“This isn’t charity,” he said at last. “It’s in my best interest that you lift your curse. That your grimoire unlocks its full potential to serve me. You needed the right… tools.”
“And me? No one cares about my needs!” grumbled Aignan, bursting out of nowhere, horn first, covered in leaves as if he’d charged through every bush in the forest. “Everyone treats me like I’m useless, but you’ll see! Category One, my ass! If I don’t find orange marmalade, I’ll bite someone!”
“But you don’t even like orange marmalade,” I said, watching him squeeze into the shop.
“I know! It’s to show how displeased I am!”
“Should I know?” asked Arawn, head tilted.
“I created a pastry that infuses anger… and he ate… about ten of them.”
He only hummed, as if I’d made something utterly ordinary.
“But I’ll fix it!”
“Take everything you need. I’ll send the moving shop back tonight.”
His gaze lingered on my bandaged wrist. My stomach knotted. He had that way of looking—long, too long—as if he could strip the truth out of silence itself.
“What happened to you?” His voice was calm. Too calm. Like a taut wire about to snap.
I hid my arm at once. The last shards of light slipped behind a veil of clouds. Mist thickened around us. I couldn’t tell him the truth. Couldn’t admit that the mark spread a little further with every doubt. That Yeun’s wing had only slowed the inevitable.
“It’s nothing, I?—”
A shiver raced down my spine. Arawn had moved. His gloved hand rose, and without me retreating, without even breathing, his fingers brushed the edge of the bandage. A touch. Light. Absent. My throat tightened. Beneath his fingers, my crystallized skin crackled. Tiny sugar crystals glittered.
“I have to get back to work!” I spun around and fled for the kitchen. As if distance could be enough to break the invisible hold he had just laid on me.
I wiped my forehead with the corner of my apron, caramelized sugar weighing down the air. Éclair was peering out the window, eyes fixed on the purple forest.
“He’ll come back. Aignan might be bitter, but he’s not suicidal.”
Éclair slowly shook his head, his new little mushroom bouncing on top of his head.
“Look, see…First we melt the sugar in the cauldron and?—”
Before I could continue, Chouquette, her tail wrapped around a lantern, swung down with a frog clamped between her teeth. I blinked. The frog, visibly offended, wriggled free and leaped onto the windowsill, settling there with an indignant croak.
“I suppose you can stay,” I sighed, pointing my ladle at the amphibian. “You’ll be our muse.”
Chouquette, already busy imitating the frog’s croaks, dragged it into her favorite cauldron. I cast a glance at the crack in the ceiling. Strangely silent tonight. Maybe its host had grown bored, or perhaps I’d imagined everything.
“We’re making a green Paris-Brest. Matcha choux pastry filled with pistachio cream, then topped with roasted pistachios, sliced almonds, and a veil of powdered sucre d'or.”
At that moment, my grimoire snapped open on a new page. Ink stretched out in elegant arabesques, like ivy tendrils unfurling.
The Forest Crown:
Gather the regenerative roots of matcha, the resilient richness of pistachios, and the mossy whispers of powdered sucre d'or. Unite them in a crown of choux, a feast of woodlandenchantment, a bridge between past and present, solitude and sharing.
I jumped, letting out a little squeak. “That’s exactly what Aignan needs!”
A shiver ran down my arms as I tightened the knot of my apron, and excitement bubbled in my chest. The grimoire trembled lightly, its words reforming into golden instructions. I skimmed through the steps and held an egg aloft.
“Éclair, watch closely! You have to tap it three times against the bowl. Once for light, twice for hope, three times for unity.”
I demonstrated. On the third tap, a golden shimmer rippled across the shell before it cracked cleanly over the bowl. Éclair rushed to imitate me with far too much enthusiasm.Crack. An avalanche of shells collapsed into the batter, while tiny mushrooms sprouted on his head.
