The Witch Who Baked the Monster King’s Heart

I have never been a very good witch.

At least, that is what I always tell myself whenever another witch makes the sky crack open with lightning or pulls a dead man out of his grave. Some witches can turn cruel men into toads, whisper to animals, or make a candle burn underwater. Me? Give me flour, butter, and an oven, and my magic suddenly decides to be useful.

It finds its way into everything I bake. A little comfort in the sweet rolls. A little joy in the honey cakes. Once, after the most hectic week of my life, I made a tray of strawberry tarts that had half the street sobbing before they'd finished the first bite.

I never did figure out what I'd put into those.

That was the trouble with my magic. It had never been particularly good at following rules. It responded to whatever I was feeling, whether I wanted it to or not, so I had learned to keep my emotions carefully contained whenever I worked.

I pressed my hands into the dough on the counter and focused on the soft warmth beneath my palms.

Stay calm, Rosalie. Keep steady. Don't let anything spill over.

“Behave today,” I murmured to the dough. “I really don’t need any surprises.”

The faint scent of cinnamon curled through the bakery as I worked.

I smiled.

For once, everything seemed perfectly ordinary, until the back door banged open.

“Rosie! It is freezing out there!” Lena stomped through the back door, her apron already crooked, her cheeks pink from the cold. It was barely four in the morning, but apparently that wasn't early enough to keep Lena away. We'd become friends a few years ago, and somewhere along the way, she'd stopped treating my bakery like a place she needed permission to enter. She made a beeline for the milk jug, poured herself a cup of cider, then wandered over to the counter and peered into the mixing bowl.

“What are you making?”

“Sweet rolls.”

Lena reached for the dough, and I slapped her hand away. “Hey, you little bakery vulture. Wait until they’re done.”

“But tasting the dough is the best part,” she complained, reaching for it again.

I moved the bowl farther from her. “You said that last time, and then you spent the whole night complaining about your stomach.”

Lena gave me a sheepish look. “That was once.”

“Twice.”

“Fine, twice.” She took another sip of cider, but her eyes were still fixed on the bowl. “Still smells good, though.”

Something small shuffled out from beneath the pantry shelf.

Moss was a small, round mushroom, barely reaching my knee, with two little black eyes and no mouth that I had ever seen. He had wandered into the bakery as a baby the same week my grandmother died and simply never left. He couldn't talk, but he had plenty of ways of making himself understood. His cap stretched a little taller when he was happy, sometimes flushing with bright, cheerful colors, and went completely pale whenever he got a fright. He’d decided back then that the bakery was home and I was family, and I’d done pretty much the same with him.

Right now he was holding an entire stick of butter against his cap like it belonged to him.

“Moss, that’s for the brioche.”

He took one guilty step sideways and hid, badly, behind the broom.

I shook my head and reached for the recipe book.

The leather cover was cracked, one corner still scorched from the year I nearly burned the shop down, crying because nothing I baked was turning out right. My grandmother’s handwriting filled every page, quick and slanted, as if she had always been in a hurry to get her thoughts down before they slipped away.

I found the note she’d written in the margin beside the sweet rolls.

The dough remembers the hand that shapes it.

I hadn’t understood what she meant back then. I thought it was just another one of her sayings. Now, I knew better.

She had raised me after my parents died on the mountain road when I was six. I remembered very little about them now, only small pieces that had somehow survived all these years. My mother humming while she worked in the kitchen. My father lifting me onto his shoulders when I was too small to reach the counter. Their laughter filling our home.

Most of it had faded, but I still remembered how safe I had felt with them.

Nan Bee.

The name came back to me so suddenly that I almost smiled.

I hadn’t thought of it in years. I used to call her that when I was little, before I was old enough to understand that everyone else simply called her Grandmother. For a moment, I could almost hear my own childish voice saying it again.

She taught me to bake long before she ever let me near a real spell. She used to say that anyone could learn a spell, but not everyone could learn to put something of themselves into what they made.

Looking back, I think that was what she left me—a piece of herself tucked into every recipe, every scarred counter, every room I had grown up in.

"Hey." Lena bumped my shoulder. "You okay?"

"Just thinking about her."

“She’d be proud of you.” Lena glanced around the shop, taking in the ovens, the crowded shelves, and the trays waiting on the counter. “Just look at this place, Rosalie. Look at what you’ve done with it. You took everything she taught you and made it your own.” She smiled. “Now come on. Open the shutters before we have a line down the street.”

Out in Briarwick, at the edge of the kingdom of Aldermere, morning always came slowly. Woodsmoke curled from chimneys along the lane, from human hearths and fae ones alike. A pack of goblin children darted past an elderly fae woman sweeping her step, her wings tucked close around her. Nobody paid much attention to any of it. What you were mattered less than whether you paid your tab and said good morning.

I liked it that way. My grandmother used to say the edges of a kingdom always kept softer hearts than its center. In the royal courts, people cared about status, power, and who stood above whom. Our little corner of the kingdom was different. People came for warm bread, traded gossip over the counter, and left a little happier than they arrived.

I unlatched the shutters just as Grik came shuffling up the lane, his coat hanging too big on him as usual. His nose was already lifted toward the smell of the ovens.

“Morning, Rosalie.” He smiled at me. “You’re looking lovely today. Truly.”

“You say that every morning, Grik.”

“Because it’s true every morning.” He stepped inside, his eyes already drifting toward the tray Lena was setting out. “I’d hate for you to think I only come here for the food.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”

He laughed. “You wound me.”

By the time the first batch of rolls came out, the shop had begun to fill, slowly at first, then all at once. The elven woman from the corner house murmured her thanks as she tucked moonberry tarts into her basket. A vampire leaned against the doorframe, his collar turned up against the morning light, waiting his turn.

“Two chocolate buns,” he said when he reached the counter. “If there’s any left.”

“For you, always.” I wrapped them without needing to ask.

His mouth curved into a satisfied smile. “I knew there was a reason I liked this place.”

He left more coins than he owed and didn’t wait for his change, already pulling his collar higher as he stepped back outside.

For a while, it was just the shop being the shop. Flour dusted my hands. Grik and Lena bickered over the price of a loaf, the same argument they’d been having for years. Moss had settled near the window, his little cap tilted toward the morning light.

The noise outside gradually faded, leaving only the low crackle of the ovens and the clink of dishes behind the counter.

Grik stopped talking.

I looked up.

Three black carriages were coming slowly down our narrow street, their silver crests catching the morning light.

I knew that crest. I’d seen it stamped into coins.

I’d never seen it rolling toward my own front step.

"Rosie."

Lena's voice had gone thin.

“Why is the royal carriage outside our shop?”

The door opened, and a sharp chill swept into the shop. I shivered, rubbing my arms as the cold reached me.

The man who walked in wore a dark coat trimmed in silver. He was unnaturally tall, with gray-pale skin, black hair, and strange, washed-out blue eyes.

I knew what he was almost immediately. A dullahan. I’d read about their kind in my grandmother’s books—creatures born without a human head, able to carry their own skull beneath one arm while walking among the living.

This one still had his head, though, so I assumed the stories had been exaggerated.

His gaze passed over the shop, the flour sacks, the ovens, my grandmother’s battered old book, and finally settled on me.

“Rosalie Bellrose,” he called.

I came around the counter, the baking paddle still in my hand out of habit. “That’s me. Can I help you?”

“Your bakery is to be closed.”

For a moment, I simply stared at him.

“Closed?” I glanced toward the ovens, where the loaves were already baking. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“By order of the crown.”

My eyes dropped to the parchment he had placed on the counter. The seal was real. That didn’t make any sense.

“What has the crown got to do with my bakery?”

“That is not for me to explain.”

I swallowed and looked back at him, forcing myself to keep my voice steady. “I understand you have an order, but you can’t simply walk in and expect me to hand over the shop without telling me why.”

His expression didn’t change. “Clear your belongings.”

I held his gaze. “I’m not leaving.”

He looked at me then, properly this time. “I would advise you not to make this difficult.”

“I’m not trying to make anything difficult.” My fingers tightened around the baking paddle. “I’m asking you to tell me what I’ve done.”

He said nothing.

It was only then that I noticed the guards waiting in the doorway. There were more of them than I had first realized.

My stomach dropped.

The man turned toward them.

“Arrest her.”