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“What if you lose?” she asked.

“Then I write the game down and try to learn from my mistakes.”

She tilted her head toward the lamps. “We’re almost there. Mrs. Dove-Lyon thinks of everything.”

“She thinks of everyone,” he corrected. “It’s not just gaslight. It’s guardianship. Look there.” He pointed toward a tree-lined square. “No loiterers. No public house nearby. She chose this so you’d be safe.”

Rosine slowed, brushing her skirt with thoughtful fingers. “It’s strange, isn’t it? That the Lyon’s Den—a place of carnal pleasure, cards, and coin—became a refuge for people like us.”

Sander looked at her properly. “It’s more than refuge. It’s her nest. She pushes us to fly, even if it costs her comfort to watch.”

She laughed softly. “We’re her hatchlings now, are we?”

He gave a gentle smirk. “Not the feathered kind. The cunning ones.”

Their pace steadied. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It carried weight, shape, and a presence of its own.

“You asked me once why I always make raisin buns,” she said.

“I did.”

“It was the last thing my parents made,” Rosine said suddenly, her voice low, as though the words might shatter if she spoke them too loudly.

Sander glanced down, but she wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes stayed fixed on the cobbles ahead.

“The night when…” Her throat tightened. “When the soldiers came. My mother had soaked the raisins in rum and honey. My father grated lemon rind with that old grater that always caught his sleeve. They joked about it. Laughed. The smell filled the bakery and drifted upstairs into our rooms.”

She swallowed. “And then—” Her voice broke. “And then I never smelled it again.”

The words landed heavy between them, weightier than the mist still clinging to the street.

Sander’s fists curled inside his coat. He wanted to say something—anything. To promise safety, to vow she’d never lose everything again. But words seemed clumsy, brittle things against grief like hers.

So he walked beside her in silence, every muscle taut, every step steady, though inside his chest ached with the fierce, helpless ache of a man who wanted to give her back what could never be returned.

At the final corner, the street opened. A pale green door waited at the end, brass numbers dulled by time, a lace curtain stirring faintly in the morning air.

“This is the address,” he said.

Sander heard her breath catch.

He reached into his coat and withdrew a ring of keys. Ordinary iron. Cold. But in his hand they gleamed like something consecrated.

“It’s for you,” he said quietly. “You should be the one to open it.”

Her fingers brushed his palm as she took the keys. Warm. Trembling. His chest tightened.

The lock gave way with a click. The hinges sighed and a little bell rang overhead. She stepped inside.

He lingered at the threshold, watching her claim the space with her imagination.

“There’s room,” she murmured. “For a sugar work station. A cooling table. A tall rack, maybe—if I’m clever.”

“You are, very much so.” He hesitated, then let it slip. “And so beautiful.” He closed the door and the little bell over it rang again.

The words startled even him. But they were irrefutably true.

She turned away too quickly, but he saw the shine in her eyes.