Chapter 17 #4
I looked into the face I had only just learned to love.
Perhaps tomorrow I would no longer remember how his smile made warmth bloom in my once dormant heart.
Perhaps his touch would feel no different from anyone else’s.
Perhaps I would have to study my maps and his pressed leaves to understand why this moment had once mattered.
But even if if every feeling vanished, no magic could erase the truth that I had chosen him. “I offer my love for Gabe,” I whispered.
“No.” His arms tightened desperately around me. “Cecelia, don’t.” His voice broke. “Please.”
Pain tore through my chest as the bond pulled—not sharp, but hollowing, as though invisible hands were scooping out a glowing treasure, the very core from my heart.
I clung desperately to Gabe’s shirt as I relived my memories in quick succession.
His first awkward bow in the forest. The tracking tart.
His rain-soaked hair dripping across my kitchen floor.
The crumbs upon his chin as he eagerly devoured the lemon scone during our first tea together.
Our fingers brushing as we bent over the map. His lips against mine.
Each memory as vivid as before, yet with every one, the feeling attached to it grew fainter, slipping through my grasp no matter how tightly I tried to hold on.
“Cecelia.” His voice broke. “Look at me.”
I forced my eyes open. Tears streamed freely down his face, the first I had ever seen him shed. The sight should have shattered me. Instead, I felt the grief already beginning to dull, carried away with everything else the magic claimed.
“No,” I whispered.
The loaf rose suddenly, golden light pouring through its torn center. For one breathless moment, my heart lifted that the offering had been accepted.
Then the magic suddenly reached within me once more, seeking the hope I had only just cultivated.
I felt the future I had imagined with Gabe begin to unravel—the bakery nestled beside a secluded forest path, his journal resting beside my maps, mornings filled with flour, warm bread, and the quiet comfort of working side by side.
“That wasn’t part of the bargain,” I gasped.
Unbidden, the magic paid no heed. Next it reached for my joy, then my trust, followed by my sorrow, stripping away everything Gabe had awakened within me, everything I had fought so hard to reclaim.
Gabe wrapped his arms around me and tried to pull me away, to shield me from the inexorable siphoning of the magic, but the bond held me fast, stronger than iron chains. “Stop, take mine instead!” he shouted. “Take whatever you want from me, but don’t claim anymore from her. Please.”
His desperate plea echoed through the kitchen, unanswered. The magic had no claim upon him, only me.
Another piece of myself slipped away, leaving behind a hollow ache. As I felt its absence settle within me, understanding dawned with startling clarity.
I’d once believed I could purchase miracles one careful sacrifice at a time—a memory, a measure of health…
or an emotion. But hunger had never understood the meaning of enough, it only knew that it had been fed.
Every time I opened the recipe book, I willingly offered it another path into my heart.
And every time it demanded more, I surrendered it without question.
The Wolf had never been waiting beyond the windows, nor had it stalked me through the forest—it lived within the bargain itself. And all these years, I had been feeding it.
The ravenous magic once more reached for what little remained. My future stretched before me like a long corridor of empty rooms—beautiful places carefully mapped and quietly abandoned, faces remembered without affection, a life stripped of pain because it had first been stripped of love.
Once, I might have accepted such a bargain. Not anymore. Granny’s question returned to me with sudden clarity: would I truly want my heart back, even if it meant welcoming all the emotions that accompanied it? Joy and sorrow, hope and fear, love and grief.
For the first time since I had entered into my magical bargain all those years ago, I realized my answer had become wonderfully, undeniably simple—I wanted every painful, inconvenient, beautiful part of being alive.
I planted both hands upon the open book. “No more.”
The hunger pulled again, more urgently than before, but I held fast.
“You may have what I willingly promised,” I said, though my voice trembled beneath the strain. “But nothing else.”
The ink writhed across the parchment and the recipe book’s pages ruffled beneath my hands as the magic fought me. For years I had believed the book’s demands were immutable laws. Now I saw them for what they were—a ravenous appetite that knew only how to consume.
And I refused to feed it any longer. “No more,” I repeated, leaning into Gabe’s supporting arm as I fought the magic.
A sharp crack split the book’s spine. Gabe tugged me backwards, away from the book as a golden light burst from the seam, flooding the kitchen with such brilliance that I could scarcely keep my eyes open.
Somewhere beneath the roar of the magic, I heard something howl—not from the forest, but from the book itself.
The sound rose wild with fury and hunger, before silencing. All at once, everything became still.