Just Tea
The bell above the door of my little bakery, *The Gilded Crust*, chimed with a sound far too cheerful for my morphing mood. I was piping buttercream roses onto a batch of vanilla cupcakes in a chocolate cherry sundae float, my focus is absolute, my hand unsteady. "Come on. Come on... just one last step." A single errant swirl would be unacceptable. I had leveled kingdoms with less concentration than I now, devoted to simple confectionery. "If you can call your current project normal." Said a demon maid leaving quickly from my heated glare.
“Conquering the realm required less patience than sourdough,” I mused internally, smoothing a petal with the tip of my knife. Here, in this sun-drenched kitchen smelling of sugar and yeast, my past life of echoing throne room shuffles and grand, doom-laden proclamations felt like a poorly written play. "Your time had come!" That line makes me cringe now, father the prior demon king decided his little sweetheart har talent... "Seriously why didn't I quit earlier?" My only subjects now were bubbling starters and temperamental ovens. It was… peaceful.
The bell chimed again. I didn’t look up, my voice dropping into the automatic, slightly bored cadence of a shopkeeper. “I’ll be with you in a moment, insignificant mortal.” The old epithet slipped out, a comfortable, venomless habit. "I mean w-welcome!" Damn you father.. how could you predict I would be the perfect student?
“Take your time.”
That voice. Smooth, warm, and horribly, impossibly familiar. "Surrender yourself!" I remembered. My head snapped up from my prized special deluxe pastry I'm keeping cool using sub-zero magic.. There, leaning casually against the counter, was Prince Lysander. Not in armor, but in a soft-looking linen shirt, sunlight catching the gold in his hair. He smiled, a simple, genuine thing that crinkled the corners of his eyes.
“Hi,” he said, as if we were mere acquaintances. As if he hadn’t once led a battalion to the gates of my fortress. “I’ll take two blueberry scones.”
My mind emptied. This felt like a trap. It had to be. I straightened to my full height, summoning the old chill into my gaze. “Do you truly believe you can simply… *purchase* baked goods from me? That your audacity will go unpunished?” I threatened, my voice low. “I could turn these scones to stone in your stomach. A mild, but deeply inconvenient, doom.” Of course I was bluffing not even capable in that feat.
He just kept smiling, that infuriatingly adorable smile. “Noted. But I’ll risk it. They’re really good scones.”
The tension seeped out of me, replaced by a flustered confusion. This wasn’t how the confrontation was meant to go. As I reached into the case for his order, my hand brushed his. A simple, accidental touch. I recoiled as if scalded by a lava golem fumbling guard duty.
“This is manipulation,” I hissed at my heart doing a ridiculous flutter against my ribs.
Lysander’s smile softened. He looked at the steaming cup of chamomile tea I’d unconsciously poured for myself in my panic. “It’s just tea,” he said gently.
Later, after I’d learned he’d been a weekly customer for months “I like the atmosphere,” he’d said, not *“I was hunting you”*, and after he’d watched me close up in silence, he spoke again. He’d been observing the careful way I wiped down the counters, the contented sigh I’d let out when everything was in its place.
I was once someone who loved doing laundry and other logistics like sorting every item in the home; that habit turned into placing valuables into treasure chests scattered across my old home—though these day I just sleep. Am I nervous? Not likely. Right?
“You seem happier here,” he said in a quiet assassination of my newer lazier habitual self.
"Am not!"
Hia statement disarmed me more completely than any duel ever had under the hollowed sanctuary of chronically inside demon lords in the family. It was an observation, not an accusation. It saw the truth I hadn’t even voiced to myself.
Now, after closing, he sits at the cleaned counter. I slide a cup of tea toward him, the steam curling between us. The silence is comfortable, but I have to break it. I have to reclaim some shadow of my old self.
“I am not reformed,” I declare, lifting my chin. “This is a strategic retreat. A temporary fascination with… structural integrity of pastry.” What am I saying? Who says a sentence unlike people speak?
Lysander takes a sip of his tea calmly, his eyes holding mine over the rim of the mug. There’s no challenge in them, no demand. Only a quiet, accepting warmth.
“I never asked you to be,” he fired another breaching arrow of conquest. "Are you free later?"
And in the gentle quiet of the bakery, with the scent of sugar lingering in the air, that feels like the most profound thing anyone has ever said to me.
-------- Author's Note
Maybe I could take it further someday of them having that dinner date... I loved making this even if the story was born out of my daily writing sprints, though not perfect at all—Lysander originally was supposed to drive the demon lord crazy and into a shouting match, I gave up on that idea haha. Thanks for your time.
