Page 11 of The Baker’s Shadow

The realization drops me to my knees. My strength, my power, my entire goddamn self. It’s sitting in her chest. Keeping her warm. Keeping her fed. I gave her my fire and now I’m just smoke and hunger.

Preston turns. For a split second, his gaze sweeps the tree line. His eyes, pale green, too bright, too sharp, pass right over where I’m crouched in the shadows.

He can’t see me. But he knows something’s watching.

His smile is perfect. Cold.

Then he turns back to the excavators, gesturing for them to dig deeper.

I fade back into the cypress. My hands are shaking. Actually shaking, something I haven’t felt in centuries. The tether in my chest pulls taut, dragging my attention back toward town. Back toward her.

I need to go back. Not because I want to. Not because I’m tangled up in her grief or her warmth or the way she’d let me take everything without flinching.

I need her because she has my strength.

And without it, I’m nothing.

The swamp closes around me as I move. The wisps are quiet now. Even the mud-men have sunk back into the silt, sensing the shift.

The shadow-born has a weakness.

And everyone in the Hollow knows it.

CHAPTER 5

Kaia

The button pops off my jeans and skitters across the bathroom tile.

I stare at the small white disc spinning in lazy circles before it rattles to a stop against the baseboard. These jeans fit perfectly two weeks ago.

Loose, comfortable, the kind of worn-in denim that moved with me through pre-dawn baking and the endless rhythm of knead and fold and shape.

Now the waistband cuts into my stomach like a tourniquet.

My hands shake as I press them against my stomach. Not soft anymore. Firm. Rounded. The kind of curve that takes months to develop, not fourteen days.

The faucet drips. Each wet plop hits the porcelain and something inside my skull shifts.

The sound doesn’t fade. It multiplies. Splits into rhythm and counter-rhythm, near and far, fast and slow. My knees buckle. I catch myself on the sink edge, but that only makes it worse because now I can feel the vibrations traveling up through my arms. Pulse-pulse-pulse, everywhere, a percussion section warming up inside my head.

Mrs. Chen’s heart, three houses down. I don’t know how I know it’s hers, but I know. The slight skip-flutter of a valve that doesn’t close quite right, the brief hesitation before each beat.

And there’s Mr. Rodriguez, two streets over, his rhythm steady and slow, the deep bass drum of someone walking uphill with a leash in hand. The teenager on the corner is a snare roll, rapid-fire and frantic, probably lost in whatever’s screaming through his earbuds.

I cup my hands over my ears. It doesn’t help.

The sound is everywhere. Inside me. Around me. A city of pulses beating in different rhythms, and I can hear every single one.

I turn the shower on full blast. Let the water drum against the tub, white noise to drown out the symphony of blood and muscle. I don’t get in. Just sit on the closed toilet lid and breathe through my mouth because even the air tastes different now. Thicker, sweeter, like I’m inhaling honey instead of oxygen.

My phone buzzes on the sink. Another order. The bakery hasn’t stopped since that morning two weeks ago when I couldn’t stop making bread. When my hands moved on their own and the dough rose faster than physics should allow and people lined up down the block for something I don’t remember baking.

Seventy-two croissants yesterday. Sixty loaves of sourdough the day before. I’m not sleeping anymore. Just closing my eyes for an hour, maybe two, before my body drags me back downstairs to the ovens.

And I’m not tired.

That’s the part that terrifies me most. I should be dead on my feet. Should be hallucinating from exhaustion, making mistakes, burning batches. Instead, I’m stronger. Faster. My hands don’t cramp. My back doesn’t ache. I can lift the fifty-pound bags of flour like they’re filled with feathers.