Chapter 10 — The First Morning
767 Words
The first morning he came to the kitchen before I did.
I had been in the castle for two weeks. I woke earlier than usual — the predawn light through my window the particular shade of almost-blue that I had come to associate with the castle's version of hope — and padded down to the kitchen expecting quiet and flour and my own company.
Instead: Damien, in shirtsleeves, with flour on his hands and a look of intense concentration, standing in front of my most temperamental mixing bowl.
I stopped in the doorway.
He looked up.
"Otto left a recipe," he said, by way of explanation. "Your recipe. From the first night." He glanced at his hands. "I may have underestimated the process."
I looked at the bowl. At the evidence of at least two previous attempts on the counter behind him.
"You've been here a while," I said.
"Since three."
"It's five-thirty."
"I'm aware."
I came the rest of the way into the kitchen, washed my hands, and came to stand beside him at the counter. He moved to give me space but not much — less than he used to. That was new. That was recent.
I looked at the dough.
"You overworked it," I said.
"I followed the recipe."
"Recipes are guidelines. You have to feel it." I reached past him and pressed two fingers gently into the dough, showing him the give. "See? Too much resistance. It's tense." I glanced at him sideways. "Like someone else I know."
"I am not tense."
"You've been kneading for two and a half hours."
"That is — that is a separate issue."
I laughed. Actually laughed — the real kind, not the polite kind — and he blinked at the sound of it the way he sometimes did, like it was a thing he was still getting used to. Like it was a thing he wanted to get used to.
"Start over," I said. "I'll show you."
We made the chocolate fondant from scratch, side by side in the early-morning kitchen. I talked him through each step — the temperature of the chocolate, the way the batter should move, the moment when something stops being ingredients and becomes something else entirely.
He was a precise student. He asked good questions. And gradually, incrementally, he relaxed — the careful posture softening, the measured distance closing, until at some point I registered that he was standing close enough that our shoulders were nearly touching and neither of us had moved away.
When the fondants came out of the oven, perfect this time, we ate them at the counter.
"Better," he said.
"Much," I agreed.
"I made these."
"You helped make these."
"I was here for the entirety of the process."
"You overworked the first three attempts."
"Which I then corrected." He looked at the fondant with the satisfaction of someone who had genuinely earned something. "These are good."
"They are," I agreed. "You're a quick learner when you let yourself be."
He looked at me then. Really looked — the way he had started doing recently, the held-back version of himself increasingly absent, something warmer and more present in its place.
"Elara," he said.
"Yes?"
"I would like —" He stopped. The old careful habit surfacing. Then, deliberately, visibly choosing differently: "I would like to show you something. Today. If you're willing."
"The east wing," I said.
A pause. "Yes."
I held his gaze.
"I've been waiting," I said quietly. "Whenever you're ready."
"I'm ready," he said. And then, slower, like someone testing the weight of something they'd set down a long time ago and weren't sure they'd be able to lift again: "I think I've been ready since the corridor."
The kitchen smelled of chocolate and early morning. Outside, the castle's sky was moving through its slow strange version of dawn.
I took his hand.
He looked down at our joined hands — the way I had, two weeks ago, in a candlelit room when I'd thought I was going to die and instead found something I hadn't known I was looking for.
Then he looked up, and he was smiling. Not the almost-smile, not the corner-of-the-mouth movement. A real one. A full one. The kind that changed his whole face and made him look not like a king and not like a grieving man but like someone who had, finally, been allowed to just be.
"Come on then," he said. "I'll show you what's behind the door."
And hand in hand, in the quiet of the first morning, we walked toward the east wing together.
- Writer
