Page 23 of Sustaining
And exhausting.
I fall sleep with sweet images of two people rolling around a field of wild flowers. Unrealistic or not, it’s perfect.
Nine
Made of Magic
“Your fatherreally liked the one who left.”
After this morning, I rather liked the one who left too, Mom.
My mother’s small hands never stop kneading the rye bread. It’s one of her favorites, and therefore it’s one of the villager’s favorites because of how much care she puts into making it.
“My dad has a favorite out of my mates?” My eyes narrow, and I trail my index finger through the coat of flour lining the wooden countertop. Her hands round the dough into a perfect smooth mound of a loaf, and when she’s satisfied with the shape and lathered it up just right, she then scores the top with a signature swooping heart that makes me smirk.
She’s adorable when she’s not carefully putting on a show for anyone who might be watching too closely to the suspicious mage hiding in plain sight.
“Oh, he likes them just fine.”
Does he? Does he, Mom?
I arch a brow at her, and she dutifully ignores my look as she works around her shop.
“But the one who left, I can tell he respects that one.”
“Why?”
“Because he protects you.”
“Sinister protects me.” All of them protect me. What makes Kain so damn special in my father’s mind?
“Yes,” she says flatly while sliding the loaf of bread into the stone oven, refilling the pan of water lingering at the bottom. Everything she does is done with ease here. She might hold all the tension in the world in front of everyone else, but in this shop, where she does what she does best, she’s free.
“But?” I tilt my head at her, and the longer I shift the flour back and forth, the more I start to feel comfortable here, too. Before I know it, I’m stirring and mixing and kneading bread myself.
Maybe this bakery is enchanted and I just never knew it.
That’s the only reason I can come up with for why I feel so at ease here.
Or maybe it’s just because of her.
“But Sinister is different, that’s all.” She shrugs her small shoulders, a smudge of white flour accenting her shirt around the collar at eight a.m. already.
“So am I.” So are you. I bite that thought back.
“Shhh.” She doesn’t look at me as she works, moving fluidly through the tasks of her morning.
“He doesn’t like Sinister because he’s a demon?”
“He doesn’t like Sinister because he brings you unwanted attention, Arlow.”
I blink at her, my palms sinking deep into the pale, dense dough. This is my life. A nonstop circle of fearing fucking attention.
“He’s a good man.”
“I’m sure he is—”
“What happened to the third mage you grew up with?” My abrupt question has her choking on what I can only assume is air itself. The tension in her shoulders is barely seen before she busies herself with throwing sugar into a shining teal mixing bowl. The wordsThe Sweet Lifeare scrawled across the front of the bowl in white script, and the simplicity of it all makes her look like the most normal, unremarkable woman you’d ever meet.
