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“But it wasn't the photograph that caught her attention. It was what was tucked into the frame. Dominic's eyes followed hers. And a tinge of color appeared in his cheeks. Walking over, the butterflies skittering about her stomach, Sylvie reached out and touched the intricate little silhouette portrait of her own face. Her eyes lifted to Dominic's in-the-flesh face, which was currently much stiffer than that paper. "Pet," he said. "She cut a couple of portraits in here one day when we were talking about Operation Cake. Yours and Mariana's." "Yes. I saw Mariana's after you gave it to her." She ran her fingers around the paper contour of her plait, dropped her hand to the desk. "You didn't give me mine, though." "No, I didn't." "Because... we didn't get along? And you wanted to keep Pet's artwork?" "I did want to have some of Pet's art." Dominic's jaw ticked. "And somewhere along the line, I wanted that one in particular." Sylvie swallowed.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Breathing deeply, she whispered, "You don't taste the way you smell." Dominic shifted, his own fingers trailing down her neck, skimming a tantalizing path over her breast that made her legs shake. "I'm not sure how to respond to that." His voice was deep. Husky. "The sugar scents cling to your hair and the fibers of your clothes." She moved her head, gently nuzzling into the silvering hair at his temple. "I thought you might taste like cake twenty-four seven." Less husky. "I do brush my teeth." "I know. Minty fresh. Delicious," she assured him. "I'm just saying, I like cake. It would have been nice.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“If you were nervous during your time on the show, you didn't show it. You still prioritize flashy decoration over the essential foundations now, but you were never openly rocked by criticism. You took it on the chin and until that last fucking disaster"---a tinge of heat lit up his tone; clearly the unicorn hoof did still rankle---"you listened to all of us and your bakes improved accordingly." Good grief. Apparently, bread-baking Sid was right on the money about the alien abductions. She didn't know what they'd suddenly done with the original Dominic, but cheers for the substitute. Sylvie could feel a reluctantly pleased flush creeping into her cheeks. "To the extent of your ability," Pod Dominic finished.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Oh, my goodness," Sylvie said with obvious delight, immediately leaning down for a closer look at the former professor's Beauty and the Beast spread. There were iced biscuits, piped well, each in the shape of an animated character. Happily chomping down on a smiling teapot, Mariana cooed, "Look at the gingerbread houses." Adam had re-created the central square of a small French-inspired town in gingerbread blocks, chocolate beams, and blown sugar fountains. He'd mechanized the latter to spill out a cascade of syrup, which fizzed like sherbet and tasted far better than Dominic had expected. Most of the sugar-craft requirements had been checked off on the cake, however, and the sculpted objects that stood atop the icing. Even for a highly skilled, trained sugar artist, it was difficult to pull off a human figure, and Adam had wisely opted for the Beast's enchanted household: the clock, the candelabra, and so on.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“There's still a hefty amount of protocol, and even if the bride and groom look like they've respectively stepped out of The Nightmare Before Christmas and an Archie comic, the royal tradition is---" "The brandy-soaked, raisin spotted, intestine-clogging brick known as fruitcake," Pet interrupted. "Will look and taste the same whether it was made yesterday or two decades ago. And at no time during its lengthy existence will anyone want to eat it. I've told you, the bride likes chocolate cake. Specifically and vitally, she apparently likes your Death by Chocolate fudge cake. Very little about this couple conforms to royal standards, which is half the reason the bookies are already taking revolting odds on how long the marriage will last, or if they'll actually make it to the altar. Rose is infamously a strong personality and a massive pain in her family's arse. I guarantee that however she has to bend to tradition, she'll wrangle final say over details like the inside of her cake.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Mabel was well over a foot shorter than Jay. At the bakery Christmas party, she'd glanced with loathing at the limbo pole, walked straight underneath it, and headed for the bar. She still managed to look down her nose at him now. "Valuable life lesson. If you feel comfortable shoveling handfuls of stolen sweets into your pockets, I might feel comfortable shoveling you headfirst into a pipe." Jay raised his brows at Sylvie. "Have we considered moving Mabel's workstation so she's slightly farther away from the paying customers? Perhaps about"---he made a pinching motion with his finger and thumb--- "two post codes to the left?" "Have we considered getting a haircut, so we look slightly less like an aging rockstar?" Mabel asked conversationally. "It's swell of you to take over potions class while Sylvie's back on telly, Axl Rose, but you don't have to go full wizard cosplay.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Did supply just run out on the usual lineup? Pseudo-bakers with too much imagination, sporadic technical skill..." For the first time since he'd ignored her for the entire drive here, his eyes flicked squarely in Sylvie's direction. He'd probably intended to look away just as quickly, but their gazes caught and held. "And the general creative aesthetic of My Little Pony." Languidly, Sylvie ran her fingers through her ponytail, fluffing out her latest pink and lavender highlights. She smothered the most delicate of yawns.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“The overhead lights hit the Serch Bythol sculpture on the utmost tier, the sugar crystals shimmering and dancing like a cascade of diamonds. The planes of the cake beneath were clean and crisp, and the sugar-stained glass panels caught every light on the ceiling, throwing back shimmering rainbow rays. Sylvie was most proud of the silhouette that circled the middle stained-glass tiers--the skylines of London and Johnny's family estate in Lancashire. Only when viewed at close range did a second, hidden skyline emerge from within the reflective depths---the fantasy lands of I, Slayer, complete with a tiny, flying dragon. It was a work of art---and even now, she was taken aback by the level of harmony they had achieved, twinning together two very different styles. In honor of the union of two very different people, whose lives would hopefully interlock just as successfully.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“The bride's sleek dark hair was smoothed into an unusually restrained knot, but she'd stuck to her guns with the heavy black eyeliner. Her lacy black dress was a little funereal, but clearly a compromise between her own preference for Victoriana and the palace's idea of appropriate styling for a photo shoot that would make the history books. The groom was wearing a pink shirt, and his curls were fluffy. It was like a grown-up Emily the Strange marrying Bertie Wooster. The smiles were natural, the body language extremely affectionate, but their knuckles were white. Nerves or tension? Sylvie studied the cover shot for a few more seconds, then scrolled down to the article. The journalist would have had a lot of the copy sitting ready to go. This had been on the rumor mill since their first joint public appearance. The union between the king's eldest granddaughter and the youngest son of a baronet, who, according to this tabloid, had inherited neither land nor brain cells from his parents. The overgrown Goth princess and a stuttering social climber with all the poise and sophistication of a golden retriever. Charming.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Opening a small metal box, she added a pinch of blue salts to the syrup mixture and blew on the cauldron. A burst of smoke puffed up, sending a dusting of glitter particles spinning in the lights. He turned his head to follow the twinkling trail, and she slanted a sideways smile. "Magic." "Predictable chemical reaction," he returned, examining the box of salts. "And once again in your company, I have glitter in my hair." "And your stubble. Bit of technicolor glam to liven up the grays. You're welcome.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“And you're quite sure about this video game thing?" Jay looked and sounded skeptical. "She is a princess." Sylvie snorted. "So her personal hobbies ought to be---what? Practicing ribbon-cutting? Swanning around St. Giles unveiling makeshift plaques? The girl walks her pit bull in a Metallica T-shirt, and showed up to the Easter service at the Abbey wearing a skull necklace. Gamer princess seems entirely on brand.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Each layer was a clean, crisp white. Marzipan over rich Vienna cream icing, edged with sugar lace, a delicate spidery web of lines, the perfect allusion of the bobbin lace that Princess Rose liked to weave. Or at least claimed she wove as a useful anecdote. His notes stated that she gave biannual speeches as patron of the City of London Arts and Crafts Guild. Flowers wound up the side of the cake, the blooming vine of a fairy tale. He studied the effect with distaste. A tap of the leftmost flower, and the petals changed color from an iridescent pink to a deep, brooding blood purple, almost black in tone. He swept his hand in front of the cake. One after another, the edges of the peony poppies bled, thee dark color leaching over the celestial pink. Still fairy tale, but with the inevitable malevolent element. Better. Also better suited to a dungeon or coffin than a reception table, but from the impression he got of the bride, the Tim Burton vibe was strongly in her wheelhouse.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Good call dropping the mystery-ingredient round." She caught Sylvie's questioning glance. "Finalist last year with an unknown allergy to turmeric. Violent gastro effects. Ever seen the pie scene in Stand By Me?" Sylvie winced. "We had to reshoot the whole day. I was scrubbing neon yellow out of my ears for a week." Mariana smoothed back a strand of salt-and-pepper hair. "We looked like we'd banded together to massacre Big Bird." Only this woman could make that anecdote sound almost classy.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Three layers. Chocolate. Lemon. Pink champagne. The bride wanted lemons grown only in Sorrento. The groom claimed that chocolate made anywhere but Bruges was a waste of cacao. They both refused to consider any champagne but that of a bespoke label that produced only two hundred bottles of that variety a year, most of which were presold to a man in Chicago who, like most multimillionaires, didn't share his toys.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“Sylvie flicked her brush over the dragon, leaving a line of glittering pigment on the spiked tail. The edible paint had an oil-slick effect, shimmering from blue to pink to purple to black under the light. "What time do I have to---" Jay began. "Shhh," hissed about fifteen voices at once, as Sylvie picked up the dragon and set it on the lowest tier of the cake. Three layers of rich chocolate cake, covered in mirror glaze icing, marbled blue, purple, and black, with gold paint etched and feathered to replicate the appearance of the sugar dragon's scales. She wound the tail upward, adjusting the long curve to swoop neatly around the top tier, the very tip coming to rest protectively on the sculpted couple who sat on the edge, their legs dangling, tiny sugar ankles entwined. One totally edible princess with long black hair and thick eyeliner. Her endearingly fluffy blond love. And Caractacus, the dragon sentinel from the video game I, Slayer, over which the royal couple had apparently bonded, turning an excruciating first private date into an all-nighter. From curt questions and stammering answers to a beer-drinking, ogre-bashing bonk-fest. Just like all good fairy tales. The Brothers Grimm would be proud.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“You know those DIY craft kits for kids, where they supply the blank ceramic base and it's just screaming out for the paint and glitter?" She relented when he cast his eyes ceiling-ward. "It's lovely. Elegant, chic, and perfect for the brief. And inspiringly executed. If I had my Operation Cake crown coin, I'd award you the thousand quid." He addressed her with typically crisp brevity. "Your ingenuity was never in question. But your technical ability now---" "Is neck and neck with yours.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“It's evident which drawing came from which mind," Johnny said with a small grin, and certainly, the pâte de verre flowers and spiraling tiers of Sylvie's cake said "Sugar Fair" as distinctly as the clean lines and elegant piping pointed to De Vere's. "But..." But at the essential level, the cakes were remarkably similar. They had both chosen a stained-glass effect, constructed entirely from blown sugar, each tier designed to catch the light and cast a shimmering cascade of color. Peony poppies, primroses, and petunias glittered within the sugar glass. And on the highest tier, the Midnight Elixir cake, they had both incorporated a trinity knot.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“At the street level, Sugar Fair welcomed customers into a bright, child-like fantasy. The architecturally designed enchanted forest was awash in jewel tones, and gorgeous smells, and the waterfall of free-flowing chocolate. But it was the Dark Forest downstairs that had proved an unexpected money-spinner, an income stream that had helped keep them afloat through the precarious first year. Four nights a week, through a haze of purple smoke and bubbling cauldrons, Sylvie taught pre-booked groups how to make concoctions that would tease the senses, delight the mind... and knock people flat on their arse if they weren't careful. High percentage of alcohol. It was a mixology class with a lot of tricks and pyrotechnics. It had been Jay's idea to get a liquor license. "Pleasures of the mouth," he'd said at the time. "The holy trinity--- chocolate, coffee, and booze." With even her weekends completely blocked out, Sylvie had almost made a crack about forfeiting certain other pleasures of the mouth, but Jay had inherited a puritanical streak from his mother. Both their mouths looked like dried cranberries if someone made a sex joke. The sensuous, moody haven in the basement was a counterbalance to the carefully manufactured atmosphere upstairs. There were, after all, reasons to shy away from relentless cheer. Perhaps someone had just been through a breakup, or a family reunion. A really distressing haircut. Maybe they'd logged on to Twitter and realized half the population were a bunch of pricks. Or maybe the'd picked up the Metropolitan News and found Dominic De Vere indirectly thrashing their entire business aesthetic in a major London daily. Whatever the reason--- feeling a little stressed? A bit peeved? Annoyed as fuck? Welcome to the Dark Forest. Through the bakery, turn left, down the stairs.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“So it wasn't until they were standing on ice-crisp grass in a spectacular winter garden that he noticed what Sylvie was holding. She blinked placidly as she gave Gaston-Dominic a pat on his mullet. "Unless you're planning to eat that," he said, "you'd better not be taking it in the car." Her look was drenched with pity for his poor struggling wits. "Obviously, I'm taking it in the car." She smiled beatifically at it. "I'm going to put it in the kitchens at Sugar Fair as our new mascot." Before he could voice one of several comments on that, she reached into her bag and pulled out another item she'd purloined from the tables. It was a pink sugar Cadillac, reasonably identifiable and Emma's one real success today. Carefully, she propped up G-D in it. "What--" "How else is he going to get around with those teeny legs?" Absolute last straw.”

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“Rosie and Johnny's relationship was being ripped to shreds, with the press and public pawing over the pieces like wild dogs. The emotional chasm between Dominic and Pet had been torn even wider. Apparently, Sylvie had been wasting time, money, and ingredients for months, constantly defending this woman to Jay. And someone intimately connected to the Starlight Circus had just called her décor "kitsch." "Penny," she said very calmly, with a smile just as vague, just as airy, and just as malicious, "get the fuck out of my home." Penny tossed her head---and froze as Mabel walked toward her, hips swinging, also smiling. That smile had more eerie impact than every lighting effect in the Dark Forest combined. The intern took a step back, but halted in momentary confusion when Mabel offered her the lollipop. She took the candy skull automatically, and then shrieked as Mabel---tiny, deceptively delicate Mabel---made a blur of a movement with her foot and Penny tumbled across her shoulders. Whistling, Mabel walked toward the back door and out into the alley, wearing Penny around her neck like a scarf. Through the window, Sylvie watched as her assistant calmly threw the intern into the dumpster. As a stream of profanity drifted from the piles of rubbish--most of which, incidentally, was all the ingredients Penny had purposely wasted--Mabel returned to the kitchen. "I'll be off, then," she said, collecting her bag and coat from their hook. "Have a good night," Sylvie returned serenely. As Mabel passed her, without turning her head or altering her expression, their hands fleetingly clasped. The door swung closed, leaving Sylvie alone with Dominic in a lovely, clean kitchen, while her former intern made a third cross attempt to clamber from the trash.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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“He's clearly not suited to the public rigors of this role. Encouraging the delusions of a mentally ill---" Johnny had finally reached his limit. "That's it." Releasing Rosie, he walked to the door and pulled it open. "Your Highness. Lancier. Get out." Sylvie couldn't repress an instinctive snort at the look on the duchess's face. Every affronted, outraged GIF in history had just come to life in this room. If the Prince of Wales never had a child, it was possible that the Duchess of Albany could one day become Queen Consort. At the very least, she would hopefully much sooner become Johnny's mother-in-law. He did not give one single shit. "Out," he said again, his entire demeanor brooking no opposition. The duchess was the most stereotypical type of bully. When faced with a dose of her own medicine, she retreated. With a malevolent glare at the offspring who'd foisted this man on her.”

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Book:Battle Royal
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