The silence following Kaelen's declaration didn't last long. Outside, the bruised purple sky curdled into a deep, oily black. The wind began to howl, but it didn't sound like air—it sounded like a thousand hungry mouths whispering through the floorboards.
"They're here," Kaelen said, his charming smile vanishing. He snapped his thorned gorget back into place with a metallic hiss. The handsome Prince was gone, replaced once more by the formidable Cactus Knight.
"Who is 'they'?" Elara asked, her knuckles white as she gripped her copper whisk.
"Bitter-Scouts," Kaelen rasped. "The eyes and teeth of the rot. They followed my scent... or perhaps yours."
A window at the back of the bakery shattered. Instead of glass shards, a thick, tar-like smoke poured into the room. It coalesced into spindly, skeletal figures with elongated limbs and hollow pits where their eyes should have been. They didn't walk; they skittered across the ceiling like spiders.
One Scout dropped onto the cooling rack, and the fresh lemon tarts instantly blackened and dissolved into soot.
"My work!" Elara cried, a surge of protective fury overriding her fear. "Do you have any idea how long those took to zest?"
"Princess, move!" Kaelen lunged.
He didn't use a sword. Instead, he swung his massive, vine-wrapped arm. As he struck a Scout, the needles on his gauntlet lengthened and glowed with a faint green light. The creature shrieked—a sound like metal scraping on stone—and burst into a cloud of dry ash.
But three more took its place, circling them in the narrow shop.
"I can't kill them all, Elara!" Kaelen called out over the screeching. "The Bitter-Base feeds on cold and fear. You have to ignite the hearth!"
"I told you, I can't!" Elara retreated toward the ovens. "The flame hasn't answered me in years. I'm just a baker!"
A Scout lunged at her, its shadowy claws inches from her face. Kaelen threw himself between them, taking the blow across his armored back. He groaned as the shadowy claws left smoking rifts in his stone-like plating.
"You are a Witch," Kaelen growled, his voice vibrating with pain. "And a baker is nothing but a master of the flame. Focus on the heat, Elara. Not the fear—the warmth."
Elara looked at his crumbling armor, then at the dying embers in her oven. She remembered the feeling of the Sun-Sugar—the way it felt when a recipe finally clicked. She closed her eyes and reached, not for a crown or a throne, but for the memory of the first loaf of bread she ever perfected.
She felt a spark. It wasn't in her mind; it was in her chest.
"Get back!" she screamed.
She swung her copper whisk in a wide arc. A wave of golden, honey-scented fire erupted from the tip, roaring through the bakery. It wasn't a destructive blast; it felt like the heat of a midsummer afternoon.
The Bitter-Scouts didn't just die—they evaporated. The shadows retreated from the walls, and the gray rot on the floorboards receded, leaving the wood polished and warm.
Silence returned, save for the heavy breathing of the two people standing in the center of the shop.
Kaelen straightened up, his needles slowly retracting to their normal length. A single, bruised petal fell from the flower on his shoulder. He turned to look at her, and even through the thorned helmet, Elara could feel the intensity of his gaze.
"Just a baker?" he whispered, the desert-wind voice softer than before.
Elara looked at her whisk, which was still glowing with a soft, buttery light. "I... I think I burned the muffins."
Kaelen let out a short, dry laugh—the first real sound of amusement she had heard from him. "Princess, if that is how you burn things, I suggest we start the journey before you set the entire valley on fire."