Her customers were cleaners, street vendors, night-shift nurses. They paid in coins, stories, or sometimes just a nod. Elena never asked for more. She baked to keep the dead alive.
“I have nowhere else to go,” he replied.
She pulled away. “You can’t. You’re not from here. And I don’t even know your real name.”
He baked badly at first—burnt loaves, collapsed cakes. Elena teased him mercilessly. But over time, his hands learned. His heart softened.
She closed shop. She didn’t answer Alaric’s calls.
They had a daughter. She did not learn to curtsy. She learned to knead.
The palace found out. A tabloid photographer captured them laughing outside La Migaja . The headline: PRINCE’S SECRET BAKER LOVE.
The silence that followed was not shock. It was grief—for a dream that had just died.