Chapter 35 #2
He stopped and set me down on the ground.
Around us, nothing remained but charred ruins, ash, and dying flames.
Not a single Cursed left. Only emptiness, haunted by a sea of Spirits clinging together in a formless mass.
And at the center of that storm—Arawn, half devoured by his own creations, gnawed apart by what he had birthed.
I wiped my tears with a trembling hand. “I still need you, Aignan. We all need you. I—”
Aignan sat heavily, crushing under his rump the crawling Cursed who tried to ambush him. He raised a paw, nudging me gently.
“You’ve grown, Lempicka. You’re no longer that careless child. I’m not abandoning you, I’m letting you fly on your own,” he said, lifting his eyes as if he could see the stars, a smile curling his muzzle. “Nyla, I’ll soon shine at your side! I’ll join you.”
He rose and leaped back toward the Cursed chasing us.
“Aignan!”
He didn’t look back, but I was rooted in place, my vision blurred by tears. I wanted to run after him. Grab him. Pull him back. But I couldn’t, my whole body trembled.
“I’ll protect you all,” he roared. “Come on, you worthless parasites! I’m the strongest black lamb who ever lived. Those damn sorcerer experiments finally paid off.”
Aignan laughed. Real, full. He laughed like a madman, like a king, like a condemned soul joyous to finally break his chains. Then he vanished into the melee.
“We’ll hold back the Cursed. But you must go forward. If you don’t stop Arawn, he’ll destroy the kingdoms, and it will be the end.” Yeun’s voice snapped me back to reality.
His blue flames flickered over the blackened ground.
I nodded and bolted. Ruined stairs crumbled under my steps.
My heart thundered, not only because of what awaited me ahead, but because of Aignan…
How could I live without him? My gaze hardened.
I no longer wanted a world where the Cursed were only broken tools, where creatures like Aignan were abandoned, exploited, tortured, before being condemned to die.
You don’t play with life. No beast should fear being raised for a life of suffering, or for doing evil. I would build something else. For him. I would carry his strength. I lifted my chin, my tears drying in the icy air.
Aignan wouldn’t want me to cry. He’d want me to fight, to show them what I was capable of. “For Aignan.”
I crossed the last step. At the summit, the castle’s walls were no more. Only a few broken columns still stood. The rest was nothing but a black abyss, drinking the light, letting shadow weigh on my lungs like damp velvet.
And, in the center, collapsed on the fractured marble checkerboard floor, lay Zelda—or what was left of her.
Her skeletal fingers, blackened and brittle, clawed weakly at the frozen tiles. Her other arm was gone, severed clean at the shoulder. A few strands of white hair clung to her skull. Thick smoke of ash bled from her body. Dark veins marbled her hollowed face, threading beneath withered gray skin.
The most powerful sorceress of the realms, corrupted by her own magic.
“It’s over,” Zelda rasped, her throat wheezing with every breath. “Give me his heart. I must stop this.”
My hand went instinctively to the heart pulsing in the pocket of my skirt. “You lack faith.”
Zelda let out a strangled, gravelly laugh.
“You don’t see? The true monster… it was never me.” The sorceress raised a trembling finger, pointing at Arawn. “It was him. It was always him.”
My jaw clenched. Arawn thrashed, swallowed by the horde of Spirits he had birthed.
They clung to him, seeping beneath his skin like living ink.
They weren’t just surrounding him; they were devouring him.
His humanity was being torn away, enraged, revolted.
That was all that remained. Hatred. A broken, wounded heart. But still beating.
“He was robbed of his heart. You—you devoured too many, and it destroyed you. For him, there’s still hope.”
“No confectioner has ever survived sucremort. You will perish, foolish child!”
I ran straight toward the abyss that was consuming him. “Arawn!”
The Spirits reacted at once, surging toward me. Darkness clung to my legs, wrapped around my waist, and slid against my throat. Each step was a tearing away, each breath a battle.
“You have to let him go.”
Arawn’s humanity wasn’t just fading, it was corrupting. And now it tried to swallow me too. Dozens of red eyes gleamed in the dark. The air vibrated with whispers, low and cutting.
“I’m sorry I didn’t save you sooner,” I said, my voice breaking. “But if you love Arawn, you have to let him move on. Give back what he lost. You’re not protecting him. You’re damning him. He has to remember what it means to be hurt. To be human. He has to heal.”
The black tide rose higher, thick as oil. I clutched Arawn’s heart against my chest.
“Arawn,” I gasped. “Come back. I’m going to give you back your heart.”
A shadow lunged through the mist. A monster of torn wings, of thorns, a stag’s skull screaming its rage. The wind struck me full force, ripping my feet from the ground. My back slammed hard against the earth as my fingers clawed into the soil.
The heart slipped from my grasp. I pushed up, reaching for it, but a clawed paw crashed down on my wrist, pinning me to the ground.
Arawn was almost nothing but shadow and mist, strands of liquid ink dripping from him to the Spirits.
Darkness clung to him, yellow eyes gleaming between the cracks of his armor of bone and mist. But on one of his antlers, my charm still shone.
He had kept it. He was still holding on.
His jaws lowered, fangs brushing my cheek.
“Once upon a time, there was a child born in a cold oven,” I whispered, hoping to catch his attention like with the boy of the orchard.
“They said he was born of burnt sugar, caramel cooked too long, too black to ever be sweet. His parents fed him bark, not honey. So he grew up in anger, silence, and frost.”
In the way he looked at me, despite the gold burning in his eyes, it was still him. He could have closed his jaws. He could have crushed me in a blink. But he didn’t. He and the Spirits waited.
“One day, he picked an apple. Not a golden apple, but a purple one, the kind that gets thrown away. He ate it, and his heart was bound by sucremort. A witch found him and trapped it too. A weapon, she said.” I pulled from my pocket the confection resting in my palm.
“But I say that’s a lie. A heart, even broken, even blackened, doesn’t have to be perfect to beat.
This heart, Arawn, it’s yours. It never left you.
And I… I came to give it back.” Then, without breaking eye contact, without curling my fingers, I held it out to him. “You have to eat it.”
Arawn recoiled. His pupils narrowed to slits. His jaws opened on a low growl. He was ready to spring, to vanish into the darkness he came from. The instant the pressure of his paw lifted, I rolled aside and snatched the heart from the ground.
“Stay here!” I commanded.
He froze. His muscles went taut. A gust lifted the dust, shoving me backward, but this time, I didn’t yield.
I lunged forward and forced his jaws open.
I shoved one arm deep into his mouth, dropping the Heart-Syrup Candy into his throat, and yanked my arm free just before his teeth snapped shut with a sharp crack.
He reared, tail lashing the air. His massive body struck the Spirits, scattering shadows in rolling waves.
His wings beat furiously. But I held fast. My arms locked around his jaws.
My feet left the ground, the void sucking at my legs.
Arawn’s human heart pounded at a frantic speed, as if it would burst.
He shook his head violently, trying to unseat me, to fling me like a splinter driven too deep. His dilated pupils flickered, frenzied, contracting under the pain.
“I won’t abandon you!” I screamed, my hair plastered to my face. “You have to swallow! You don’t have to become this!”
He fought me, his whole body rejecting the confection.
A single tear broke free, tracing a thin line across his skull.
His human heart thrashed wildly, like a creature desperate for its master.
The Spirits surged toward me, sliding down my arms, clinging to my shoulders, joining their strength to mine, rebelling against their master.
And then, under their weight, Arawn swallowed.
The Spirits hurled themselves at his thrumming heart and forced it back into his chest. Light erupted, piercing his flesh like roots of fire.
I let go. The Spirits fled. With a roar and a beat of wings, Arawn tore free from the ground.
I grabbed his antlers just in time and swung onto his back.
Gravity dragged me backward, but I held on.
He was flying straight toward the skies.
Beyond the mist, beyond even the clouds, the wind screamed against our bodies. Every beat of his wings was a convulsion that churned my stomach. His flight grew erratic and feverish. He spun to one side, then the other, his body writhing like a serpent trying to shed its own skin.
The air thinned. But I would not let go. I felt everything he felt. The grief. The loss. The pain. The fury. I had bound myself to him. The candy was working, and the battle between his two hearts had just begun.
“I want all of you!” My voice cracked, torn from my throat in a sob.
My heart slammed against my ribs. My breath strangled in my chest, crushed beneath the altitude.
“Your past. Your pain. Your love. You don’t have to protect me from yourself.
I’m here, above the clouds, because I care about you.
You don’t have to fight alone! You can be human too! ”
He climbed higher. Then suddenly, he went still. The wind stopped, and Arawn tipped. The sky turned upside down.
I was falling.
Back to the earth, face to the sky, face to him. My heart exploded against my chest, the void tearing at my insides. I plummeted faster than him and his draconic form.
He was there within reach. So I stretched out my hand.
“Come back to me… Arawn Crèvecoeur. Take my hand.”
And then, nothing.