Chapter 34 #2
My gaze drifted beyond the rooftops, toward the horizon. The mist butterfly landed on my nose and beat its wings slowly, as if to comfort me. And before I could bite my tongue, the words slipped out on their own, like a wish whispered to the wind.
“If I rewrite the heart of the elixir, maybe I could save you. There’s only the thinnest line between poison and remedy.”
The butterfly spun around me again, leaving trails of mist.
My confectioner’s gift had allowed me to heal hearts. To dive into the deepest buried feelings. To find the ingredient, or the recipe, capable of repairing what seemed irreparable.
I clenched my fists. “This time, I’ll dive all the way. I’ll go where even he refused to go.”
I was going to step inside Arawn’s hearts.
“The confectioner!”
A shrill voice made me jump. Below, a hunched silhouette shook a cane in fury. Madame Martine.
“You were on vacation?” the crone thundered, her cane pointed skyward like a judge’s gavel. “And what are these ridiculous renovations? They ruin our peaceful village!”
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving soon!” I shouted down, before spinning around to scream, “Aignan! Chouquette! éclair! Yeun! Guimauve! You’re not breaking enough down there!”
A deafening crash answered me, and Martine, leaping back, nearly tripped over a cobblestone.
“What infernal racket! And the candies, then? You’re not working at all anymore. I can see it, vacation doesn’t suit your complexion, you look exhausted.”
I laughed.“That’s because I’m happy, Martine!”
The house groaned, shuddered, its foundations slowly tearing free from the ground. Living roots writhed beneath the structure, dislodging dust and earth, lifting the confectionery higher and higher.
It’s working.
I waved to her in farewell. “I really must be going. See you soon!”
The older woman dropped her cane. “Sacrilege!”
The beams creaked, and the wood moaned as the house lurched forward on its spiderlike roots. A window slammed downstairs, and Aignan’s triumphant voice rang out, “It’s thanks to me, you know! I’m a powerful sorcerer.”
Martine clutched at her heart. “That lamb is cursed!”
“The greatest of the Cursed,” Aignan proclaimed, puffed up with pride. “Bow before my power!”
I burst out laughing at the sight of Martine, overwhelmed, collapsing to her knees in desperate prayer. The wind rose, whipping harder.
“Faster, please,” I whispered to the house, as if it could hear me, before addressing the mist butterfly. “Guide the confectionery to Arawn.”
The butterfly darted straight into the chimney. I flew down the stairs, heart pounding, and rushed to my kitchen. Planting both palms flat on either side of the closed grimoire, I stared it down without blinking.
“I need to ask you something,” I murmured, though I already knew the wretched grimoire had the nasty habit of answering with a sharp no.
“Rewrite the recipe Arawn sought to end his life and erase the sucremort. Transform it into a recipe that can restore his human heart. Bind his hearts together. Even mine, if it helps.”
The grimoire opened, and ink blossomed across a fresh page.
“For such a recipe, only a confectioner with an unshakable heart may hope to succeed. You would not survive. You are far too inexperienced.”
A breathless, bitter laugh slipped out of me. “You know, I’m really starting to get sick of being told what I can or cannot do.”
A crack split the leather cover, but I pressed my palms flat against the page anyway.
“I am a confectioner! And you are MY grimoire. So stop underestimating me and obey. Let me enter Arawn’s heart!”
“His heart is too powerful for you. The sucremort will consume you.”
“It won’t harm me. Once inside, I know I can reach him. I believe in him. Now, it’s your turn to believe in me.”
The ink bled like blood, drowning the light, carving crimson letters onto a backdrop of shadow. I swallowed hard.
The Syrup of Bound Hearts: the origin of sucre d'or and sucremort.
A fatal candy.
The warnings engraved on the page resonated like a curse. A fragment of my own heart would be required. One mistake, and the syrup would turn to poison, burning flesh, crushing bones, and tearing the drinker apart from within.
“Only a heart chosen by the sucre d'or, in its purest, most powerful form, can vanquish the evil of sucremort.”
“Great,” I muttered. “Let’s just pray I don’t blow him up.”
But the grimoire wasn’t finished. Ink bled again, forming a final warning.
“The bond between confectioner and sorcerer must be unique and unbreakable.
Otherwise, the recipe will fail, and the confectioner will perish.”
The words weighed on my chest like a stone.
Arawn’s true confectioner… His soulmate was Nyla.
Not me. Sugar had never chosen me. But I loved him.
The strength of our feelings had to count for something.
This bond we had woven, this trust he had given me, the way he savored my pastries as if they were the only things capable of softening his world. That would be enough.
“It has to be enough,” I whispered, my gaze burning with determination.
The grimoire finally revealed the recipe, divided into two parts:
A crystalline shell, tender under the tongue, shattering into a thousand melting fragments… to reveal a flowing heart, black as ink, where sleeps a poison capable of binding a soul—or breaking it forever.
Ingredients:
For the Coulis of the Bound Heart:
– A fragment of the confectioner’s soul: one apple of sucre d'or
– The yolk of a blue ostrich egg, beaten seven times, acting as a gelatin to seal the hearts
– Four Rosalia thorns, whose venom bleeds green once brought to a boil
– Sucremort: press the cursed heart until it stops screaming
For the crystalline sugar shell:
– A fairy’s wing, offered, to awaken what has been stolen
– Raw sucre d'or, caramelized slowly until transparent
– Sucre d'or’ snow, to soften the bite
I tied my hair back with a spatula, strands sticking to my neck from the heat of the cauldron. A candy was never more than a spell you could bite into.
Even if no confectioner had ever managed to tame the sucremort without being slowly consumed by it.
The fire caught beneath the copper. First, the Coulis of the Bound Heart. I poured in the equivalent of one apple of sucre d'or. Mine. If he was the incarnation of sucremort, then I would be the incarnation of sucre d'or.
The sugar melted slowly, the bittersweet smell stinging my nose.
Then I cracked the blue ostrich egg, and the yolk spilled in a viscous stream, midnight blue, veined with gold.
One, two, three… seven precise rotations.
With each turn, my own pulse aligned with the rhythm of the satin syrup as it thickened.
I wrapped a cloth around my hand and plucked the Rosalia thorns, which writhed in my fingers like hungry creatures, eager to bite into my skin.
One by one, I let them fall into the cauldron.
A sinister crack sounded, and immediately, a bubble of green smoke burst on the surface, releasing a toxic cloud.
The stench burned my throat, a suffocating blend of acid and iron.
I pressed a rag against my nose, staggering under the harshness of the poisoned breath.
“You won’t get me.”
With a hasty gesture, I flung open the window. Cold air rushed into the room, sweeping away the stifling fumes in a single gust. The venom bled a deep green, seeping into the starry blue coulis. The gold was extinguished. The mixture blackened, swallowing the light.
It’s working.
Finally, I grabbed Arawn’s heart. It was burning hot, heavy, faintly pulsing. “Forgive me.”
I clenched it in my palm, and the heart screamed.
Scarlet drops beaded and fell. A wave tore through my arm—a shiver of fever, of ice, of coals mingled.
The sucremort slid down my arms. My heart screamed in harmony with his, as if it wanted to leap out of my chest. The pages of the grimoire flew in every direction. Voices bled through my ears.
You were never wanted. My parents.
You will never be a confectioner. Nyla.
You are empty. The witch.
I cannot love you. Arawn.
You’re nothing but a clumsy fool. Aignan.
The sucremort seeped into my soul. It searched out every fracture, crawling across my skin, leaving behind violet veins and little blisters on my trembling hand.
“You’re wrong,” I panted at the sucremort.
You were never worthy of my love. That’s your loss, not mine. My parents.
You wanted the best for me. That’s why you were so hard on me. You believed in me when no one else would have bothered. Nyla.
Without you, I would never have met my family. Thank you for that wish. The witch.
I will not let you go. Arawn.
Maybe that’s true, but you always stayed by my side. Aignan.
And suddenly, the heart no longer bled.
Silence fell. The march of sucremort stopped. I wrapped his heart in a cloth, pressing it against me. I had done it.
“I’m sorry for this pain. I’m coming. Please, wait for me.”
I clamped the lid onto the cauldron, but the moment I released it, it shuddered. The evil inside was trying to escape. The sucremort rebelled, and the metal vibrated, ready to burst.
“Oh no, you stay put!”
I set a heavy flour jar on top, raising a brow. The lid stopped rattling, though a few agitated ripples still pulsed beneath the surface. I was about to plunge into the last step when the door creaked behind me.
“Listen to me, both of you,” Aignan grumbled from the bottom of the stairs, his voice filtering through the wood. “If you want the respect of humans, you have to demand it. Martine never dared question me again after I ate those famous cupcakes right in front of her…”
I stifled a laugh.
“Aignan is true to himself. Blunt. Stubborn. But adorable,” I said, turning toward Yeun in his human form.
I knew why he was there. “You are his first happy memory as a human, but what his heart had to sacrifice left him with a void. And a heart always knows how to demand what it’s missing. The recipe… You don’t have to—”
Too late. He cut me off, laying his wing on the counter. “Before you ask if I’m sure, Master is my best friend. It’s time his heart remembered.”
He set a hand on my shoulder before turning away. I followed him with my eyes until the door closed behind him.
I lowered my gaze to the wing. Gently, I placed it in a fresh cauldron.
I melted the raw sucre d'or slowly. Too hot, and it would shatter into sharp shards. Too cold, and it would stay grainy. I let it caramelize until it turned translucent. The fairy’s wing dissolved into it slowly, fragmenting into iridescent dust.
In a stoneware bowl, I beat the sucre d'or snow. The only sugar able to resist moisture and strong enough to imprison the coulis. With it, I shaped little hollow spheres, white as frost pearls, then, with the tip of my fingers, carved out their centers, sculpting a delicate cavity.
I lifted the lid and drew out the Coulis of the Bound Heart, black as a starless night. It slid into the hollow of the shell. The dark ink nestled there, dense and velvety, blooming against the sucre d’or like a shadow spreading over snow.
I sealed the candy, and let it rest in my palm.
Deceptive. Beautiful. Deadly.
An alchemy of sucre d'or and death.
I had succeeded where Nyla had failed. But the hardest part was yet to come. Would the confection be strong enough to heal his heart? Would mine be strong enough to face it?
“Lempicka!” Aignan shouted from below. “I think we’ve arrived!”
I rushed to the terrace, the candy tucked in the pocket of my skirt.
The shop slowed, its roots cracking beneath it.
But all I could see… was mist.