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BESSA

The shock stretched into minutes. The candle had made me feel like I was in that chamber with the evil magician. I had shrunk against the chains, just as the boy Ambrose had done. I’d felt their cold metal bite on my wrists.

Then, I thought of his hands as they were. His beautiful, calloused, working hands. He wore a ring. Sometimes, he absently played with it, spinning it around his thumb with his index finger. Was it the magic ring?

He was wrong; I had many, many more questions.

I got up, my nightgown wrapped tightly around me, intending to march into the night and track Ambrose down, armed only with my burning curiosity, when Eska nudged the second candle over.

The second candle. The one that smelled like freshly baked bread and spiced cookies.

“Thank you, sweet girl,” I murmured, fumbling for another candle holder. I didn’t want any taint of the first memory-wick to touch this one.

It lit immediately as if eager to be replayed, this one’s light coruscated against the stone walls, throwing iridescent prisms of color around my chamber before dissolving the room again like mist. Even the glow was warmer, more golden. The acrid scent of burning herbs and metallic tang on my tongue softened to freshly turned soil, sun-warmed wood, the sweetness of honey. Cinnamon and spice threaded the air. It reminded me of my parents’ bakeshop; it reminded me of home. So how was Ambrose’s memory so sharply scented of my home?

This time, the memory unfolded from an even younger Ambrose’s viewpoint. The dark-haired, green-eyed boy could only have been eight or nine years old. He was bundled in a thick, hand-woven scarf, his hands and nose pressed against the frosted glass of a window as he stared into the shop. He left little rings of fog against the glass where his nose and mouth had been as he pulled open the door and slipped inside. A lantern glowed at the window, looking remarkably like the one I recalled from my childhood. A circular oven took up most of the room with loaves of bread all laid out according to each customer’s order. Then, a woman emerged from the back, pushing a tendril of hair behind her ear and leaving a smudge of flour on her cheek in a gesture more familiar to me than my own hands.

Mom.

Ambrose was from Honeywood Haven. He had meant it very literally when he said he felt at home. Because he was home.

“Hello, Donahue. The usual?”

The boy nodded while I tried to assimilate this knowledge. He’d changed his name when he’d left. And no one seemed to remember the little boy. Why would they? It had been decades, and he’d grown into a man.

My mother bustled about the bakeshop, gathering the same bread he’d ordered when he’d found me there a week ago, the day he’d shown me the small patch of wildflowers. She slipped him a cookie and a smile.

He exited the bakeshop, skipping down the iced cobblestones with little fear or tension in his young body, sliding across the iciest parts as all village children learned to do.

The pearly wax pooled in the candle dish before evaporating completely, its magic spent. For a moment, I sat huddled with Eska in my lap, my arms around her soft fur. I didn’t want to be alone, but the man I wanted to be with was an impossibility. I could no more sneak out of the castle to see him than I could announce to all of my Glacial Council that I wanted to do so.

It was also abundantly clear why he didn’t trust people in positions of power and why he was so guarded. But he had finally trusted me, even when I hadn’t given him many reasons to do so. I’d been angry and defiant in his apiary, mad he hadn’t given me all of his truths the moment I met him, as if he owed me. And still, he’d trusted me enough with these memories. I stood, my nightgown cascading down my legs.

“Come on, girl.”

Eska curled around my neck, and we crept down the corridor to Mika’s room. My sister was already asleep, only half waking as I slid my always-warm body next to hers and let her put her chilled toes on my leg.

“You okay, Bessa?” she murmured in a voice thick with sleep.

“I wanted to be near you,” I said, my exhaustion finally taking over. “It’s been a strange day.”

“That’s sweet.” Mika rolled over, her eyes half shut. “Good night.”

“Good night,” I said, sleep already taking over.

“By the way, the frog can talk,” she mumbled into her pillow.