The room filled with the sickly-sweet smell of burning flesh.
Flesh that had been marked by ink and magie.
Eventually, she let go, only to avoid passing out.
With her other hand, she ripped the ring off with a cry. It took the skin with it.
Instantly, the magie fell away like a shroud as she clutched her hand to her chest.
It was like being thrown into a burning lake. Memories flooded her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. They suffocated her equally with joy and sorrow. Smoke-filled restaurants, long mornings in the kitchen, her mother’s blood still warm in the cracks of the Market street.
When her vision cleared, she was backed against the mirror staring at her wreck of a station.
This wasnothow ratatouille was made. The heat was far too high and the uneven vegetables would never caramelize at the same rate.
What the hell had she been thinking?
Her mother would have been so disappointed.
“I am.”
Elara didn’t have to look to know who was there to haunt her now.
“Hello, Mother.”
21NIK
A glass shattered. Someone screamed. They all gossiped.
Rebels were among them.
They would strike again.
In one act of desperation from Elara, Nik’s whole plan came crashing down.
Corinne Rousseau loomed over her daughter like a specter, her presence dark and horrifying. She wasnothinglike the woman Elara described during their late-night baking sessions. This was a nightmare ripped from deep within Elara’s own mind. And it perfectly reflected what the audience thought of the rebels, what Nik had—no—stillbelieved about them.
“I thought you wanted the world to remember me.” Corinne Rousseau’s voice echoed from every mirror.
“I do,” Elara’s quieter voice replied.
She’d managed to stand and face her mother, who was glaring at the name upon her coat.
“Auclair.” She tilted her chin. “You tried to forget me.”
“I did.” Elara rubbed her hand, which was a dangerous shade of red, the skin patchy and melted. Another scar she would add to her collection from this contest.
“You wanted me dead.”
“Never,” she snapped fiercely.
“Then why haven’t you fought for me? For all of us?”
Elara’s shoulders drooped, and Nik had the urge to be there to lift her chin and give her the smallest amount of comfort she’d offered him these last weeks.
“You pathetic girl.” Corinne motioned to the wreckage of Elara’s station. “I gave you this gift, and you threw it away. Why? Because you’re a selfish child, a coward who’s no better than the rest of these fools. You take what you can, even if it means robbing others.”
Despite his hatred, he knew this wasn’t the real Corinne, who’d always been kind to her neighbors. The chef who handed out her practice pastries to children in the evenings. The woman who had fiercely defended her people. She was reckless. Not a monster.
