He held his head high, but his tail had curled tight against his body, heavy with all the stares pointed his way. The elders always said black lambs brought bad luck and dark sorcery. With my pink hair and amber eyes, I never understood why his fur caused so many problems. To me, he was beautiful.
“Don’t worry about him,” Nyla said sharply. “He’s a Cursed One of Category One on a danger scale that goes to ten. He’s harmless.”
“Harmless?” Aignan barked. “That’s only because I’m a lamb. The system’s rigged! I’m atleasta Category Four.”
Nyla raised an eyebrow. “If you were a Category Four, you wouldn’t still be here.”
I crouched to scratch behind his ear, but he snorted and trotted back to the shop, slamming the door shut behind him with an angry kick of his hoof. “Aignan, wait?—”
“Leave him.” Nyla climbed up onto her horse. “When I found him, he’d been cursed by a sorcerer. He gained the ability to speak, but somewhere along the way, he lost all sense of manners. He holds a grudge. I can’t blame him.”
She gave me one last look. A hesitant one, like she was searching for the words but they just wouldn’t come. I waited, heart too full of all the things I didn’t dare say out loud. She was the one who’d raised me until my fourteen years old of age. The one who found me on the bakery doorstep. The one who, though she’d never known how to stay in one place, had rooted herself here for me.
She loved me too. I knew it. She and Aignan were my family. But I wanted to hear it. Just once.
Please.Just once.
But Nyla turned away and tightened her grip on the reins. “Full gallop!”
She vanished in a cloud of dust. I ran after her. The dry dust stung my eyes. My apron streamed behind me. My heartpounded so hard it hurt. But she was far away. Too far away. Silent tears streamed down my cheeks.
“I’ll take care of the bakery! I’ll wait for you, I promise,” I shouted one last time, my words swept away by the wind.
Part I: The Pastry Shop
1
The magic of the sucre d'or answers only to the hands of confectioners. For anyone else, it blackens and turns to ash. If you try to consume the sucre d'or raw, it burns like a poison too wild to tame, a deadly spark of untamed magic.
LEMPICKA
Apuff of mist slipped from my lips as my brush traced a ribbon of icing along the flaking facade.
The sugar beaded in the damp air like a frost-dusted bean. The wood felt as dry as an old, forgotten biscuit. I squinted. The shivering foundations wouldn’t be enough to shelter a bird’s nest. All because of the mist that had invited itself to Bois-Joli like an unwelcome guest, thick and heavy as overwhipped cream.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I whispered to the shop. “We’re doing our best.”
Nyla’s pâtisserie was the last in the row, exposed to every gust of wind, with no wall to guard it and no neighbor to keep it awake. Tonight, it seemed wearier than ever. Its pale-pink coat,once vibrant like a sugar blossom, sagged under the weight of the years. Ten winters had passed since Nyla left. Ten winters we’d struggled together.
“Still busy, Miss Lempicka. Aren’t you freezing?”
I knew that voice. Yeun. My most loyal, most enigmatic customer.
I climbed down from the wooden ladder. “Winter’s simply misunderstood. It’s the season of warm ovens… and the blooming of golden apples.”
I still wasn’t convinced he was entirely human. His legs bent like a grasshopper’s, and his wide-brimmed hat tilted with impeccable grace, perfectly matched to his fine mustache. But what unsettled me most was the lining of his cloak that looked like insect wings. Sometimes blue, and tonight, I could’ve sworn they were pink.
The shop door flew open. Madame Martine burst in like a devil in a wool shawl, cane raised, back hunched. “That cursed lamb!”
Sugar crackled under her feet. She stomped right over the shards of candy scattered on the doorstep. The jar had toppled earlier this morning, and I hadn’t had the heart to pick the sweets up yet.
“Right back at you, you old goat!” Aignan shouted from the counter. “Two moons she’s been bleating the same tale, that one!”
He’d stirred up trouble again and scared off what little clientele we had (though she never seemed willing to spend a single coin anyway). I slammed the door shut and gave Yeun a tight-lipped smile. But his eyes had already drifted to the little scraps of papers soaked in honey candy I’d managed to read earlier.
“Not enough.”
“Always the same.”
