“Because the only thing I do know how to do is work the sucre d'or!” The words burst from me like a burn. “I’m a confectioner, so if there’s one challenge I can rise to, it’s that one. How do I break it?”
He stepped toward the window. The Spirits scattered, and an orange light slipped between the curtains.
“You underestimate the power of a curse.”
He fixed his gaze on me. But it was no longer a gaze—it was a pale amethyst blade, glinting like a stalactite laid against my throat. Cold as steel. He looked as though he might cut me in two just to see what I was hiding inside.
“You’ll have to mend your heart, Confectioner.”
Mend my heart?
Outside, a crack shook the tall trees. I swallowed. The forest, as one body, had bent. Branches twisted, trunks tore from the earth under the weight of something gigantic rushing through it.
“Yeun will show you the orchard. If you can pick the apples before midnight, I’ll agree to a bargain,” the sorcerer said, his hand tightening.
I jumped to my feet, my bones cracking like hardened sugar. Did he really think I was that incapable? For a confectioner, picking an apple was as easy as it got! “And what tells me I can trust you?”
He smiled, an actual smile, but so cold it froze my blood. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dissolved in the mist.”
He passed by me, his coat lifting with the motion, the air streaking with threads of black ink spilling from the seams. He stopped at the door.
“Yeun. Watch her. She’s been followed.”
“By what? And why did the Wish Witch curse me? You can’t just?—”
The door slammed behind him. Outside, the mist thickened at once, coating the windows in opalescent frost. I jumped out of bed. The floor crunched beneath my feet like a crust of broken caramel.
“Don’t go out,” Yeun pleaded. “The castle is protected.”
“Let her,” Aignan growled, emerging from under the bed, fur disheveled. “That blasted witch cursed her, and that stale-biscuitexcuse for a sorcerer dares to threaten her? Like I was saying to that winged nincompoop, I?—”
“I told you my master can’t transform you!” Yeun snapped. “You’re a lamb! A low-rank Cursed, not a sorcerer!”
“Mustache butler, have you ever seen a lamb that talks? No! So if your sorcerer’s so powerful, he’ll turn me into a ferocious beast so I can attack that cursed witch and?—”
I left them bickering and set my palm on the door handle. The air was heavier, as if the mist itself were trying to slip inside. It left a metallic taste in the air, as sharp as a blade’s stroke.
“Why did she curse me, Yeun?” I breathed.
He looked down. He wouldn’t tell me. Perfect. I’d rip it from him myself. I opened the door.
“Mademoiselle!” Yeun cried.
I rushed down the corridors as if the walls might close in. The frames followed me with their gaze. Some empty. Others blurred, as though their occupants had fled without warning. No warmth. No color. A tomb disguised as a huge tower. I ached for my shop. There, everything was warm, vibrant.
I hurried down a staircase of dark wood, streaked with purple veins. Beneath my palm, a pulse, almost imperceptible, like a sleeping heart. The staircase coiled around itself, as if the castle had been built around a giant tree whose roots and branches had turned into hallways and walkways.
I pulled with all my strength to open the great door, and a rush of mist whipped against my face. It had the thickness of sea fog, but the bitter taste of burnt sugar. If I followed it, it would lead me to the sorcerer.
“Mademoiselle! The mist keeps unwanted visitors out. If it’s like this, it means?—”
I ran through the whistling of the trees. Moss crept over the gnarled roots, clinging to the trunks like an old velvet coat. Thenatural arches were streaked with purple leaves, shimmering with amethyst glints.
If my curse was like the sucre d'or, then it hated extreme temperatures—especially humidity, like in this place. That was probably why every inch of my body had crystallized. Now, my fingers could finally move, my legs respond, but with every motion, it felt as though my skin was cracking.
But golden apples can also rot from the inside.
The trees suddenly turned bare and twisted, like long, bony hands stretched toward the sky. Chouquette darted beside me, her long tails streaming behind her.
