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Over the sizzle of the garlic and the steady chop of the zucchini, Balder takes a moment to look at his daughter.
Cereza’s face is relaxed and her hand is steady on the knife as she slices through the squash she picked out for dinner. Each slice is precise and even, and she pushes them off the cutting board onto a separate plate with the flat of the blade to make space as she works. The bow of her lips, the cut of her jaw, her eyes, the grey of a summer storm, are all Rosa of course; but the hook of her nose is an exact match to Balder’s own. It is almost startling to recognize a part of himself in her.
When Rosa first let him hold her, she was just a shock of dark hair and a powerful set of lungs. He almost doesn’t believe the woman standing before him is real.
“Don’t let the garlic burn.”
He glances at the pan, exhales heavily through his nose, and turns the heat down.
The dinner is a surprise for Rosa, a sort of congratulations for securing a spot volunteering at the local community center. Balder doesn’t quite understand her desire for it, if he is honest. Human concerns seem so petty in comparison to the scope of their own lives, and he still remembers their faces lit up by the pyres of the Hunts – they deserve nothing of Rosa’s generosity. But that is part of why he fell for her in the first place, he supposes. She was awfully kind to him as well, even when he was little more than a prejudiced boy in gaudy robes.
Cereza finishes her prep with a flourish of the knife, spinning it around her fingers. She’s reckless, always, for things big and small. He opens his mouth to chastise, but she’s already set the blade aside to transfer the cut zucchini into his pan of oil and garlic, stirring with the wooden spoon he’d plucked from her own drawer.
He feels a bit useless. She’d invited him to help with this dinner, sending Jeanne off to keep Rosa busy, but has let him do hardly anything. The chicken is roasting in the oven, and she barely looks at him as the vegetables begin to cook and she adds her own blend of spices to the pan.
He had learned to cook in the Sanctuary, same as all the acolytes – but he has no idea who taught Cereza. Rosa spent her entire life imprisoned, and an offhand comment weeks ago informed him that Jeanne was liable to burn water if sent off to make tea on her own. Did the Umbra really teach the outcast these skills? Did she teach herself?
“It smells good,” he offers, standing upright at the counter. He is close enough to see her profile but far enough not to impede her as she works. “Where is the recipe from?”
“I don’t recall.” She glances at him, razor sharp. He clenches his jaw.
She keeps doing this – inviting him over under some pretense, and mostly ignoring him to go about her own plans, only speaking to him when it involves a thinly disguised barb. He doesn’t understand what she is getting at, or why.
Regardless, he accepts every invitation.
“Ah.”
“I can write it down for you, if you’d like.”
“If your mother likes it.”
“She’ll like it.”
“Since you made it, I imagine–”
“She will like it. I used to sneak her similar meals.” Cereza turns down the heat and covers the pan. Her voice is even, betraying nothing.
He tries not to think about those years, about what they were like for Rosa. His last image of her for centuries was her being hauled away in chains. Cereza reminds him of it often.
“I didn’t know that.”
“How could you?” It is rhetorical, and she even laughs, a fake little thing that cuts him to the bone. There are a million accusations in that statement alone.
She washes her hands and checks her phone, again. Only here does the mask crack; her eyebrows furrow and her fingers tap across the screen. He can just make out the contact picture.
“So, you and Jeanne–”
“You don’t need to do that.” Her response is immediate, and she doesn’t even bother to look at him. Her nails are painted salmon pink. She sends another message, swipes to check her email.
“Do what?”
“Pretend like you care.”
Balder exhales again. Cereza’s hair falls into her eyes, strands wriggling free from her braid. He always loved that style on Rosa, on the rare occasions he could convince her to let him put it up. It made her look younger, more free. On Cereza, it has the opposite effect.
“I do care.”
“Mhm.”
“Cereza. I do care.” He swallows thickly. “What happened between Jeanne and I was unfortunate, but–”
“Unfortunate.” She stretches out the syllables, savors the hard final consonant. “Not the word I would have picked, but perhaps my vocabulary could use some work.”
He remembers how much Jeanne screamed as the angels held her down. He remembers his own laughter, echoing in the hollow of his skull. He remembers the color blue overtaking his vision, and how his daughter returned to him wreathed in the same shade.
“That wasn’t me.”
“Of course not.” She smiles, unnerving, and closes her phone screen. “Stir the vegetables, would you? I need to set the table.”
She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, gliding into the next room with a set of plates and silverware balanced in her arms. He does as he is instructed. The steam hits his face as he lifts the cover on the pan. He lets it burn his skin a bit, stirring and humming an old prayer hymn to calm his nerves.
When she returns, she’s changed into a new outfit, a loose knit sweater that matches her nails and a pair of embroidered jeans. He glances at his own outfit, a wrinkled dress shirt and old tweed trousers. Both their feet are bare. Their toenails are painted the same pale lavender, Rosa’s favorite shade.
“Unfortunate was the wrong word.” She takes the spoon from him. When he doesn’t move she huffs, hand perched on her waist. “Cereza, I cannot take back the past, but I would like to forge a better present.”
“How touching. You ought to get that on a card.”
“Must you be so…”
She looks at him head on, the first time in the entire evening.
“Nevermind.”
“No, please. Enlighten me. Must I be so what?”
“I do not know what you want from me.”
She smiles, a funeral mask.
“What I wanted was for you to come for me and Mummy, without a mob intended to kill us. Since that opportunity has long passed, what I want now is for you to move out of my way.”
Rosa’s anger has always been hot enough to rival Infernal fire. Cereza’s is colder than the peak of Fimbulventr, where he had failed her a second time.
She hip-checks him gently, stir the vegetables, adds a pinch of salt. He stares at her, a stranger with a face he spent years seeing only in dreams.
“They would have killed us all.” His voice raises in pitch, incredulous. “Do you understand? I would not have survived long enough to even glimpse your faces. The nights I spent in agony, wondering what had happened to you both…”
“You still could have tried.” She takes the vegetables off the heat. “Not that it matters now. We all got our happy ending. Pass me the serving platter, please.”
He does so with numb fingers, thinking of her injured outside the true Gates of Hell, guns clutched tight even as she stared down her own death. When Rosa had heard why she’d gone to Inferno, the one thing a witch ought never to do, she had smiled. Smiled! Their daughter, throwing her life away, and for what?
Cereza had tried to get Jeanne back, knowing the risk. Balder knew the risk, and opted not to try at all.
She transfers the cooked zucchini to the serving platter, arranging carefully and wiping the dribble of oil off the edge of the porcelain. The chicken comes out of the oven next, wrist supporting the entire weight and only a small pot holder to protect the delicate skin of her hand. She carves it with a new knife, larger than the last, and sharper too. The skin has a beautiful crust to it, and the flesh inside is moist. His mouth waters. His guts twists.
Even now she is trying with him, despite the chasm between them, years of distance and pain and regret enough to drown the gods. For Rosa’s sake, perhaps, but still.
She is too good to truly be his daughter, he thinks, even though she has his nose – and his stubborn pride.
“Let me try now.” He touches her wrist. She stills. “Please.”
Balder had played the fool first to a cruel order, and then to a petty god. The humiliation of it finally bleeds out in front of his daughter. It is the lowest he has ever felt.
Cereza hands him the knife.
He carves, slowly.
“So you and Jeanne are together?” The vowels are jumbled in his mouth, like he has swallowed cotton.
She tilts her head, jaw tight. Still–
“Jeanne and I are an item, if you liked to call us that. We haven’t exactly labeled it.”
“Is she good to you?”
Cereza shrugs, picking up her phone again. Her glasses glint with the reflection of the screen.
“She tries her best.” A pause. “She tries, even when I make it difficult. I daresay she deserves better, but she’d have some choice words for me if I voiced that aloud.”
“She loves you.”
“Oh, yes.” Cereza laughs a little, but there is an edge to it, something dark. “It’s terrible. It would be much easier if she didn’t.”
“You could tell her to leave you be.”
He had asked Rosa once to do the same. She had scarcely turned away before he was begging her to return and groveling for forgiveness. He places each slice of chicken onto the serving platter, gently laid atop the vegetables. The kitchen smells heavenly. His stomach grumbles.
“Why would I do that?”
“Did you not just say it would be easier?”
“I didn’t say I wanted it to be easier.”
She pushes up her frames, glances at his handiwork. Her lips purse. His carving skills aren’t that atrocious, but she is oddly meticulous in the kitchen in a way she isn’t elsewhere. She doesn’t say anything. He makes sure his next few slices are even and as perfect as he can get them.
“Well, what do you want then?”
Another shrug, an oddly graceful gesture from her. Childish, too. He forgets, sometimes that she is much younger than she appears. Five hundred years spent asleep in a coffin while the world moved on without her.
“Marriage, old age, lots of little witch children?” She scoffs, rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. Did you know what you wanted, early on with Mummy?”
“I did in fact want all of those things.” The knife trembles in his grip. “When you were born…it felt like all my dreams came true.”
His daughter, all grown up and yet not at all. He tries to picture her as the little girl he stole out of time, her chubby fingers clutched onto his robes, teeth crooked and looking at him like he was the sun itself. The image is fuzzy in his head, warped.
They share a long look. She looks away first, shaking her head.
“Don’t expect wedding bells anytime soon.”
It’s not too late. He tries to believe that. Belief used to be his guiding force; perhaps it can be again. He takes a deep breath, memorizes the sharp lines of her face and the elegance of her hands. His daughter. His pride and joy. It’s not too late.
“Try telling your mother that.”
Cereza barks a laugh. Balder finds himself joining in.
“I have! And yet, she keeps dragging me out under false pretenses trying to get me to buy an engagement ring.”
“I thought the Umbra weave bondmate bracelets?”
“We do!” She takes the knife from him again. “She thinks I ought to do both. Something about honoring tradition and entering a new age. I told her it would be a waste; Jeanne loses half of her accessories. It’s why she buys everything on sale.” Beneath the derision, Balder thinks he might detect a well of fondness.
“Lumen typically exchange sundial chains.” He taps his own; the metal links are engraved with tiny roses, done by his own hand in the long months of Rosa’s pregnancy. “Your mother had no need of such, and it was hard for her to get away with displaying any sort of trinket without arousing suspicion. In the end we only exchanged vows.”
Cereza finishes carving and plating the meal. She puts the used pans in the sink to soak, letting the bubbles rise under the hot water until they kiss the lip of the dirty dishes. She keeps her back turned to him, fingertips ghosting over the suds.
“A watch chain would be harder for Jeanne to misplace.” Cereza’s voice is subdued, thoughtful. It’s not too late. He reaches across the chasm with shaking hands.
“I could show you how to forge one.”
A pause. Balder’s heart clenches. He forces the fist of it to unfurl.
“Perhaps.” She turns and catches his eye, face placid but eyes bright. “That is, if she isn’t late bringing Mummy back for dinner.”
On cue, the front door swings open to reveal a smirking Jeanne and smiling Rosa, faces red from the cold and cloaks pulled up near their ears.
“Just tell me when you’re ready to learn.”
“Learn what?” Rosa asks, kicking off her heels. She wastes no time in moving into the warmth of the kitchen. She drops a kiss to Cereza’s brow, and then one to Balder’s cheek.
“Nothing, Mummy.”
“So it is definitely something. Balder, dear, what are we learning?”
“Ah, well,” he hesitates, caught between Cereza’s icy glare and Rosa’s eager expression. “I offered to teach Cereza a recipe, from the old days.”
Not quite a lie, but Rosa’s eyebrow still raises, mouth opening to call him on it. Jeanne is his unlikely savior.
“Good luck. Cereza is a terrible student.”
“Or you’re just a terrible teacher.”
“My students say otherwise.”
“Their judgement is clouded by your beauty, obviously.”
“You think I’m beautiful, then?”
Jeanne props her chin on her hand, smiling only for Cereza. She scoffs, even as she reaches out to smooth Jeanne’s windswept hair.
“Go wash up. You look ridiculous.”
“You aren’t denying it.”
“I’ll deny you dinner if you don’t hurry up. It’s already getting cold.”
Jeanne rolls her eyes and complies. Cereza carries the platter of food to the dining room, mouth pressed into a thin line to hide a smile. Rosa’s arm finds his waist, head against his shoulder.
“Alright?” She murmurs, idle hand coming to stroke over his sundial.
He kisses the crown of her head and breathes.
“Getting there.”