Page 44 of Sugar & Sorcery
Of course she would send a creature to spy on me or on her. My wards would never register something so harmless. And I had allowed a magical stall to appear here. The thing must have slipped inside to bypass my defenses.
I stared into its damp eyes. Behind their glassy sheen, I saw Zelda, draped in her eternal black lamb’s blanket, a cigar wedged between her teeth.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she purred, her voice spilling from the frog, languid and smooth. “I only wanted to see how you were faring.”
The ember bit lazily into the rug beneath her feet, and on the table, laid with insulting carelessness, my black beating heart, fragile and insolent. Like a trinket. Like a damned puppet whose strings she fondled at will.
“You and I are bound, my dear Arawn. You cannot flee any more than you can flee your true nature. All I want is for you to return to me and end this ridiculous rebellion.” With a lacquered finger, she slid my heart a little closer to herself. “I’m even willing to give it back. To work on your curse… together. To forget your betrayal. I need you. They’re all incompetent, except you.”
I let out a weary sigh, the ghost of a twisted smile tugging at my lips. Zelda had never been able to fight. With such magic, her body had only grown weaker. The most powerful witch in the world was nothing more than a wretched fly without it, and without the souls she had shackled to herself.
Every magic bore a flaw, and I was the weapon to fill hers.
My fist closed slowly around the frog, pinning it hard against the sill. Its tiny chest fluttered beneath the pressure.
“Tempting,” I hissed, tilting my head. “But I’ll take it back without your blackmail.”
Zelda’s laugh rippled, soft and mocking, as she drew a long drag from her cigar and exhaled a plume of black ash. “You put too much faith in yourself, Arawn. You’ve gone soft these past years, hiding in your little hovel, surrounded by the pitiful.”
“You forget what I’m capable of.”
Her eyes gleamed with hunger. “That’s all I ask. That you become the sorcerer you once were.”
With idle cruelty, she ground the tip of her cigar into the pulsing surface of my black heart. The stench of scorched flesh hit me, acrid and clinging. I didn’t move. I would show her nothing. Only a faint tremor coursed through me as I hid my hand behind my back, every muscle taut as a bowstring.
“Your heart still resists me,” she crooned. “But the more you use your magic, the more you belong to me. And if you think to find your humanity with that confectioner unworthy of you, you will lose… everything.”
I knew it. If I felt too much, Zelda would use my heart against me. But if I gave in to my Cursed form, then I would be nothing but a puppet.
A weapon. A tool. Nothing more.
“She’s only a necessity. You didn’t hold back with her curse.”
Zelda’s lips twisted in a cruel smile. “Kill her, and come to my realm. I’ll offer you the finest confectioners in the world.”
A harsh, joyless laugh tore from my throat. “You’re insatiable, Zelda. Perhaps it’s the last human thing left in you—that inability to endure solitude. You always want what you cannot have, a?—”
Zelda squeezed her cigar into her fist and clutched my black heart tighter, making it bleed onto the ash-covered rug. It was as if invisible claws tore through my flesh, crushing my insides. My muscles seized, useless, like cut tendons.
“We’ll see if that confectioner means nothing to you!”
In a blink, her reflection vanished. The frog still quivered between my fingers, its bulging eyes fixed on me. I narrowed mine.
“Prepare yourself,” I said, low and merciless.
With one clean, unflinching motion, I ended it. The frog burst in a spray of viscous juices and green larvae. My nerves ignited. A blazing wave surged through my veins. My horns ripped through skin. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ground.
I threw my head back, battling the bestial surge threatening to engulf me. I forced the monstrous form down and, for the span of a breath, was nearly human again—save for the damned horns.
My gaze fell on the smoking remains of the frog. Barely a heap of flesh. It would have died anyway, poisoned by Zelda’s black magic. At least its soul remained intact. This was not the first life I had ended. It would not be the last.
Movement stirred at the edge of my vision. The confectioner’s Cursed pet was waking. Its many tails twitched faintly before it leaped, sinking its teeth into my glove.
“What do you want?”
I raised my arm, letting the creature dangle from my sleeve like a rag on a line. Then it sprang onto the counter, gently tapping Lempicka’s head with its tail tip. I crouched, lockingeyes with its yellow gaze. This thing was nothing like the monster it had been when I first found it.
“I’ll take her back to her room. If she asks, tell her she walked there in her sleep.”
