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.
