Page 54 of The Baker’s Shadow

Kaia’s voice is tight. Defensive. I can picture her sitting there, hands clenched in her lap, chin up even though she’s terrified.

“It is when it’s enchanted. When it’s laced with magic designed to manipulate. To control. That’s not baking, Ms. Brennan. That’s assault.”

The silence that follows stretches. Someone shifts in their chair.

“Is this true?” Marcus asks. “Are you using magic in your baking?”

“I don’t know.” Kaia’s voice cracks. “I didn’t mean to. I’m just trying to survive, to keep the bakery open, to⁠—”

“To feed them corruption. She’s harboring a Dark One. A shadow-spawn from the Hollow. Of course her magic is tainted. Of course it’s dangerous.”

“That’s not fair. He’s not⁠—”

“Not what? Not a daemon? Not a creature of darkness?” Preston’s laugh is sharp, bitter. “You’re pregnant with an abomination. You’re a danger to this town, to everyone in it. The kindest thing we can do is shut down the bakery before someone gets hurt.”

The keg beside me dents. Metal groans under my grip. I force my hands open before I tear through it completely.

“I move for immediate closure. Health and safety violation. Contamination of the food supply. Use of unauthorized supernatural abilities in a public business.”

“Second.” The human lawyer’s voice is thin, scared.

“Any objections?” Marcus asks.

The tremor runs through the Hollow like a shudder through bone. Subtle. Most wouldn’t feel it. But I do, deep in the part of me that’s bound to those woods, and it’s wrong. Like the first crack in a frozen lake.

Something is starting.

The door splinters under my boot. Oak and iron bands, two inches thick, and it comes apart like kindling.

Every head whips toward me. The room goes silent. That particular silence when prey realizes there’s a predator in the room.

The council sits at a round table. Marcus, gray-skinned and broad-shouldered, looks like he could lift the building off its foundation. Moira, dark-haired and sharp-eyed, watches me with the stillness of deep water. Rowan, all angles and amber eyes, smells like pine sap and old growth. The human lawyer grips the table edge like it’s the only thing keeping him upright, pale and sweating.

And Preston. Sitting directly across from Kaia, his smile freezing as he sees me.

“She’s not the danger. I am.”

Marcus stands. Stone scraping against wood. “State your nature.”

“Shadow-spawn. Guardian of the Hollow.”

Gasps ripple around the table. Moira’s eyes go wide. Rowan jerks back like I’ve struck him. Even Marcus looks shaken.

“Impossible. The guardians died centuries ago.”

Preston’s voice is flat, but there’s something underneath it now. Fear, maybe. Or recognition.

“Not all of us.”

Another tremor runs through the Hollow. Stronger this time. Wrong enough that Moira’s head snaps toward the window and Rowan’s hands press flat against the table.

“What was that?” the human lawyer whispers.

No one answers.

“She carries my child. By the Old Laws of the Hollow, she is under my protection.”

The words come out harder than I mean them to, but they need to be said. Need to be heard.