Blinding Light: A Sleeping Beauty and Snow Queen Remix

Chapter 26

A/N: Viviana Morales and Princess Isabelle Ricosta.^^

Five months later...

Viviana giggled, ducking as the eggs splattered over her head.

"Preisha! Cael! No fighting with the ingredients!" Isabelle groaned, trying to suppress a smile of her own.

They were baking in Viviana's kitchen, because Viviana had insisted the royal chefs would never leave them alone to experiment in the art that was baking cookies. Isabelle had enthusiastically agreed, only because she wished to see the world outside of her castle, even if it was only a suburb outside of Betejuencos, Nazeen's capital city.

Viviana swore one day she'd take Isabelle to see it all.

Viviana retrieved some new eggs, holding one out to Isabelle, whose nose wrinkled as she struggled to remember.

"Un hueso?" She guessed. [A bone?]

Viviana bit her lip to keep from giggling. "Not quite Princess. Un huevo." [An egg.]

She had been attempting to teach Princess Isabelle little pieces of Spanish, one vocabulary word and grammar rule at a time. Princess Isabelle was actually doing quite well. Sometimes she just mixed-up words.

An infamous example was the time she mixed up zapatos (shoes) and pescado (cooked fish). Viviana was not quite sure how Isabelle had managed to mix them up, seeing as they sounded almost nothing alike, but it had been pretty funny to see the looks on Jeanette and Santiago's faces when their Princess had said she'd tried eating a new variety of shoe, and liked it.

Isabelle cracked the eggs into the mixer bowl, watching Viviana carefully.

"Entonces, añade la mantequilla y azucar cafe." Viviana said, making sure to enunciate the words and speak slowly so Isabelle could process. [Then, add the butter and brown sugar.]

"Add the butter and the sugar." Isabelle muttered, and Viviana gave her a thumbs up.

"You're getting the hang of this!" She cheered, and Isabelle beamed.

"Well, I do have an amazing teacher."

The front door opened and closed, and Jeanette walked in with her familiar at her heels.

"I smell baking!"

"We haven't even started the mixer yet, how can you possibly smell baking?" Viviana asked, shooing Lucian, Jeanette's familiar, away from the mixing bowl.

Lucian had shown up roughly three months ago, and he had greatly surprised Isabelle, who believed most familiars were small animals.

Lucian was a silver wolf with light green eyes and an average pitched voice. Viviana thought it was hilarious when Lucian and Cael would speak at the same time, because Cael was so much smaller than Lucian, but his voice was two times deeper.

Jeanette sat down at the counter and Lucian wandered over to sit at her feet, watching Preisha and Cael tumble through midair with interest.

"Where's Tiago?" Isabelle asked as she started the mixer. "I thought he'd show up for cookies."

Jeanette shrugged. "He's obsessed with some internship opportunity involving dream magic. I think he's in an interview for it right now."

"It's nice that he knows what he wants to do and isn't afraid to pursue it." Isabelle sighed, and Viviana knew why she was upset.

Isabelle's life at the moment was a chaotic mess that likely wasn't going to be fixed any time soon.

Ilsadora and Maldeena may have begrudgingly returned to the state of acquaintances, but their battles had left lasting scars on everyone around them.