drat.” He looked around the room, then at Ark. “I seem to have left my chalk behind. Does Miss Aura have any?”

Ark scanned the room. A narrow cabinet caught his eye—tucked beside the hearth, painted with fading ivy motifs, the kind of thing people stuffed with stationery and forgotten correspondence. He crossed to it and pulled the doors open⁠—

—and stilled.

Inside sat two framed photographs. A woman with Cassia’s cheekbones and firelight hair, smiling at something just out of frame. Beside her, a younger Cassia—maybe six—grinned with a missing tooth, arms wrapped around her mother’s waist. The other showed a man with laugh lines around his eyes, standing in a garden.

He realized at once: it wasn’t a cabinet. It was an altar.

Soft, magical candlelight flickered on either side—everlasting flames, steady and warm. In front of the frames sat a small, carefully shaped loaf of bread. Crusted, golden, speckled with seeds and nuts, its ridged pattern forming a leaf.

He wasn’t a bread connoisseur, but he’d seen enough harvest displays to recognize this was indeed a harvest loaf.

He turned. A glass cabinet behind him held a tarnished trophy, half-hidden behind a silk flower arrangement.

First Place—Little Mineola Winter Harvest Loaf Competition.

His chest went tight. It all seemed to make sense now. Joy and Love, and . . . Grief, woven into the bones of the house like threads in a tapestry.

“Did you find the chalk?” Caius called from the kitchen.

Ark blinked, cleared his throat. “Not here. Let me keep looking.”

He closed the cabinet doors slowly, careful not to make a sound, and stepped back.

By the time they finished warding both the house and the bakery, the morning had ripened into a proper breakfast hour. The Witching Flour was still closed to the public, but the air was already thick with the mouthwatering scents of food.

Cassia had laid out a breakfast that could’ve graced the finest restaurant in Angelene—baked eggs nestled in flaky pastry, their centres still soft and bright orange, studded with chunks of sausage and a scattering of herbs. Crisp sage leaves curled at the edges, dark and fragrant. A small bowl of fresh greens—peppery leaves and crisp ribbons of fennel, scattered with segments of blood orange, all tossed in a light, sharp dressing—sat alongside a pot of apple compote, the fruit soft and flecked with cinnamon.

Ark had been surprised at first to learn the bakery had no employees. Now, he understood. Cassia was a force of nature. He watched her—the briskness of her movements a familiar comfort. Her strong fingers kneaded bread dough, pressing and folding with a rhythm that spoke of years of repetition. Then she drizzled oil, rubbing it into a rolling pin until the wood gleamed. The simple, domestic act hooked itself in his chest and held, stirring something far from tranquil.

Gods, she was undoing him with nothing more than dough and oil and a rolling pin.

A finger tapped his chin—firm, unhurried. Caius’s voice was dry. “Close your mouth, darling. There’s a lady present.”

Ark blinked, startled, and brushed his knuckle across his lips as if to clear away evidence of his thoughts. “I beg your pardon.”

Across the table, Rhodes was watching him with far too much amusement for someone who still had apple compote at the corners of his lips.

“Ah,” he said, grinning, “he’s gone. Besotted. Caius, we’re losing him.”

Caius made a show of folding his napkin, hiding a smile. “Tragic, really. He had so much potential.”