All We Hunger For

Chapter 1

ELARA

Elara knew better than to hope, yet there she stood within a crowd of other doe-eyed fools gawking at the same flyer. They’d been pasted around the Quarter this morning, and the crowds amassed because magie like this rarely made it south across the Joyaux.

Upon shiny white paper, an eerie likeness of the late Souverain of Arts Culinaires smiled and waved at her audience as if she hadn’t died last week.

Like all Souverains in the Counseil des Sept, she was decked entirely in white: shimmering dress, dyed hair, long eyelashes, and manicured nails.

When she wasn’t preening for the crowd, she recited the information at the bottom of the poster.

“The time has come to host the Objet d’Art Contest!” she called. Children in the front row squealed, clapping their hands at the rare magie that made the painting move. “With my unfortunate passing, a successor must be chosen, and it could be you!”

Elara walked away. She’d heard it a dozen times already that morning. The posters were everywhere, and they droned on about the same bullshit that always ended in the same useless question:

Will you be one of the Favored?

No.

Elara would not be chosen to compete, and she knew better than to let the stubborn pang of disappointment break her focus. She had a more sensible task ahead of her.

Turning a street corner manned by an Anespérer officer dressed in black, she thumbed the three coins in her dress pocket. Four years and Elara still couldn’t walk past them without hunching her shoulders or averting her gaze.

The narrow street stretched between leaning tenements and emptied out into what used to be the heart of the Restes neighborhood—The Market.

There were stalls to represent most of the seven Sociétés that ran Anespérer, though the Restes didn’t see much Arts Spectacle yellow, Arts Littéraires purple, or Arts Humains red.

People who lived in the Restes Quarter south of the Joyaux River couldn’t break into a Société even despite some being magie-abled, leaving them for more undesirable work—sewage, laundry, garbage.

Jobs the rich deemed “talentless,” which really meant work they knew the city needed but didn’t want to dirty their own hands doing.

Those jobs were noble and necessary, but they paid next to nothing.

Once upon a time, five years ago to be exact, The Market flourished. People shopped, gathered at crates to play cards, and bartered with homemade goods, and children played while the neighborhood kept watch.

Now it was flooded with more officers than customers.

Elara made her way past the market’s only artist from Arts Visuels, who poured molten metal along the edges of a broken wine bottle, fusing it with scraps of other shattered glass. With a breath, it cooled and the stained-glass bird flitted to life, alighting upon the artist’s shoulder.

The largest line was to the silver canopy of Arts Manufacturiers, where iron sang against steel.

The blacksmith’s hammer rained sparks with every blow as he worked a wrench back into shape.

Soot-stained workers in bleached coveralls waited for their tools so they could return to the factories in the adjacent Fumée Quarter.

Elara ducked beneath a canopy made of sickly-looking squash vines. Jeanine, the Arts Nécessaire farmer who tended these crops, shouted, “Squash grown with magie to fill the belly for hours. Onions that keep their flavor in any broth all season!”

As a duo of officers moved by, Elara ducked behind another customer and plucked a basket of strawberries from the shelf. They were too small, too green, too pathetic, and most certainly not worth a single som.

She had no choice. “I’ll take these.”

Jeanine’s voice answered, “Sure thing, dear. That’ll be…”

The customer moved away, taking Elara’s hiding place with him.

Jeanine’s wrinkled face tightened. “No.”

“Jeanine,” Elara muttered, eyes on the guards, “it’s just me.”

“And you bring trouble. Like your boyfriend.”

Jeanine didn’t even drop her voice. The police hadn’t noticed, but they would soon if she kept squawking.

Elara’s last boyfriend, like some stains, couldn’t be removed with time and scrubbing alone.

They had to be scorched out like gunk at the bottom of an oven.

Unfortunately, Fernand was the most stubborn mess she’d ever had to try and burn out of her life.

“I haven’t seen him in months,” she argued.

“Spreading ideas like the fool he is, he went and got my Colin arrested.” Jeanine jabbed her finger in the air to an empty stall down the line. “Got it in his head he had the right to perform magie without Société approval.”

The guards had stopped to light a smoke.

Colin was every bit the opposite of Jeanine. He’d been bright-eyed and desperate for change, which made him an easy target for Fernand Travers. He made his schemes for a better world sound charming, easy. But rebellions took more than that. So much more.

“I’m sorry,” Elara said and meant it, “but I’m not with him anymore.”

“Sure. And what’s this about you getting fired?”

Elara’s gut sank. “How did you know?”

Jeanine scoffed. “Everyone in the Restes makes it their business to keep up with Corinne Rousseau’s girl.”

Like hounds who finally caught her scent, the police lowered their cigarettes. One man, with a severe jawline and more than enough scars on his face to tell Elara he never backed down from a fight, cocked a brow, then whispered to his partner.

It didn’t matter if Elara was innocent or not. There were other people and bigger mistakes in her past that could never be purged.

Before the police could investigate, she placed the strawberries back, shot Jeanine a strained smile, then ducked away.

Beyond the humiliation, the worst part was she couldn’t defend herself with the truth.

She had no idea why she’d been fired. The head baker had released her at the end of her shift and refused to answer any questions as he shoved her out the door.

No matter. She didn’t need the overpriced fruit anyway. Ingredients didn’t make a recipe; chefs did.

She followed the smell of sourdough along the river all the way to the open bay doors of the bakery.

Inside the low-ceilinged kitchen, three bakers shuffled around overcrowded shelves lined with dirty bowls in a quiet dance of shaping, loading, and unloading swollen loaves and crisp baguettes.

This week marked the longest she’d been away from a kitchen, and she was screaming to get back in.

“Shop’s around the front,” groused one of the bakers, a tall man in a dingy brown suit.

“I actually have an appointment.”

His head shot up, eyes narrowed as sweat dripped down his brow. “You from the bank?”

“No. I’m Elara R—” Nope. Not making that mistake again. “I’m looking for work.”

The man whipped back to his busy station, upturning bannetons of dough onto a too-heavily-floured surface. The little mounds rapidly lost their shape as he tossed them too early onto the baking tray.

“Those need a bit more work.” She moved inside and took one of the dough balls in hand.

It was much too soft, but some of the structure could be saved with a bit of tucking and rolling.

Quickly, she stretched the edges, flipping them to the center, then turning the whole thing over onto a clean surface.

With a few quick tucks, the dough came together.

“It won’t save the crumb structure entirely, but—”

“Does it look like I have the time to give a damn about crumb structure?” He snatched the dough back. “I got a line filled with hungry customers wrapped around the street, and all I have is this shit to pass off as bread.”

The other two bakers had stopped their work to watch.

Their judgment stifled the room.

Elara breathed deep, trying to find her way back to the reason she was here today. She wasn’t here to prove how much she knew about baking to this man. It didn’t matter what he thought.

“Gaetan doesn’t have room on the payroll for anyone, much less for a show-off who hasn’t got a clue about the real world.”

To hell with breathing. “Listen here, you piece of—”

“He’s right,” another, familiar voice rumbled. Elara faced Gaetan, who stood just inside the doorway to the front of house. “You’re just like your mother, an idealistic, insufferable know-it-all.”

“I’m nothing like her,” Elara retorted primly. “There’s not an optimistic bone in my body.”

Gaetan’s laugh rumbled, as comforting as summer thunder. Just like that, the tension melted away from her shoulders. She was safe.

It had been months, maybe longer, since she’d seen him this close.

His eyes were shining, and his cheeks were red.

He reeked of wine and sweat beneath his dirty Arts Culinaires uniform that had once been beige, and there was far more gray in his copper beard than she remembered.

Personal hygiene had never been high on his list, but this? This was bad.

“Little early to hit the bottle, isn’t it?” she asked.

“And you’re too young to be so judgmental.” He leaned against the counter. “And too jobless. How’d that happen?”

“No idea.”

“Ellie…”

She tossed her hands in the air. “It’s true! They paid me for my last shift and sent me on my way.”

“And now you want back in to have a shot at being one of the Favored?”

Because you had to be working in your discipline in order to be considered for the Objet d’Art.

As if on cue, Souverain Lisette Plouffe’s voice filled the bakery. The three baking assistants stopped their work to gawk at the poster above the prep station.

“The time has come to host the Objet d’Art Contest! With my unfortunate passing, a successor must be chosen, and it could be you!”

“Please,” Elara huffed. “In the history of Objet d’Arts, no one from the Restes has ever become Souverain. Ever.”

One assistant shushed her.