“I did.”
That smooth, insufferably mocking voice was unmistakable. I turned slowly toward the enchanted mirror, while Chouquette and Éclair crept toward it as if it might get up and walk away on its own two legs.
“Boo,” said the mirror with absolute boredom.
Chouquette squealed in panic and hid behind Éclair, who immediately tripped over his own feet and collapsed in a puff of flour. Only Aignan remained unfazed, dragging his pillow a little farther from the chaos.
I jabbed an accusatory finger at the mirror. The features of Arawn appeared across its surface. Sharp edges, eyes of glacial lavender, hair like violet mist and wet night. He was the kind of cake too beautiful to eat, but that you suspected hid hemlock in its filling.
“I knew it was you! What do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought it was obvious,” he said. “I’m watching you.”
“Well, stop it! You’re distracting me,” I hissed, clutching the mirror’s edges as if I could strangle it. “Come show yourself in person instead of cheating with your magic.”
Arawn laughed softly—a deep, velvety sound, carefully designed to grate my nerves. “Oh, but then you’d burn something in your nervousness, and I’d have to endure the smell of carbonized sugar. Your anxiety at being seen has its own… disconcerting fragrance.”
I clenched my teeth. He was unbearable. Worse than caramel burned to the bottom of a pan. Yet those eyes were always seeing everything, always knowing more than he let on about confections. Behind him stretched a gray alley, dead and layered with dust. A village leeched of all color, without light or life.
“Did you do this?”
He shot me a look that froze me through the glass. “Don’t be ridiculous. They left on their own. Zelda promised them their wishes in exchange for their souls. This isn’t the first village to fall.”
If Arawn’s magical signature was mist, then Zelda’s was dust, judging by what I’d seen in my shop. I gripped the mirror tighter. If she kept this up, she’d have every soul in the kingdoms in her pocket. Behind Arawn, I narrowed my eyes on the poster plastered to the crumbling wall:
“WANTED – THE MIST SORCERER – CATEGORY 10 CURSED – DEADLY DANGER. TO BE DELIVERED TO THE WISH WITCH.”
Beneath it was a grotesque sketch of a horned beast spewing fog with bloodshot eyes. “Arawn… you’re wanted. Behind you, there’s?—”
“Don’t speak to me of that atrocity. I should sue them for artistic defamation.”
A muffled growl answered him. In the depths of the alley, dark viscous masses slithered along the walls. A pile of glutinous bodies, ready to swallow the village whole.
“Arawn…”
He sighed. “No, you cannot come. Zelda would delight in sending her Cursed after you, and I have better things to do than play your knight. If you want something, I’ll go fetch it?—”
“You’re about to be attacked from behind!”
He didn’t even turn. That arrogant icicle was about to get carved into slices, and still, he smiled as though he were sippingspiced wine. He couldn’t die, but I could—if I had to drag his carcass back here once his magic ran dry.
“Are you worried about me, Confectioner?”
I glanced at the mirror, then at the flower-shaped wood floor beneath me.
“Arawn,” I said with a smile, “what would happen if I smashed this mirror?”
“Hmm,” he mused, as if I’d asked him about the weather. “Seven years of bad luck, perhaps? And of course, my spell would break. A terrible waste, really.”
“I need currants,” I demanded.
He frowned.“What?”
“And I want you to stop wasting your magic uselessly!”
I dropped the mirror. The shards scattered like stars across the floorboards.
“There,” I declared, hands on hips. “Who’s afraid of bad luck in my situation, anyway?”
