POV Akhyra

It turns out that organizing a surprise birthday dinner for your employee is harder than I thought it would be.

It's been three days since I've sent Hannah and Valentino to the hotel nearby with the intention to keep them occupied while I'm getting everything ready at home, but these two have already managed to fight. Now, Tino is threatening to come back home earlier than expected. 

"I will fire your curly-haired ass if you show up here unannounced," I warn him over the phone while separating egg whites with a hand mixer.

"That gave me a very weird mental image. What's that noise?" he asks, concerned. 

"The vacuum cleaner."

"That sounds like a hand mixer," he retorts. "Are you in the kitchen?"

"I'm not. Why would I be in there?"

"Miss Morel, with all due respect the last time you tried to cook something, we had to call the firemen. If you need help-"

"This might come as a surprise to you, Tino, but before you began to work for me last spring, I'd already been surviving for twenty-one years. I think I'll be fine on my own for a couple more hours."

I hang up without giving him the chance to reply and continue my task. After the phone call, music resumes playing from my wireless earphones. Listening to the album Red gives me the extra boost of confidence I need to take the bull by the horns and conquer this recipe.

I think I'm finally beginning to get the hang of it. It did take a few wrongly broken eggs before getting there, but hey, Rome wasn't built in a day. 

For the next thirty minutes, I follow along with the instructions in the pastry book I'd recently bought. When it's finally time to take my cake out of the oven, for the next step, which is to apply the icing, I put my oven mitts on while humming happily to "I Knew You Were Trouble" blasting in my ears. 

"Let's see the masterpiece I created!"

Three minutes later, I'm still looking in disgust at the strange inclination of my three layered cake, trying to figure out what went wrong. It's not even a perfectly round shape. I followed the recipe step by step, and yet I ended up with a leaning tower of Pisa on my countertop. 

My anger continues to boil when I glance around at an hour of hard labor wasted: sugar trails, abandoned eggs in a bowl with cracked shells floating in it, the flower mixture that I had to remake three times before I got it right, then my eyes fall on the rolling pin from an open cabinet. There's no hesitation when I grab it, raising the utensil with both hands above my head. I only pause to savor the thrill of anticipation before bringing it down on the failed pastry in a satisfying, whack! 

It's strangely cathartic to repeat the gesture over and over again as Taylor Swift screams in my ears, "Trouble! Trouble! Trouble!"

When I'm done, I take off my gloves and let myself fall on the kitchen tiles to catch my breath. It's only when I take out my earphones that I realize someone has been knocking on the front door. The banging is loud enough to rattle its glass ornaments. 

"Akhyra are you in there?!" Lucian yells from outside. 

What the heck is he doing here? I didn't call for him today. 

"I'm coming!" I answer as I'm getting closer to unlock the door. Lucian knows the rules by now, so when I open it, he's already retread several steps away. 

"Why are you not picking up your phone?" He accuses. "Are you okay?"

I put my phone on airplane mode earlier to avoid any interruption from Valentino, but I don't like Lucian's tone, like he's reprimanding a child. 

I cross my arms and ask back, "Why are you here?"

"Valentino sent me this," he answers, holding his phone up to show me the message on the screen.

Valentino: Go check on Ms. Morel ASAP. I'm afraid of what she could do if left unsupervised.

I can't help laughing at how dramatic Valentino sounds, but my amusement is cut short when Lucian snaps, "You think this is funny?"

Jeez, someone woke up on the wrong side of bed today.

"Listen, it's not my fault you came all the way here for nothing," I remind him. "Take your bad mood on Valentino."

"That's not-" Lucian begins before stopping himself to pinch his nose, exhaling a frustrated sigh. When he looks back at me, he looks even more worked up than before. "I just need to know that you're okay."

I notice for the first time the way that his chest is rising and falling rapidly. His hands are trembling, but the real giveaway is his eyes. He looks terrified. From having been there multiple times, I recognize the signs of a trigger when I see it.

"I'm fine," I answer. "Are you alright?"

He turns around to lean on the railing. Even with his back to me, I can see him shaking.

"I just need a moment. I'm good," he mutters to himself.

"Hey," I call out to get his attention. "Follow my lead."

I sit on the floor, expecting Lucian to question me, but he doesn't. He still looks out of it.

"Cross your arms to form an X in front of your chest like this," I instruct as I show him how to do it. He does. "Good, now take turns tapping on each shoulder and take deep breaths as you tap." 

I nod when he begins to mimic my gestures. Once he's found a rhythm, I instruct him to close his eyes, but I still keep doing it with him. We stay like this until his breathing becomes even, and his shaking stops.

"Where did you learn that?" Lucian asks when he finally opens his eyes. "It's surprisingly efficient."

"From therapy. It's called the Butterfly Hug Method. It works well as a self-soothing technique when one feels anxious or overwhelmed."

"I apologize for yelling at you earlier." His eyes are warmer now that the panic has disappeared.

"Don't worry, I'll just put that on account of your menstruation."

His head falls back as he cracks up. It's quite contagious, and soon enough, we're both laughing together.

***

"And this is how you get things done, Your Royal Highness," Lucian brags as he takes out a perfectly straight and rounded three layered cake that he places on the countertop.

I gape at it from my seat on the kitchen table. 

"I did all of those steps. Why did yours come out well and mine didn't?"

"Trust me, if you'd done all the steps correctly," he emphasizes, "It would have come out well."

He begins to apply the vanilla icing. As I watch him artfully place the strawberries, it makes me wonder how many times he has done this before. 

"How come you're so good at this?"

"You'd be surprised at the things you end up mastering when you grow up with a little sister."

He's never talked about his family before. This might be the opportunity to gather some information. 

"What's her name?"

"Lucemaëlla but we just call her Maëlla. She turned nineteen at the beginning of this month. It's the first year I wasn't there to make her a cake."

"I bet she's really proud of having a big brother playing for the national football team."

"I'm the one who's proud to have her as a sibling. She is excellent in everything she does, whether it's her studies or other personal endeavors." 

He goes on to tell me about how she recently won a prize for a project she did for the youth emancipation program organized by the mayor of Arcahaie.

There's a permanent smile on his face as he talks about her achievements, and the fondness in his voice is hard to miss. When Lucian realizes I haven't said anything in a while, he chuckles nervously.

"I'm sorry, didn't mean to bore you to death."

"You should bring her to Valentino's birthday," I suggest, which makes him look up at me bewildered. 

"You mean here?"

"Where else would it be?"

"I'm just surprised you'd want a stranger to invade your kingdom," he says, but I can tell by the playful look in his eyes that he's not trying to be mean.

"You talked about her for so long that I feel like I know her already," I tease him back, which makes him smile.

"Touché."

When his task is finished, Lucian places the cake in the lower compartment of the fridge. He's pretty useful. I'm happy now that I failed to make him quit.

"What did you just say?" Lucian asks, making me realize a bit late that I had voiced my thoughts.

"You did a good job on the cake," I answer nonchalantly.

He doesn't get duped by my compliment, and I watch realization dawn upon him. He's probably reviewing all the unnecessary errands that I sent him to these past few days and the chores that I made him do around the house, like rearranging the storage room. I even complained about his car when he took me to the orphanage, hoping he'd be vexed enough to quit the following day, but I had no such luck.

"That's why you were so evil during all this time. You were trying to get rid of me!" Lucian exclaims, baffled.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, there's no use denying it.

"I don't get why you haven't quit yet. You're like a bad rash that I can't shake. Do you like to be tortured? Is that your thing?"

"You think I haven't tried to quit?" He fires at me. "Your father won't let me. I begged him for days, and he got so fed up that he even blocked my number. Now my teammates are calling me his ex-girlfriend."

I can't help laughing at that last piece of information.

"Of course, you'd find this funny," Lucian deadpans.

"Since you've proven yourself useful, I declare a temporary truce"

"Why must it be temporary? It could just be an indefinite truce."

"Take it or leave it," I warn him.

He gives his signature mocking bow that makes me roll my eyes.

"Apologies, Your Highness, for trying to take advantage of your magnanimous offer."

"I'm beginning to regret this decision already," I say despite the tiny smile stretching my lips. 

It might not be so bad to have Lucian Moreno here after all. He's quite... entertaining.

"Let's clean up the kitchen before the chef comes," I tell him. "By that, I mean, you'll do the cleaning, of course."

"A chef is coming?"

"Who else would be cooking the seafood we bought yesterday?"

"I don't get why you went through the trouble of trying to bake if you had already hired a chef," Lucian remarks as he walks back to the countertop. "By the way, why are you going through so much trouble for Valentino?"

I clap twice in my hands as I get off my seat. "Less talking, more cleaning." 

Lucian gets the hint and drops the topic. I already shared enough yesterday. He doesn't need to know everything.