I leaped toward the wounded branch. Violet sap was already creeping, like a living poison. It was aiming for the trunk—andthe entire orchard if it reached the roots. My hands shook. I had nothing to cut with. The Spirit kept growing. His arms passed over my head, ready to close us both in his embrace.
So I seized the branch and cut my hand on a splinter. Where my skin split, a golden tear of sugar welled up. The sucre d'or is lethal to anyone who consumes it raw. The drop slid onto the wound in the wood, and the dark sap stopped dead. The sugar crystallized on the bark, forming an irregular, rough shell. A heart of burnt caramel. The rot was locked inside. And all around it, a golden vein stretched across the bark.
I set my hand on the trunk and collapsed against it. My palm burned where I’d cut it. But what mattered was that the orchard was safe. The wind fell. The boy Spirit drew his limbs back and stepped toward me.
“I’m sorry… I couldn’t save it all.”
The soft mushroom on Éclair’s head sagged as he bolted, Chouquette darting after him. The boy bent to pick up an apple that had fallen to the ground. The moment his fingers brushed it, it rotted, sinking into the earth. He straightened and pointed at a higher apple. His stoic face gave nothing away.
“May I?”
He nodded. I tightened my apron and rose on tiptoe. My fingers brushed the apple. Smooth. Cool. Gleaming.
He protects this orchard, yet he can’t touch a single thing without it withering in his hands.
My throat tightened. It wasn’t fair. I placed the apple into the fabric. Aignan would have grumbled the entire time, but at least he would have held my apron between his teeth. I wished I had him here. Like before. Like with Nyla.
“You remind me of an old fable Nyla used to tell me,” I whispered, resuming the harvest. “The one about the frozen prince.”
The boy sat, his head tilting slightly.
“They said this prince had a heart so cold that every sweet offered to him would wither in his hand. So everyone came to believe he hated sweets. Until the day a confectioner made him one meant only for him.” I glanced up at the highest branch. A single apple hung there, slender, pearly, almost weightless. “It glowed softly, like a star trapped in sugar. He kept it with him his entire life, without ever taking a bite. Many wondered what the confectioner’s secret ingredient was…”
He had moved closer. His red eyes devoured me, wide, fixed, as if he’d forgotten even the idea of blinking.
“What she had put inside it was simply the certainty that he was worthy of it. That something sweet could exist just for him. He was no longer the one who ruined things. He was the one something had chosen to stay with.” I gathered the edges of my apron around the apples and tied them in a knot. “You can’t touch the apples… but I could make you a sweet meant only for you.”
“No.” His voice shot out, echoing against the trunks, winding through the branches. “He doesn’t want you here either.”
I flinched. He could speak? “Who?”
The boy didn’t answer, but his gaze said enough.
“Arawn?”
The child nodded. “You’re just a weak human. You can’t do anything.”
He had called me “human,” not “Cursed.” I smiled faintly. “Exactly. As long as I’m still human, there’s something I can do.”
I was about to thank him, but before I could utter another word, the boy was already walking away into the mist.
“Wait!” I cried, slipping between the willow’s branches. “I don’t know where to go!”
No answer. The Spirit didn’t turn, didn’t slow, didn’t give me a final glance. So I followed. The fog thickened around us like asea of cotton. The orchard’s scent faded, replaced by something cooler: eucalyptus, mingled with moss and freshly turned earth.
“This isn’t the way back to the manor, is it?”
It wasn’t the boy who answered me.
“Why do you always refuse what you’ve become?”
I pushed aside a branch beaded with dew and froze.
The Mist Sorcerer floated in the black water, head tipped back, his pale throat bared to the moonlight. The light slid over the breadth of his angular shoulders, tracing every line of his back with a precision almost cruel. Dark water licked at his skin, steam rising where it touched, as though a branding iron had been plunged into an icy spring.
A black horn lay on the bank, cleanly severed. When he lifted his head, a shiver traveled up my spine. The other horn curled back along his temple, sinuous, knotted, streaked with dark veins like a root. The Spirits floated around him, their ethereal forms nuzzling against him like docile animals.
“Get out before I turn you to ash,” he said, his voice cutting through the silence.
