Chapter 6
Every curse demands a price from its caster. Each spell draws slowly upon the fears and sorrows dormant in the heart of its bearer.
LEMPICKA
When I opened my eyes, it felt as if my eyelids had frozen under a layer of frost.
I tried to sit up, but my body cracked against the dark sheets, as if shards of glass were lodging themselves into my veins. Even the air tasted of spent incense and dead rain.
Click. Clack.
The sound split the silence. My gaze slowly climbed.
The Mist Sorcerer sat upright in a green velvet armchair.
The light from the vine-shaped chandelier hanging from the ceiling didn’t even dare touch the sharp edges of his face.
In his hands, he turned over a lighter, black as liquid ink, with a worn charm dangling from its beak like a scrap of rag.
With each turn between his fingers, a wisp of mist coiled around his wrist before vanishing at once.
“You’re awake at last,” he murmured, his voice both soft and cruel. “They say sleep is restorative. It would seem it wasn’t enough.”
I had barely managed to half sit when my breath caught hard in my throat, like biting down on a lump of hard caramel too fast. Behind him, the windows wept with a haze of breath, and pressed against the glass were black shapes—shadows drawn long like nightmares, their red eyes locked into the glass.
Chouquette bristled, leaped onto the windowsill, and hissed, held back by éclair. Beneath the bed, a rustle followed by a sheepish cough. Aignan, no doubt.
“They’re the Spirits, mademoiselle.” The voice came without warning. A blue flame floated near the bed. “Normally, they’re nocturnal and hide under the lake during the day. But it seems your arrival has disrupted their habits. Do not be afraid, the master has ordered them not to devour you.”
“If they obey,” the sorcerer added.
“Pardon me, I haven’t even introduced myself properly. Yeun, butler to the not-so-terrible Mist Sorcerer, will-o’-the-wisp, and descendant of the Fae.”
I blinked as the will-o’-the-wisp bowed. “Of the Fae?”
“Indeed.” Yeun shimmered faintly, shifting from one form to the other. His floating flame form briefly gave way to a smaller, winged version of his human self. “Tell me, which form do you prefer I take?”
“I—I don’t mind. They’re all fine.”
He immediately transformed back into his human appearance and nodded. I swallowed, glancing down at my fingers. They glimmered faintly, like the sucre d'or beginning to crystallize. Beneath my skin, fine golden veins pulsed.
“What am I… exactly?”
Yeun sighed. The kind of sigh you reserve for truths too long to explain. “In a way, you’re like sugar extracted from golden apples.”
Sucre d'or.
A smile brushed my lips. It wasn’t the worst fate. After all, being a confectioner had always been my whole life.
“I know it can be frightening…” Yeun began, only to cut himself short. “Mademoiselle? Are you all right?”
“This is excellent news!”
For once, I didn’t feel so pitiful, but full of hope. I would not let the Wish Witch steal Nyla, my shop, and now my heart. I’d show her what I was made of.
“Excellent?” Yeun squawked.
“If you don’t break free of it, you’ll lose your soul by the first harvest of winter,” the sorcerer said, rising from his chair like a knife slowly drawn from its sheath.
His steps were silent, his shadow swallowing the room.
“You’ll lose what you love most. Your heart will freeze, piece by piece.
The cracks in your soul will widen with every failure, and those breaches will fester.
You’ll wander without end, rotting everything in your wake, until you become pure malice. Cursed for eternity.”
No words of comfort. No softness. Just a sentence delivered with implacable detachment, without a glimmer of hope.
“It’s true I’m not good at much. I’m rather ordinary, and I know nothing about magic.”
The sorcerer gave a muffled laugh. “And that’s a good thing because…?”
“Because the only thing I do know how to do is work the sucre d'or!” The words burst from me like a burn. “I’m a confectioner, so if there’s one challenge I can rise to, it’s that one. How do I break it?”
He stepped toward the window. The Spirits scattered, and an orange light slipped between the curtains.
“You underestimate the power of a curse.”
He fixed his gaze on me. But it was no longer a gaze—it was a pale amethyst blade, glinting like a stalactite laid against my throat. Cold as steel. He looked as though he might cut me in two just to see what I was hiding inside.
“You’ll have to mend your heart, Confectioner.”
Mend my heart?
Outside, a crack shook the tall trees. I swallowed. The forest, as one body, had bent. Branches twisted, trunks tore from the earth under the weight of something gigantic rushing through it.
“Yeun will show you the orchard. If you can pick the apples before midnight, I’ll agree to a bargain,” the sorcerer said, his hand tightening.
I jumped to my feet, my bones cracking like hardened sugar. Did he really think I was that incapable? For a confectioner, picking an apple was as easy as it got! “And what tells me I can trust you?”
He smiled, an actual smile, but so cold it froze my blood. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dissolved in the mist.”
He passed by me, his coat lifting with the motion, the air streaking with threads of black ink spilling from the seams. He stopped at the door.
“Yeun. Watch her. She’s been followed.”
“By what? And why did the Wish Witch curse me? You can’t just—”
The door slammed behind him. Outside, the mist thickened at once, coating the windows in opalescent frost. I jumped out of bed. The floor crunched beneath my feet like a crust of broken caramel.
“Don’t go out,” Yeun pleaded. “The castle is protected.”
“Let her,” Aignan growled, emerging from under the bed, fur disheveled. “That blasted witch cursed her, and that stale-biscuit excuse for a sorcerer dares to threaten her? Like I was saying to that winged nincompoop, I—”
“I told you my master can’t transform you!” Yeun snapped. “You’re a lamb! A low-rank Cursed, not a sorcerer!”
“Mustache butler, have you ever seen a lamb that talks? No! So if your sorcerer’s so powerful, he’ll turn me into a ferocious beast so I can attack that cursed witch and—”
I left them bickering and set my palm on the door handle. The air was heavier, as if the mist itself were trying to slip inside. It left a metallic taste in the air, as sharp as a blade’s stroke.
“Why did she curse me, Yeun?” I breathed.
He looked down. He wouldn’t tell me. Perfect. I’d rip it from him myself. I opened the door.
“Mademoiselle!” Yeun cried.
I rushed down the corridors as if the walls might close in. The frames followed me with their gaze. Some empty. Others blurred, as though their occupants had fled without warning. No warmth. No color. A tomb disguised as a huge tower. I ached for my shop. There, everything was warm, vibrant.
I hurried down a staircase of dark wood, streaked with purple veins. Beneath my palm, a pulse, almost imperceptible, like a sleeping heart. The staircase coiled around itself, as if the castle had been built around a giant tree whose roots and branches had turned into hallways and walkways.
I pulled with all my strength to open the great door, and a rush of mist whipped against my face. It had the thickness of sea fog, but the bitter taste of burnt sugar. If I followed it, it would lead me to the sorcerer.
“Mademoiselle! The mist keeps unwanted visitors out. If it’s like this, it means—”
I ran through the whistling of the trees. Moss crept over the gnarled roots, clinging to the trunks like an old velvet coat. The natural arches were streaked with purple leaves, shimmering with amethyst glints.
If my curse was like the sucre d'or, then it hated extreme temperatures—especially humidity, like in this place. That was probably why every inch of my body had crystallized. Now, my fingers could finally move, my legs respond, but with every motion, it felt as though my skin was cracking.
But golden apples can also rot from the inside.
The trees suddenly turned bare and twisted, like long, bony hands stretched toward the sky. Chouquette darted beside me, her long tails streaming behind her.
“You never listen, do you?” I muttered, glaring at her toothy grin.
I slowed, motioning for her to keep quiet. The thick bark of the trees was veined with purple, as if they were bleeding. I pressed myself against a trunk.
A colossal creature rose above the forest. Its body was nothing but shifting darkness, writhing like a nest of snakes, its skin pierced with countless yellow eyes. Facing it, the sorcerer did not move. His hands buried in his pockets, he regarded the monster with a disturbing calm.
“Zelda didn’t waste any time,” he said. “So this is what she’s sending now? A Cursed of Category Eight, perhaps?”
Zelda. So the Wish Witch had a name. And he pronounced it as one spits poison.
My heart hammered so hard I was sure the thing could hear it.
Why was he so calm in front of such a horror?
The Cursed let out a growl, a cavernous rattle that tore through the air.
Then it opened its gaping maw and spoke, in a voice thick with bile.
“Kill… the confectioner… and the traitor…”
I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. A mass of writhing, serpentine shapes tore free from its own body, lunging to engulf the sorcerer. But he pivoted with an unreal ease, hands still in his pockets, slipping out of reach with a mere shift of his body.
“If she thinks that’s enough to make me bend.”
He laughed. A laugh without joy, without warmth. Antlers grew from his back, and the fabric of his cloak transformed into silver swirls of mist, taking the shape of a moth’s wings. Spikes pierced through his shoulders, shifting into black thorns. I gasped. I hadn’t imagined it, that day in my shop.
“I’ll put an end to your suffering,” he said, his tone almost gentle.
The Cursed hissed—a thick, wet sound, like the death rattle of a hollow beast—and lunged at him. So did the sorcerer. It was madness. He couldn’t possibly win.
“Wait!” I shouted, bursting from my hiding place.
But I froze.
The sorcerer was no longer human.
His long and sinuous body was like that of a celestial dragon, covered in thorns and threaded with strands of shadow. Wings spread from his back, each beat scattering wisps of mist. His massive tail coiled around the Cursed, strangling its serpentine forms as they thrashed, trying to reform.
But it was his head that turned my blood to ice.
A majestic stag’s skull. Skeletal. Its long antlers curled like frozen roots. Then, with a disjointed snap of his jaw, he sank his fangs into the writhing flesh of the monster.
His gaze locked onto mine. I stepped back. His eyes were no longer violet, but two golden-amber furnaces, inhuman, hollow, pulsing slowly.
One beat of his wings. A whirlwind of wind and earth. Then the sorcerer rose, carrying the Cursed into a sky choked with mist. Branches snapped, and howls split the night, then abruptly fell silent.
I looked up just in time to see the Cursed fall. Serpentine appendages slammed into the ground around me, still writhing in a desperate, useless attempt to find their master. Its gaping maw opened in one last surge, ready to swallow me whole.
Chouquette leaped in front of me. Her tails spread wide, but against a Cursed of this magnitude, she stood no chance.
“Chouquette, no!”
A cavernous roar split the night. The sorcerer dove, fangs plunging into the Cursed’s chest, ripping out its heart like bones snapping.
A rain of silver ash spilled from the monster as it collapsed at my feet in its final spasm.
Its serpentine forms stilled, petrifying little by little into chunks of black stone.
A single tear slid from its empty sockets before it cracked apart into an inert mass of rock.
I panted. The stag dragon turned toward me. His breath made the air shiver. Wisps of shadow peeled off him. Tiny translucent moths fluttered at the tips of his bone antlers, winking out one by one into the darkness.
So that was it. His curse.
I took a step forward and raised my hand, as if it could bridge the distance between us. “You’re…”
The words stuck in my throat. I wanted to tell him I understood. But he dissolved into the night, melting into the darkness.
“Mademoiselle Lempicka!” Yeun’s breathless voice cut through the silence. He ran up, collapsing at my side.
“His curse,” I murmured. “It’s different from mine.”
“That’s because the master sacrificed his heart and most of his soul. He wanted to become more than human, but became less.”
I nodded. My legs still trembled, but I forced them to hold. Tears welled, hot and stinging. I brushed them away with a sleeve. A fragile heart had never healed anything.
“Okay.”
Yeun blinked. “You’re… not afraid? I thought you’d be—”
“Of course I am. But I’ve seen worse. And so has he,” I said, digging my nails into my palm. “Take me to the orchard.”
The Mist Sorcerer might be my last hope.
But maybe… I was his too.