Chapter 3
ELARA
The door to Gaetan’s Boulangerie slammed, taking the smell of ash and Elara’s hopes for the future with it.
For a long moment, she couldn’t force herself to move.
It’s how your mother ended up dead.
Gaetan might have been right. Elara wasn’t satisfied with the way things were, and she craved a new tomorrow like she craved decadent, mind-bending treats.
And sure, she might’ve ended up in the wrong company a time or two, but it wasn’t the reason her mother was gone.
That honor went to an entirely different, foolish belief.
The telltale whispers of a curious crowd surrounded her.
You know who she is, right?
Corinne’s girl.
I would’ve thought she’d learned her lesson.
“Well, I haven’t.” Elara spun around. “I’m a Rousseau; what do you expect?”
She’d thrown the name out in spite, but she hadn’t expected the crowd to physically recoil from it. Any pity she’d seen was replaced with fear.
“Move!” The crowd parted for her. “Show’s over.”
If it weren’t for her last name, the crowd would’ve heralded her a hero. Powerful magie wasn’t something the Restes saw often, and when someone managed to beat the odds and learn it, they gathered like moths to the flame.
But not for Elara.
Not for a Rousseau.
Even if she managed to make a life across the Joyaux, it would haunt her there too.
Most civilians didn’t know all the rebels, but they certainly kept the ringleader—Corinne Rousseau—in the front of their minds.
Four years ago, she and her band of terrorists had risen up and, unsuccessfully, attacked the Senate, an austere marble eyesore atop the highest hill where it could be seen from every quarter.
A building of power where the Counseil des Sept doled out laws and regulations.
Except their original target, the Souverains, hadn’t been in the meeting hall that night. Instead, the only people the rebels managed to kill were themselves, a few Senate guards, and a gathering of Directeurs who’d occupied the room instead.
Only a handful of Rebels, Elara’s mother included, managed to escape.
The vicious attack sent a shock wave through the city, and the aristocracy cried for justice.
Police descended upon the Restes in full force. People disappeared from their beds, never to be seen again. Buildings burned during searches for supposed rebel sympathizers. Entire families were slaughtered.
It was enough to cause someone in the Restes to break.
Elara’s mother and a handful of the escaped rebels had been found laid out in The Market, throats slit. Their blood coursing through the cracks of the cobblestones was a message: Enough. Leave us alone.
It barely worked. The murders and disappearances diminished, but arrests continued to rise. The curfew never lifted, and access to quality food mysteriously vanished. The Restes was never the same. People retreated to their tenements and avoided gathering, too afraid of each other and the police.
At first, Elara hadn’t believed one of their own could’ve slit her mother’s throat. They’d eaten her food, delighted in her magie. They’d loved her.
But the treatment Elara had endured these last four years had been enlightening. People who’d once doted on her and given her pretty ribbons now turned from her.
Fernand had crept into that absence of affection. He’d sharpened her rage into something dangerous and turned her and the other lost children who’d idolized the rebels into a new family.
Now she was jobless, and the thought of returning to those piled-up eviction notices in her apartment made her sick.
She hooked a right down a crooked bend.
The architects of Société des Arts Visuels hadn’t put any effort into the construction of the Restes.
All innovation had gone into the elegant chateaus in Galerie.
A neighborhood with wide-open street corners, sprawling parks filled with trees and flowers, and restaurants.
Real restaurants that served decadent pastries and sumptuous meals rather than the bare necessities for survival.
After that, the architects moved into the districts reserved for the wealthy, both in name and power: La Diamant and Belleplace.
Elara had visited Belleplace once as a child because it was directly north of the Restes, and her mother could get quality ingredients if she wore her best Professionnelle dress and charmed the grocer well enough.
Places like the Restes and Fumée quarters were for industry—at least that’s what the Souverains had declared centuries ago. Those quarters would be the home of progress, the backbone to keep the city running.
Well, the city’s back was breaking. The Restes was cramped with deteriorating tenements. People were packed in so tight the bricks were beginning to buckle, folding in on one another like the bones of the overworked people who called them home.
Elara kept to her path despite the pain shooting up her tired legs.
It meant passing by the rubble of one of those ruined tenements. Charred beams collapsed inward like splintered bones. The smoke and ash had long since cleared, but the scorch marks up the bricks remained.
The police had set fire to it in the weeks after the attack—the family inside accused of harboring rebel fugitives.
Her mother had agreed to give herself up that night, but someone came for her first.
The next alley dead-ended at the face of an abandoned shop.
The last rain hadn’t been kind to the roof, which looked close to collapse. Elara shuffled a few fallen shingles against the cobblestones, only to freeze at the glistening rivulets in the grout.
It was rain, she knew that, but it was hard not to erase the image of blood.
Unable to find her mother, who’d been hiding for weeks, Elara had run out in search of her only to find an unusually large crowd in The Market. When they saw her, they shuffled away, treating her like the plague rather than the orphan she had just become.
The rest of the evening was a collection of images and sounds: a piercing wail, the pain of the street as she collapsed to tuck her mother close, warm blood, sickening gurgles.
It was Fernand who scooped her up and carried her away when the corpse grew cold.
No one would save her now.
Her own fault, really. If her mother’s death had taught her one thing, it was to trust no one.
The rebellion hadn’t failed by accident.
They’d been betrayed by one of their own. Someone on the inside who’d sold them out to the Counseil.
When Fernand’s last scheme ended with half their friends in prison, she knew his rebel cause would face a similar fate. She’d applied for Arts Culinaires—a way out, and an homage to her mother.
Corinne Rousseau had been the Restes’s most prized baker not only because she was kind and generous, but because she’d fought and scraped for every success.
The day she’d beaten the Restes odds and become a Professionnelle?
Even the neighborhoods across the Joyaux heard the Restes celebrate.
It took a rigorous audition to make it into a Société—a process of bringing in several tests of your skill to a board of Directeurs.
For Elara, it had been truth-telling tarts, a cake that changed your mood with each layer, and eclairs that increased luck.
It had been the most difficult test of her life, not only as a test of her skill, but a test of her patience.
The Directeurs had recognized her name and immediately thrown her out.
She’d returned.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Until she’d broken down and begged them. She only wanted to bake. They only needed to make her an Aspirant, and she’d be happy.
Elara had left with a title and sore pride.
She hadn’t known they’d take her offer literally. In the last year, she’d gone before the Directeurs to try and rank up with no luck.
Elara touched the front pocket of her apron, where her mother’s recipe book had lived all morning. The cover was stained and the edges soft from age and use. Her mother had spent years crafting everything from mood-lightening custards to muscle-strengthening baguettes.
But her direction changed after ranking up.
She couldn’t overlook droves of hungry children begging at her door, so she collected like-minded fools.
The rebels had met in places like this: cafés and bistros where they could recklessly shout declarations over wine and forge plans for a new tomorrow.
Elara had met Gaetan during those meetings.
Too young to help the rebels, she was relegated to the kitchen, where Gaetan prepared meals for their gathering crew.
It’s weak, he’d told her once as she fumbled with a dough ball. Stretch it like this, until it’s thin enough to see light through.
It’ll break, she’d protested.
Then it’s not strong enough yet.
He’d walked away before the bombing and spared himself the murderer’s knife. He’d supported the people—not some impulsive decision made by a bunch of drunk fools with far-fetched dreams of rebellion.
She removed a square paper from the back of her mother’s recipe book. The edges were soft from years of being folded and refolded, and the page itself stained with coffee rings, oil, and charcoal smears.
Elara smoothed it open against her chest.
Her mother had sketched the building with a clumsy hand and a keen eye on the possibilities. New pillars, clean glass, enough tables for artists to gather. When Elara had found it at five, she’d added the purple coloring and gold trim. She’d even added ideas for new desserts.
Her mother hadn’t been angry. Instead, she’d placed Elara on the counter with a fresh stick of charcoal, and they dreamed of the rest together.
The largest mark on the blueprint ruined everything. Elara stroked the ruddy splotch, which had once been bright red. Corinne had carried this dream with her, even on the night she’d died.
This hadn’t been the end for Elara.
And losing her job wouldn’t be the end now.
If Gaetan didn’t want to risk his dingy shop to help her, she would find another way.
And as if summoned, that way appeared.