Chapter 36
If sorcerers’ magic never touches the soul, confectioners’ magic does, working upon it like a balm. And isn’t that, in the end, the most powerful of enchantments?
ARAWN
Ihad been a prisoner of what felt like eternal darkness.
I remembered nothing. Who I was. What I was. Just a gaping absence where what was left of me withered away. In a way, it was soothing. To no longer fight. To no longer exist. But something, somewhere, still clung to me. A lingering glow in the depths of that bottomless pit.
A single memory. A single face. A single voice. A single name.
Lempicka.
A breath of cotton and sugar in the void. A voice that echoed beneath my skin, in my flesh, in what little remained of my soul.
Lempicka.
She was calling me.
Arawn Crèvecoeur. Who was he? That name seemed both familiar and foreign.
My eyelids cracked open. Lempicka. She was falling, her hand reaching for me, swallowed by the clouds before I could touch her. A swarm of moths burst around me. I wanted to move, to reach out, but the darkness consumed me again.
The beat of wings. A shiver on my skin. Something landed on my nose. The wind bit into my flesh. A memory split the shadows, clinging to me with the same stubbornness she did.
The one even my monstrosity had failed to erase.
I was leaning against the trunk of a tree, stretched across a branch, one leg dangling into the void, the other pulled tight against my chest. Next to me fluttered an insufferable winged caterpillar pretending to be a fairy and answering to the name of Yeun.
The creature was chattering about something as insignificant as it was stupid: some story about wanting to help me and save my soul. As if I needed help. The thought of strangling him crossed my mind briefly, but I abandoned it. Too much effort. Instead, I idly tore a few leaves, weary.
“Fetch me one of those things over there,” I drawled, gesturing vaguely at the heart-shaped pastries sitting on the edge of an open window. “The ones that look like hearts made by someone who’s never seen a real heart.”
Yeun obeyed without question, flapping away.
I sighed, turning my attention back to the little confectioner through the window.
What a walking disaster. A cauldron bubbled behind her, on the verge of spilling over, while she ran about her kitchen (if you could call it that) like a hamster trapped in a wheel.
She was ridiculous, a smile glued to her lips despite the tears slipping down her cheeks, dampening her confections.
“Honestly, I don’t understand Nyla,” I muttered, spinning my lighter in my fingers. “What can you possibly see in her?”
I had come here with one clear intent: to make her disappear. Nyla’s constant thoughts of her had become unbearable. So unbearable I had to see for myself—and avenge the hours of torment I had endured listening to her mind. I hated the girl before I ever knew her.
Why this girl? She was as fragile as she was exasperating, dragging behind her a lamb that munched on her sweets as though it had the right. My stomach clenched. That was why I had become a vegetarian.
A simple snap of fingers, a gust, and she would have been gone.
That damned bond between confectioner and sorcerer was starting to seriously get on my nerves.
But instead, I stayed. Entire days. Perched on that branch, watching.
Brooding. It wasn’t in my nature. I hated it.
So I decided to act, to break the monotony.
With a flick of my finger, my magic tipped her plate. The pastries smashed to the ground. A wolfish grin stretched across my lips. It wasn’t much, nothing close to my usual cruelty. Even a child could have done worse. But it would do.
“Show me your ugliness, human,” I said sharply, flicking my lighter. The flame sputtered and died instantly. “Make this simpler for both of us.”
To my surprise, the girl didn’t cry. She didn’t get angry.
She stepped outside, a tray of candies in her arms, and when she saw her cakes scattered in pieces on the ground…
she laughed. Then she scooped them up. And threw them at her lamb, like snowballs.
She chased it around her little house, laughing out loud.
“What a strange confectioner…” I murmured.
The confectioners I had known would have wept over the loss of their work, their art. But her? She didn’t even blame the wind. She played with what was left.
And then, with total lack of aim, she threw one right at me. The sugary projectile shot through the leaves that hid me and smacked me square in the chest, nearly knocking me from my perch.
“For you, Master,” Yeun sang, returning with a heart-shaped pastry glazed with some strange violet syrup.
“Wonderful,” I replied flatly, snatching the cake.
I expected nothing when I bit into it. But the flavor struck me like a thunderclap. My eyes widened. The branch beneath me snapped.
I hit the ground with a dull thud, stunned. For the first time since my transformation, something stirred in my chest. A glow. A spark of a fire I thought dead. I had felt it when I was nothing but a child. That unbearable feeling.
Hope.
“Mister, are you all right?” the girl asked, concerned.
I pulled my coat tighter, hiding my face, and flicked my lighter. A butterfly of mist escaped. It didn’t dissolve. Not like usual. Worse, it flew toward her. For the first time in my life, I did something unthinkable.
I fled. Far. As far as I could.
As though she were the most dangerous adversary I had ever faced.
I flew to Zelda. To her kitchen, in search of solitude. But there I found Nyla, working on a confection that looked much like the girl’s, this one shaped like a star.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She raised her brows. “Velvet stars. And you’re covered in branches.”
I ignored the remark, bit into one, waiting for the same sensation. But nothing unusual happened this time. It wasn’t the same. “Not as good.”
I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Or to admit the truth: sorcerers forged a unique bond with a single confectioner. A bond for life. And I had, against my will, just found mine. I had condemned myself.
Fortunately, Nyla slapped me for insulting her pastries.
My cursed side judged it better to erase that memory from my mind.
And I had. Until now.
The butterfly of mist, however, had not forgotten.
It brought me back to her, again and again, until my hearts—blind and reluctant—finally surrendered and admitted she was the one I had been calling for all along.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Two hearts beat in unison.
Something inside me had broken. Or rather, been freed. My cursed heart had yielded to my human heart, and somehow, against all odds, the two had found balance.
I opened my eyes. Lempicka was falling. Her body drifted through the air, arms slack, her hair scattering around her like a spectral halo. Too far. Too fast.
I dove. I was no longer a stag dragon. Nothing of that remained—except for this fragment, this last vestige that refused to die. I forced my heart to give way, to burn what little sucremort was left in me. My wings cut through the air. Not as vast as before, not as strong. But enough.
I caught her midair. My arm locked around her at the last second, my other hand sliding behind her head, pressing her against me to shield her from the impact. Too late to slow. I twisted, turned my back to the ground.
The earth rushed up to meet us. My wings shattered. The mist broke apart. Pain exploded down my spine, flaring into every nerve of my body. The ground swallowed us in a crash, lifting a wave of dust and rubble.
A crushing weight pressed against my chest, something strange, unknown, making me feverish and weak.
It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t magic. It was my human heart.
Beating too hard. Too fast. An uncontrollable tide.
I wasn’t ready. Everything was too sharp, too real.
The colors burned my eyes, the sounds deafened me. And against me…
Lempicka.
My breath hitched. I pulled her tighter, as though I could carve her into my skin, make sure she would never vanish, and that she was real.
Her loosened strands scattered against my chest, soft and unruly.
Their scent, a mix of sugar and cotton, enveloped me, and it was as though all of me twisted beneath a new kind of pain.
I turned her gently and pressed my forehead to hers before laying her down on the ground.
I knelt beside her. She made me feel something I would never master.
Something immortal. I didn’t know what to do with this heart.
With these beats that made me feel like I would implode every second I looked at her.
I wanted to kiss her, cherish her, lose myself in her presence again and again.
“Foolish human,” I murmured with a thin smile. “You’ve saved me again, when it should be my role.”
But she never followed the rules. Lempicka had tamed my Cursed heart. The one that was supposed to be untamable. It still beat, but it had yielded to her. The sucremort had bowed before the sucre d'or. Before her. And my magic, it had not abandoned me. It had simply come to terms with me.
I lifted my gaze. No more Spirits at my side. Only Zelda’s Cursed, bowing before me. Freed from her grasp, freed from the sucremort. They would be reborn.
“That’s impossible,” Zelda hissed from the ground. I had nearly forgotten her. “You can’t… the curse—”
Sorcerers had no power over the soul. But confectioners did. We had always underestimated their gentle magic.
“I’ll send you to the prince. He’ll know what to do with you,” I declared coldly. “Farewell, Zelda.”
With a flick of my hand, Zelda was dragged out of what remained of her castle by one of the reborn Cursed—a centipede-serpent hybrid.
“Are… are you really you?” asked Yeun, his blue flame perched atop his ostrich.
“Unfortunately for you, yes,” I replied dryly, though my gaze betrayed a flicker of amusement.
I was still a sorcerer. But human. My days as a stag dragon were gone.