Chapter 23 #2
“Oh… in that case, it’s fine, if—”
Before I could finish, Arawn ripped off his glove. His fingers were blackened, traced with dark veins like cursed rivers etched into his skin. His nails, long and sharp, gleamed with a black sheen, like claws.
“Now you understand,” he murmured, low and cutting.
I lifted my hand, palm open, facing his. The tips of my fingers were freckled with tiny shining burns, like ice cracking.
“You see this? Nyla called them confectioner’s kisses. I burned myself so many times she said they were marks of perseverance. I even grew to like them.” I smiled. “Yours are a sorcerer’s marks. You shouldn’t hide them. At least, they don’t bother me.”
He stared at his hand for a long moment, swallowed, then shoved his glove back on with a sharp motion. His fist clenched before he crushed the amethyst mushroom between his fingers. Fast. Precise. Merciless.
“Your mentor must have been a remarkable human.”
“You should use the spatula,” I advised, turning to my purple fruit puree to sprinkle in the crystallized sucre d'or. “And she was. She never raised her voice and taught me everything. Even if she didn’t show emotions easily, I know she cared for me.” I wiped my hands on my apron and squared my shoulders.
“Nyla died serving Zelda. Whatever she says about her, I refuse to believe it.”
“Zelda clings to confections because they’re all that’s left of her soul.
” Arawn ground the mushroom more slowly with the spatula now, his brows furrowed.
“Your mentor may have perished, but she saved her soul. There’s a legend that says after a confectioner’s death, if their heart is pure, they become an apple tree.
The taller the tree, the stronger its magic. ”
I tossed a handful of cranberries into my mix. “Nyla told me that story too. Thanks, let me—”
I reached for the spatula, but my fingers brushed his. His gaze lingered on me, as though honey were dripping from my face, which, given my curse, wasn’t entirely impossible. He seemed torn between letting the moment stretch or shattering it with a flick of his hand.
The ceiling decided for him with a groan. A chill swept through that crack. Whoever was up there knew how to make themselves heard when they wished. I cleared my throat, caught the spatula, and gripped it a little too tightly.
“Thank you… for your help,” I said, stirring the ingredients, focusing on the repetitive motion. “Zelda… What was she like with you?”
Arawn tensed almost imperceptibly, his shoulders rigid. “She found me.” He paced the kitchen like someone who didn’t know where to stand in a room too narrow. “I slaughtered anyone who stood in her way, never asking questions. With each transformation, I lost more of myself.”
My fingers curled, nails digging into my palms. “She used you. Just like she used Nyla.”
He lowered his head, narrowly avoiding a hanging bundle of herbs. His fingers skimmed the dried leaves with a child’s forbidden curiosity, as if even they might reject him.
“She may be a failure as a human,” he conceded, a subtle contempt in his voice. “But her mana is powerful. Which is both her strength and her weakness. Her body weakens with every use of her magic, and one day her bones will break.”
My hands, until then busy smoothing parchment onto the baking sheet, trembled. To me, Nyla had been a mother. Perhaps she had been that for him, too.
“Our mentors leave their marks on us. They chose us, after all,” I said softly, handing him a spoon. “Make little balls with this, I’ll handle the sugar. If she wanted you at her side, then some part of her must still be human.”
Arawn handed me a perfectly smooth ball, which I rolled into my mix of sucre d'or and crystallized petals before setting it on the sheet.
“The only thing Zelda ever wanted,” he murmured, shaping another ball, “was a child. But her body was never able to carry one.”
I froze. The sugarplum he handed me slipped from my fingers, falling beside the bowl.
An unwelcome wave of pity rippled through my chest. Magic demanded the sacrifice of what one loved most. Zelda had wanted to be a mother.
She had wanted a son. And she would do anything to get him back.
That way, she would mend her weakness and finally possess what she had always craved.
“I don’t want to be her weapon anymore.” He let the next ball drop straight into the bowl of sugar and petals. “Now you understand why I need your help with the elixir.”
My chest tightened further. The image of Zelda holding a young, vulnerable Arawn turned my stomach.
I cut the rosemary stems more harshly than I intended.
Arawn was trapped, caught in a cruel dilemma where no victory existed.
I tucked a sprig of rosemary into each sugared plum ball.
Zelda wanted his darkness. His magic. His submission.
She only cared for his monstrous parts, never his whole self.
My fingers clenched around the rosemary until I realized what I had done. The violet sugarplums looked… like cursed apples. What was wrong with me?
A low laugh slipped from his lips. “That is so very you.”
“Me?” I cried.
He thought I looked like a cursed apple?!
“Yes,” he answered, laughing again—a sound so unexpected, so pure, it almost seemed out of place coming from him. “You’re bold, and though clumsy, you’re afraid of nothing.”
I smiled. I was afraid of many things, but I couldn’t bring myself to correct him. I liked the way he saw me.
“As despicable as humanity is in my eyes, I don’t want to condemn it entirely. Chaos began with Zelda and me… it must end with us. I nearly gave in to the cursed part of me… until someone reminded me I still had a choice.”
I sniffed. “Yeun?”
He swallowed, looking away. “Yeun, indeed,” he said dryly, as though the very name irritated him. “He wanted to serve me, not the other way around. A more acceptable arrangement.”
“Maybe you’re actually a good person, deep down,” I teased, raising a brow.
He turned to me, incredulous, as if the very idea was so absurd it didn’t deserve a reply.
“How did you manage to escape?”
“I had help.” He cleared his throat, his tone brisk and deliberately evasive. (Clearly, he had no intention of saying more.) “You too, in a way, escaped her.”
I tilted my head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“You resisted. This sugary appearance… perhaps it protects you. That’s my theory, at least.”
“My crystallization… protects me? That’s ridiculous.”
He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing the flickering candlelight.
“Not when you think about it. Has it ever harmed you, or is it more a physical manifestation of what you feel and inflict upon yourself? When your life is on the line, you crystallize completely. You freeze before anything can break you. But when it’s your emotions that overwhelm you, you lose sugar. And when you doubt, the curse darkens.”
I lowered my eyes to my hands, where grains of sugar sparkled faintly. I thought back to what Nyla had once told me. That I would turn into a burnt soufflé if I didn’t watch over my heart. At the time, it had seemed like an overblown metaphor. But now…
“Everything leads me to believe your heart found a way to speak to you. To show you its pain. To force you to face what you refused to admit.”
I dared to lift my gaze to him. He was so close I could drown in the velvet depths of his pupils, where shards of icy lilac glimmered. It was as if he were searching in me for something I didn’t yet know myself. He wasn’t touching me, but he lit that languid blaze that flushed my cheeks.
“I can keep anyone else from harming your heart and hold them at bay. But against you, I can do nothing. If there is one heart worth something, it is yours, Lempicka.”
A barely audible crack. A filigree of sugar had just fissured across my wrist. Everything in me screamed not to get attached. But how could I fight my own heart, when it already beat in chains? I swallowed hard, snatched a sugarplum quickly from the tray, and raised it toward him.
“So, do you want a bite?”
Arawn’s lips stretched into a thin smile. “It would seem you’ve discovered my weakness.”
His hand closed around my wrist. Not with force. Just enough to send a shiver rushing up my arm.
He guided the confection slowly toward himself, never once breaking eye contact.
A gaze too intense, too deliberate, too…
dangerous. Then, he leaned in. His breath brushed my wrist before his lips parted, his bite slow, measured.
His fangs grazed the sugar, and I could have sworn he lingered.
That his tongue tasted the confection… but also my skin.
When he drew back, he licked the corner of his lips.
“I would say,” he murmured, his voice a mixture of velvet and shadow, “that you are far more talented than you think, my Sugarplum.”