His birthday arrived quiet and entirely ordinary, exactly the way Felix had told her it always did. Silveria waited patiently until dinner, nerves twisting tight and uncomfortable in her stomach the entire day, before finally bringing out the cake she'd worked so carefully to prepare.
Damien stared at it for a long moment like he genuinely wasn't certain what he was actually looking at.
"Lemon and honey," she said quietly, watching his face carefully for any reaction. "Rosa told me it was your mother's recipe."
Something in his face cracked open then, raw and entirely unguarded in a way she had genuinely never once witnessed from him before. "Where did you learn how to make this?"
"I asked around," she admitted. "I hope that's alright. I didn't mean to overstep, if it wasn't."
He didn't answer right away. He simply stared down at the cake, his jaw working slowly, something bright and visibly painful moving behind his careful eyes.
