Page 44 of Poison Nights & Twilight Alchemy

“At least I have a friend now.” She grinned.

He tugged a lock of her hair. “A friend that won’t let you down.”

Dulce’s expression didn’t waver, even as she focused her attention onto the task at hand. “Look, see that shaft there? It’s one of many that runs from the deepest cellar to the castle’s highest tower, where the wind outside pulls air upward to create what’s known as pressure differential ventilation. Genius, don’t you think?”

“Yes, genius indeed.” Reed couldn’t stop smiling as he watched her.

Dulce collected food, stacking jars of honeyed fruit and sacks of wheat into his arms, and the two of them hauled provisions up the narrow stairways and into the kitchen, following the chalk-marks on the wall, left most likely by the previous cooks so they would never get lost.

Reed busied himself with starting the fires and clearing off the counters, using water from the kitchen’s very own well to scrub them, while Dulce readied the ingredients, dusting the ceramic bowls and copper pansshe would need.

The counters cleaned and the fires blazing, Reed drank his first proper glass of water in days, ate a honeyed plum, and fell back to studying Dulce. She hummed softly to herself, frowning in concentration as she kneaded dough. He caught her staring at him when she crossed the kitchen, and her cheeks pinkened once more while she returned to adding cinnamon, nuts, and fruit to the mix before fashioning it into a twisted braid, glazed in honey, then placing it into the oven.

Next, she melted sugar in a pan, letting the bubbling liquid cool as she retrieved slabs of meat and fish from a bowl of salt, sniffing tentatively at it.

“Dare we risk it?” she asked, peering mischievously at Reed from behind the haddock she held up.

“If you’d seen what happened after they served bad quail at Dankworth’s,” Reed told her around a pickled egg, “you wouldn’t ask that.”

Dulce dropped the fish back into the salt, her pout so adorable it took every ounce of Reed’s self-control not to bring her face to his and kiss her.

Soon, the aroma of baking bread filled the kitchen, and by the time they had constructed the sugar into candy around fruit and nuts that would travel easily, Dulce declared the bread ready to eat.

Reed had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. He’d never had a meal so satisfying, though it was admittedly a strange mix.Perhaps half starving is the answer to appreciating food, he thought with a laugh.

With his stomach blessedly full, sleep pulled at him, the exhaustion of travel and the unwanted excitement of almost being killed by possessed animals taking its toll atlast.

Dulce encased yet more food in sugar while Reed made two sheets of hardtack from flour, water, and salt, rolling out the tough dough, poking holes in it to ensure it baked evenly. Finally, he cut the crackers into squares once they had baked—they would be dry enough to last through next winter.

She placed her hands on her hips and nodded in approval at their loot. “Come morning, I think we should have enough sustenance to travel for days.”

Reed hoped she’d thought of some magical solution to their witch-finding predicament when he asked, “How will we know where to go next?”

“Oh, I’m confident the raven can help us,” Dulce answered. “It would be impossible for such a creature not to havesomeconnection to the witch herself, her magic is melded to its entire being, after all.”

“You don’t plan to…” Reed arched a brow, running a thumb across his throat. He wouldn’t fault her if that were the case, however.

“Of course not!” Dulce exclaimed with indignation. “The spell should be quite harmless. A little marjoram, some holly, and a touch of rosemary never hurt anyone.”

Reed yawned. “No time like the present, yes?”

They found that the raven had returned to the witch’s cabinet in the cellar, and the bird hardly seemed to notice when Dulce walked right up to it and threw a cloud of fine powder over its form. The raven simply blinked at her and slept, allowing itself to be lifted onto the velvet-covered table.

“Now comes the tricky part,” she whispered, shooing Reed onto the sofa and instructing him to remain silentwith a finger over her lips. She ground something in a mortar and pestle, murmuring words he couldn’t understand all the while. Placing the ground concoction under her tongue, she rested her fingers on the raven’s feathered back and closed her eyes.

Candlelight flickered across her features, and Reed held his breath as he watched, flinching when the bird’s foot twitched.

“Beyond Nightmore Forest, La Bisou Morte resides at the northeasterly edge of the Crowmare Sea, where a fortress lingers and the sky is painted in blood.” Dulce opened her eyes, triumphant.

“Blood soundspromising,” Reed drawled. “I’ll give you my Admit One ticket right now to go,” he added with exaggerated cheer.

Dulce, whose eyes were clouded with worry, broke into laughter that spilled through the room, waking the raven as she shook her head at him.

She removed the folded map from inside her spell book and spread it across the table, then trailed a finger over it. “We need to cross the Rust Fields to reach Nightmore Forest.”

“Before we begin that marvelous journey, and before we sleep, I have a surprise for you.”

Dulce studied him with interest. “What is it?”

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