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Rosine didn’t answer. Her buns had risen—perfectly, naturally, like they always did.

Soft, golden, obedient.

Unlike her.

I don’t want to worry about buns now. It was Sander who occupied her mind.

Soft, shining dough sat in obedient ranks—neat rows, familiar curves. The sight curdled a thought: let no one look at me and see the same thing. Neat. Golden. Obedient. A shape braided to suit another’s hands. All but mine. She was not dough; she was heat—strength in the wrists, will in the rise. She rose because she willed it, never because she was told.

And yet, she still felt his breath behind her ear as if Sander’s presence was a constant companion. Stop trying to trade it for this.

She wasn’t. She would never trade her work—the dough in her hands, her future.

But perhaps—just perhaps—she had wanted to see who lived on the other side of the velvet curtains.

Not to leave the kitchen. Just to know she could.

Could she truly escape a life in the kitchen, though?

The thought would not loosen. Even an hour later, sleep would not come to the servants’ rooms.

Near midnight, when the moon hung high and heavy over London, she slipped to the alley for air, the cobbles turned silver, soft as sifted sugar. The Lyon’s Den sat so close to St. James and its guarded palace gates that even the side streets kept themselves neat. Through the mews arch and along the service lane, a side gate sagged into the Countess Pembroke’s long-neglected garden—a little wedge between the Den and Green Park, hedges by day for hiding, shadows by night for breathing. She carried only a small satchel of kitchen scraps wrapped in paper—dripping-soaked crust, a heel of cheese, a strip of roasted chicken skin—never grapes or never raisins because they were expensive and could make dogs sick, so perhaps also foxes.

Beyond the back wall ran a long, narrow alley; a little farther lay the forgotten garden of the reclusive Countess Pembroke. She was probably waiting for the earl who’d just lost to Sander that night, and was doing whatever angry earls did. Through those grounds, Rosine could reach Green Park by day and avoid the streets with nightly dangers. But at night, she preferred to stay closer to the Lyon’s Den and just sit near the fountain in the countess’ garden. She had glimpsed the countess only once—through a latticed window behind a hedge gone wild—like a secret the city had mislaid.

London could still surprise her: scraps of field tucked into squares, kitchen yards smelling of tallow, market gardens clinging to the edges. Strasbourg had foxes in the forests, yes, but never in the city; she had not seen a live one until England.

Memories tugged her back to Strasbourg: the tight lanes by their bakery, slipping out with her brother to chase butterflies once the ovens cooled. Then the riots—glass turned to knives, shutters to splinters, ash to silence. Paris had not kept her from running after that night. A passage from Calais to Dover was more luck than plan—until Mrs. Dove-Lyon became aware of Rosine’s buns that she’d baked for a street vendor. She’d hired her on talent alone and given her a job and bed, not merely a cot. The Den was a refuge now, and she’d grown accustomed to her role as Rosine, the baker for the Lyon’s Den. Yet some nights she felt like dough left too long: restless, pressing against its tin, sighing with a pressure she couldn’t release herself from. For Rosine, grief, ambition, the ache of always proving herself—slipped loose only out here, where no one asked her to smile.

Thus, she slipped further into the garden, away from the alley. Tonight, the gate to the garden gave with a whisper. It had learned her step these last weeks; she came almost nightly now with safe scraps. Sweetness, she’d learned, is not always safety—Rosine by name, yet she would never give raisins to foxes.

She stepped further into the garden.

London’s nightly noise seemed to exhale around her. Lavender loosened its scent on the night air, damp earth breathing up through the grass, a faint thread of woodsmoke lingering from some unseen hearth. At its center, a stone fountain murmured, the water catching moonlight in silver ripples that slid across the basin’s edge. Rosine lowered herself to the moss, her paper-wrapped satchel balanced on her knees, palms resting flat against the cool stone.

And then—foxes.

Three of them. Silent but bold as thieves. Their coats shimmered rust-red where the moon touched, white-tipped tails like paintbrushes; eyes glinting like banked coals. They stood at the garden’s edge, seemingly unhurried and unafraid to just watch her. Smart creatures. Almost like city wolves—wild, cunning, unsettlingly close. Just as Sander always seemed to be.

Rosine slipped her hand into the satchel and drew out the safe bits—crust, a shred of chicken skin, a dab of suet on paper. She scattered the pieces across the stones with a small flick of her wrist, keeping the sweeter things closed up. Not everything sweet belongs in every mouth, she thought. A raisin can be a name and not a treat.

The foxes moved fluidly, their paws whispering over the grass. One dragged the suet-paper away, another snatched the crust, the smallest nosed delicately at the chicken and carried it off, tails writing quick strokes in the moonlight.

Her lips curved into a smile before she realized it.

For a breath, the weight she carried—grief, ambition, the ache of always proving herself—slipped loose. The foxes bent their heads over her careful offering, and she felt grand. Not hidden but welcomed, as if the garden itself had been waiting for her.

If her mother had been here, she might have laughed at the sight of her daughter feeding city foxes like parish strays, called her foolish but indulgent, slipping her another handful with a wink. But there was no mother anymore. No bakery of her own, except in her dreams. Just her and the Den, and the kitchen that both saved and caged her. Upstairs was not her floor, Sander had said. But who truly decides a woman’s floors, and why couldn’t she decide herself?

She closed her eyes and let herself forget for a moment so she could just breathe.

She wasn’t thinking of her ovens. Or patronage. Or the way the world never quite made space for her to step out from the kitchens.

And she didn’t see him.

Not until she opened her eyes—and caught a shadow shifting at the far edge of the garden.

Sander?