Chapter 17
Sorcerers traveled with their homes. Their dwellings served as their altars—the very core of their magic—stabilizing their power. Without them, a sorcerer's magic dwindled faster, leaving them vulnerable.
ARAWN
“With clothes like these, I’ll stand out… and not in a good way!” Lempicka grumbled, tucking her pink hair under the hood of the cloak I had conjured for her.
She waved the brown sleeves, far too long for her, swallowing her hands whole. Then she pouted. But those were the conditions. If she wanted to accompany me, she had to avoid attention—and take that broom, even if she held it as if it were a dead rat.
“I’ve no desire to reduce a market to ashes or drown it in blood because of you,” I cut flatly.
I already knew what we would find there. Vermin. Charlatans. Well-bottom sorcerers. My tolerance was low, especially for fools.
“No one ever said violence was a solution.”
Too naive. I shot her a pointed look, but her attention had already drifted toward our means of travel, parked in the middle of the forest.
“A flying carriage?” she exclaimed, eyes glittering with wonder.
Technically, it was no carriage. It was a tower. One of my towers. I had torn it from the castle and enchanted it to float. I opened the door for her. “Sorcerers travel with their homes. You’ll see others of the same kind.”
She slipped inside the confined space, wedging the broom awkwardly against the wall. I followed, folding my legs into the cramped quarters, careful not to brush against her. The tower had never been made for two. It had only ever carried me.
“I still don’t see why I need this broom,” she muttered.
“I enchanted it for you.” I crossed my arms, regretting this journey already, my mood darkening as the tower rose into the sky. “If something goes wrong, you’ll use it to escape.”
Lempicka lifted her eyes toward me, her cheeks coloring faintly. “Oh, so it’s… like a gift?”
“No,” I replied too quickly.
She pressed her lips together, and I wondered if I had offended her. Humans seemed attached to possessions. What did I know? I had never received any. I had never given any.
The tower floated above the clouds and the mist. Tiny frozen flakes shattered against the glass as a ray of sunlight pierced through the frost. I instinctively drew back.
She did not move. Her skin caught the light, glittering like a rain of diamonds.
My breath stalled. I tightened my mask and pulled up my hood, trying to shut out the sweet, disorienting scent that assaulted me.
This journey was going to be endless.
The tower began its descent, skimming the jagged red cliffs of the mountain as the sorcerers’ market unfolded beneath us.
I exhaled, relieved, as we neared the crowded port.
Lempicka had pressed herself to the glass.
Flying ships docked, their towering masts swaying in the air.
Some sorcerers flaunted their power by traveling with their entire homes, while others had nothing more than a single tent, carried aloft by disciples, trudging along the same paths humans walked on foot.
I opened the tower door mid-flight, steering it with precision into a docking hollow beneath the rocks.
But before I could speak a single warning about the dangers of the market, the confectioner slipped her arm into mine.
Her eyes widened. My gaze dropped to the point of contact.
Her lips pressed together. My pulse spiked, hammering against my temples. Neither of us said a word.
Measured steps, back straight, chin lifted, I led her into the chaos of the market.
A sea of bodies jostled, and merchants bellowed.
The air was thick with scorched herbs and unnamable spices.
Street duels cracked with bursts of magic while laughter spilled from taverns carved into the mountain, where drunken sorcerers, drunk on cheap sucre d’or brews, nearly toppled from rope bridges.
A cacophony. I should have brought earplugs before coming here. “It isn’t… particularly refined.”
Instead, she was enchanted.
“It’s so alive!” An explosion split the sky, showering it with color. She startled and darted behind me, eyes wide. “What was that?”
“Fireworks,” I said. “An imitation of shooting stars. We can improve on matter, but not create it. Look at the ashes falling—it’s nothing but dirt, transformed.”
We pressed on through the stalls, and I pointed out the trinkets—love philters, domestic charms, fabrics soaked with minor properties—all mediocre, made by apprentices. She halted at the long line beneath the request tent.
“That is how the Wish Witch became the most coveted in the kingdoms. Your kind always wants more, but here, they’re only charlatans. The weakest sorcerers become merchants. The others serve kings or replace them. All blind to the truth that magic always has a price.”
“Yet magic can be beautiful too. It depends on who uses it.”
“So naive,” I said, despite myself, with a smile.
I barely had a blink to react. Two sorcerers, arms full of boxes, barreled across our path, too fast, too close. She would not move in time. I seized her wrist and yanked her hard against me. She collided into my chest.
A burning shiver detonated beneath my skin, crawling through my veins like an uncontrolled spell. Heat radiated from the confectioner’s heart, her body pressed tight against mine. Her hair released pheromones, sweet as spun sugar, choking the breath from me more surely than any suffocation curse.
She looked up at me, our faces too close, her lips parted as if to speak or to breathe my air.
I could not drag my eyes from hers. Caramel and amber, but not like the Cursed—like golden apples.
Her skin held a human glow again, less crystalized.
In a swift motion, I released her, stepping back to force distance.
“Stay close to me,” I ordered, my voice rougher than I wanted.
“T-Thank you,” she stammered, retreating quickly. Her gaze caught at once by a stall bursting with sugar-stars, crowned with a plaque: Best Confectioner of the Realm.
I followed her with all the enthusiasm of a man dragged to his own execution. When I leaned closer, the scent of coconut and citrus peel hit my nose. My brow furrowed. The candy was dull, its surface flat, refusing the light.
“Can I taste one?”
“Wait.”
She had already snatched up a star. I caught her wrist and the candy, without even glancing at the vendor: a puffed-up parasite in red satin and stacked heels. I crushed the star between my fingers. Inside, streaks of gray-violet. My gloves creaked. Sucremort. Disguised. Masked.
“A problem?” the confectioner asked.
Lempicka glared, lifting the ruined sweet. “How dare you sell this? This is unworthy of a true confectioner!”
“And what would a girl like you know?” he sneered, adjusting his oiled hair. “Confectionery demands more than a little goodwill. Women don’t have hearts strong enough to master every sugar.”
“You sell poison and dare call it sugar, and then you insult my confectioner? All I see is a rat without magic, hiding behind rusted trophies.”
I took his trophy and forced my magic through my palms. The metal shrieked, twisting in on itself, collapsing into a warped, molten black mass, the engraved name swallowed by scorched bronze. I dropped it on the wooden table, splitting it in two.
The confectioner recoiled, clutching his vest, his face pale and damp.
“A-Arawn!” Lempicka choked.
“He didn’t protest. He knows he didn’t deserve it. Come.”
“It’s you!” the man cried, falling to his knees. “You’re the creator! The illustrious Wish Witch—”
I seized Lempicka’s hand and pulled her away before he could finish.
“Arawn, wait! What did he mean?”
Releasing her hand, I swallowed, continuing through the stalls. I didn’t have the strength to confess. Nor the stomach to see disgust form on her face. Not today.
“It doesn’t matter. He was rambling nonsense. The heart of a woman isn’t weak, and I’ll prove it,” she declared, rising on her toes. “I’ve been thinking that I want a traveling sweetshop!”
A short, harsh laugh escaped me. “That doesn’t exist.”
She raised a brow. “Sorcerers move their houses, don’t they? And my mentor’s shop…” She faltered, her throat tightening. I noticed, because she had that way of smiling sadly, though her eyes could not lie. “She led me all the way to your realm.”
I nodded. “A traveling sweetshop… That’s a beautiful dream.”
She lifted her little finger toward me. “My confections will make people happy, so happy they’ll forget the ones made with sucremort. They’ll never want them again.”
I stiffened, her words striking like needles beneath my skin. I hooked her pinky with mine, sealing the promise. “And when all this is over, I promise you sucremort will vanish.”
She laughed, light, as if refusing to give weight to what I had just admitted. “You’re not responsible for all the world’s misfortunes, you know?”
I swallowed hard and followed her from the corner of my eye as she was drawn to other stalls.
Her fingers brushed against a roll of lavender tulle.
When the price was announced, she waved her hands to politely decline, her attention already stolen away by a tiny bell that chimed differently depending on the emotions of its guests.
Without her noticing, I marked every object her fingers lingered on, even for the briefest instant, and paid for them.
She, too absorbed by each new trinket, noticed nothing.
I repeated to myself that it was for the sake of our cooperation: a happy confectioner was a willing one, and a willing confectioner would prepare the elixir meant to kill me.
But the problem came at the last stall. A woman with a clover-shaped birthmark on her forehead offered me a silk scrunchie. An enchanted trinket that tied itself and shifted its color to match the wearer’s attire.
The merchant leaned closer, a sly smile at the corner of her lips. “Oh, a man in love could be even more generous than that.”