Page 13 of Sugar & Sorcery
“Nyla,” I breathed, my head buzzing.
Her smile widened. “Ah, yes. Nyla. So much wasted potential. She didn’t stay in my service for long.”
“Where is she?”
The ground swayed. My knees trembled.
“Dead, of course.”
Aignan stifled a cry. I clung to the counter to keep from collapsing, held upright only by the two Cursed pressing against me. My heart broke, shard by shard.
“It’s been nearly seven years,” she continued. “No one mourned her.”
Seven years… and I never knew. All those years of waiting, hoping, resenting her, when in truth, Nyla was no longer of this world.
“Leave.” I wiped away a tear. “I have nothing for you.”
My curiosity about sorcerers had just been snuffed out for years to come. Perhaps Aignan had been right.
She burst into laughter. A shrill sound that drilled into my ears. “Oh, but Iwillleave you. Leave you to become the exact reflection of what your heart is. Would I be the Wish Witch if I didn’t grant you what your insolence deserves?”
I had no time to react. She stretched out her hand. A cloud of dust wrapped around me like a tornado. I saw nothing, but her incantation struck me:
“Like the golden apple, of radiant beauty, yet poisoned and deadly, let the heart of this confectioner bind itself to the sweet magic of this forbidden fruit. If, at the first harvest of winter, she does not break her curse, she will remain hollow and rotten… forever.”
I choked. A searing pain tore through my chest. I collapsed to the floor, fingers clawed against my heart.
“Lempicka!” Aignan shouted, running toward me.
A cold sharper than the first snows seeped into me, freezing my veins and paralyzing my limbs. I couldn’t lift my head as the shop groaned, the beams trembling like a wounded beast.
“Did your mentor never teach you? A weakened heart is a wide-open door to curses,” she sneered, her voice distorted.
In an instant, roots burst through the floorboards, splitting the wood with a sinister crack, like bones breaking. They twisted and stretched, tearing the shop from its foundations, lifting it as if it had just sprouted legs.
“What the…?”
The witch staggered, hampered by her clothes. The roots came alive, dragging the shop forward in a jerky march, as if it were walking on spider legs. Her gaze suddenly locked on the Cursed clinging to the ceiling.
“Arawn, damn you,” she hissed. “You’re not as stupid as I thought.”
I could hear only echoes now. My chest burned. My tears fell, stinging, shattering on the floor like glass.
“Lempicka…” Aignan’s voice reached me. “You… you…”
Before I could demand an answer, the shop lurched violently.
Aignan and I were thrown across the room. Above our heads, the Cursed tried desperately to catch jars flying in every direction, but the roof began to splinter, the wood crumbling into jagged shards.
“We’ll meet again on the first day of winter. I’m hosting a banquet!” the witch muttered. “And give my regards to the Mist Sorcerer. He can’t ignore me forever. Good luck with your curse, little cursed apple!”
She vanished in a burst of dust, leaving behind only a bubbling black puddle.
I clung to Aignan as the shop hurtled forward in a frenzied flight. The walls twisted, and the roof disintegrated into fragments. The Cursed could do nothing to stop objects from flying everywhere—utensils, jars, even the big cauldron slid across the floor, slamming into everything in its path.
Through the shattered windows, the village receded, blurred, dissolved into the mist, swallowed by the monstrous strides of the roots carrying us farther and farther away.
“Nyla’s pâtisserie… I can’t let it collapse like she did, Aignan. It’s all we have left.”
