Page 46 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
At first, it’s the locals—weddings, memory gardens, sweet little gestures likesorry I borrowed your goat and forgot to return it for a week.But then Drogath, with his usual subtlety (which is to say,none), puts one of the sachets in every room of his northern lodge retreat, and suddenly I’m flooded.
His luxury clients fall in love with the scent, the sentiment, the aesthetic, the hint of magic clinging to the burlap like a kiss on the cheek. Within days, I’m fielding orders from three major inns, a seasonal spa in the Everpine District, and a surprisingly poetic letter from a vampire-run winery near the coast that asks, “Can your blooms survive moonlight and Merlot?”
I don’t say no.
I don’t say yes either. I just send them a sample and a hand-penned blessing and cross my fingers.
It’s overwhelming—but in that spinning, golden kind of way, like I’ve stepped into a field I planted months ago and suddenly all the flowers are blooming at once.
“Need me to call in the cavalry?” Drogath asks one morning, leaning in the back door with his sleeves rolled up and a look that says he’shalfserious, which means I should take him seriously before he hires a fleet of elves with degrees in seasonal aesthetics.
“I need more room,” I mutter, staring at the workshop corner like it might magically stretch on command. “And more drying racks. And possibly more hands.”
His brow furrows. “I’ll call the Thornhold site manager. We’ll draw up blueprints tonight—do you want something modular or fixed, and are we talking vertical expansion or horizontal?—”
“Drogath,” I interrupt, not unkindly, just gently enough to press pause. I cross the room and take his rough hand in my glue-smudged one. “I love that your first instinct is always to build me a castle. But this time... I want the villagers to do it.”
He blinks, surprised. “You sure?”
“I’m sure. I want Bramley to curse about measuring tape. I want Maude from the co-op to bring her weird pine tar snacks. I want to watch the whole town argue about the shade of the trim. I want tobuild with them, not just for them.”
His eyes soften, the kind of look that melts through me like sunlight on frost. “Then I’ll keep my toolbox in the wagon.”
And he does.
For the next two weeks, Drogath splits his time between back-to-back Thornhold video calls and bundling marigold with string that keeps snapping in his giant hands. He curses more than anyone else in the shop, but when he finally figures out how to knot ribbon without tearing it in half, he pumps his fist like he just won a tournament.
At one point, he accidentally glues his sleeve to a tray of moss sachets, and Tara nearly wets herself laughing.
“Don’t you dare take a picture,” he growls without looking up.
“I already took four,” she replies.
It’s chaotic and colorful and wildly inefficient in the most beautiful way. The expansion rises plank by plank with town gossip stitched into every nail—someone's cousin eloped, a goat got loose again, the twins might be selling butter-scented candles at the fall market. I bring cookies. Bramley mutters that my nails are too short to hammer and then gives me his gloveswithout comment. Tara stands in the new rafters one afternoon and bursts into tears while clutching a bundle of goldenrod.
“I’m not crying,” she sniffs, dabbing her face with the sleeve of her flannel. “I’m allergic to optimism.”
“Same,” Drogath says dryly, standing on a ladder with an armful of cedar planks. “It causes hives.”
But later that night, when we’re alone and quiet again, I find him reading a gardening guide by the fire, his massive frame curled around the little couch like he’s trying not to crease the pages. I’m tucked against his side, feet tucked under his thigh, warm and drowsy, and I swear he turns the page like it’s sacred.
“You studying up for your glade project?” I mumble against his shoulder.
“Maybe,” he rumbles. “I like knowing what I’m doing before I dig a hole in the ground and call it symbolic.”
“Look at you,” I murmur. “All poetic and prepared.”
He snorts but doesn’t deny it.
My eyelids start to droop, the fire crackling low, and I think about how the shop smells now—like peppermint and promise, like magic and mulch. I think about the way the new beams creak when the wind pushes against them, the sound of a place still growing, still learning what kind of shape it wants to be.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” I whisper, not quite asleep. “Not just for the glade. Or the papers. Or the way you finally got the hang of ribbon looping.”
He kisses the top of my head, slow and thoughtful. “I’m proud of you too.”
“Why?” I ask, teasing. “For resisting the urge to redesign the shop with imported stone and dragon-glass counters?”
“No,” he says, a bit more seriously now. “For building something that makes people want to stay.”
