Mila picked up the red food colouring and the vanilla extract and added to the large bowl, she added the contents in Angela's bowl to the butter mixture, adding the buttermilk, as well, to let Zayden stir it until it was a little bit thick and ready for baking.
Before the mixing of the ingredients, Mila had already readied the oven they used in baking.
Mila opened up a cupboard on the wall and brought out two pans for baking. One was heart shaped and the other was square. She divided the batter evenly amongst the two pans and put inside the wood-fire oven. The cake baked for about thirty minutes before Mila opened the oven, inserted a toothpick inside the square shaped cake and saw it came out clean. She put out the fire and the brought out the cake, allowing it to cool for some minutes before cutting it in triangular slices and placing on a plate. She handed it to Angela and Zayden.
"Oh my God! This smells so nice!" Angela salivated as the scent of the velvet cake wafted into her nostrils. It was so red and drool-worthy. She looked at Zayden who picked his off the plate and put in his mouth, he looked at her and nodded his head. She ate hers too. "Gosh! This is so good!!" Her voice came out muffled as food was inside.
"I trust you could do it, ya know?" Mila giggled and put cake in her mouth, relishing in the wonderful taste. "Won't you take home to your father?"
Angela shook her head, "Father doesn't do sweets. He won't eat the cake." She put the cake in her mouth, a small part remaining on her plate. Zayden was already finished with his.
"Okay." Mila wanted to ask her to take back to her stepsister, but she knew about the bad blood the two girls shared in that house. "Alright, I'll wrap this one in a foil. You can eat with your bodyguard on your way home, okay?" Angela nodded at Mila's question.
Zayden untied his apron and undid Angela's without her asking, and the latter paused her movements. They've finished cleaning the island, Mila was cleaning the grease off the oven so she didn't see them. Angela felt Zayden's finger brush her neck and she gulped, she felt him take his hand down to her back and also undid the tie there. "I'm finished." He said so close to her ear that had Angela almost jump.
She nodded and pulled away from him. "Thank you." She handed him the apron and he hung it on the coat hanger, they left the kitchen with Mila. "It's the hour of one, Nana. I don't want father to be worried."
"Of course, sweetheart. You should get going." She went back to the kitchen and brought the foiled cake and handed to Angela who put it in her bag. "Greet them for me, okay? Nana loves you." Mila kissed both Angela's cheeks and hugged her tight.
"I love you too, Nana. Tell papa I love him and I'll come next time." Mila's husband hadn't returned from work and she wondered why.
"Sure thing do, munchkin." She turned her gaze to Zayden who stood beside Angela and she squeezed his arm warmly, "Take care of her for me." She smiled and Zayden nodded. The lady and her bodyguard left the house and to the compound with Nana escorting them.
Angela and Zayden sat inside the carriage, in their usual position they sat as they went. She looked out of the window while he stared at her. "When you run out of your house, where do you go?" He watched her turn to face him then purse her lips.
"There's this lake. It's a small one, Meden." Meden was in the Land of The South. Zayden had never heard of it because he hardly stayed in Elyverde talk much of the South. "It's a magical lake, I used to go there with my mother every time." She said and looked down at her clasped hands atop her laps. "In the daytime, the lake shined blue, in the nighttime, it did purple. It is such an amazing thing, and even though I've gone there — counting accurately — five times since I remember, I'm usually always awestruck. You should come see it sometime." She told him with a smile and he returned it.
"I will. It sounds amazing." He told her and looked out of the window.
"Do you have siblings though?" Angela asked him and he shook his head. "Who did you stay with after you came back?"
"My uncle." Apparently, his uncle was the king of Kyrilia then and still now even, but he wasn't going to tell her that. "He was nice enough to take me in. I stayed with him, his wife and his daughter."
"Oh." Angela shook her head. That meant he had lived with his cousin sister. She wondered how beautiful she was. A thought or more like the devil on her left shoulder said to her mind,
Why do you care how beautiful she is? She's his cousin.
Relationships with cousins were never forbidden. She rolled her eyes as she replied the imaginary demon.
"What are you thinking?" Zayden pulled her out of the conversation she had with her demon. He had been watching her and when she rolled her eyes, amusement gleamed in his eyes.
"About what you like doing." She found the quickest most normal question possible. The question was normal, was it not?
"It won't make you roll your eyes." He chuckled when's she turned red. "I like drawing and painting." He started and Angela became very interested. She loved drawing too. She was good at it. "I'm good at archery, as well." This piqued her interest more and a gleam shone bright in her blue eyes.
"Really?" He nodded at her question. "Now I see why you caught the arrow so fast, you must be better than me." She giggled and he stared at her. She cleared her throat and opened her mouth to ask again; "Do you have siblings?" Her mind registered that she had already asked him that after it left her lips. But Zayden still replied anyway.
"No, princess. I don't."