Page 73 of Sugar & Sorcery
“I don’t want to be her weapon anymore.” He let the next ball drop straight into the bowl of sugar and petals. “Now you understand why I need your help with the elixir.”
My chest tightened further. The image of Zelda holding a young, vulnerable Arawn turned my stomach. I cut the rosemary stems more harshly than I intended. Arawn was trapped, caught in a cruel dilemma where no victory existed. I tucked a sprig of rosemary into each sugared plum ball. Zelda wanted his darkness. His magic. His submission. She only cared for his monstrous parts, never his whole self.
My fingers clenched around the rosemary until I realized what I had done. The violet sugarplums looked… like cursed apples. What was wrong with me?
A low laugh slipped from his lips. “That is so very you.”
“Me?” I cried.
He thoughtIlooked like a cursed apple?!
“Yes,” he answered, laughing again—a sound so unexpected, so pure, it almost seemed out of place coming from him. “You’re bold, and though clumsy, you’re afraid of nothing.”
I smiled. I was afraid of many things, but I couldn’t bring myself to correct him. I liked the way he saw me.
“As despicable as humanity is in my eyes, I don’t want to condemn it entirely. Chaos began with Zelda and me… it must end with us. I nearly gave in to the cursed part of me… until someone reminded me I still had a choice.”
I sniffed. “Yeun?”
He swallowed, looking away. “Yeun, indeed,” he said dryly, as though the very name irritated him. “He wanted to serve me, not the other way around. A more acceptable arrangement.”
“Maybe you’re actually a good person, deep down,” I teased, raising a brow.
He turned to me, incredulous, as if the very idea was so absurd it didn’t deserve a reply.
“How did you manage to escape?”
“I had help.” He cleared his throat, his tone brisk and deliberately evasive. (Clearly, he had no intention of saying more.) “You too, in a way, escaped her.”
I tilted my head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“You resisted. This sugary appearance… perhaps it protects you. That’s my theory, at least.”
“My crystallization… protects me? That’s ridiculous.”
He stepped closer, his shadow swallowing the flickering candlelight. “Not when you think about it. Has it ever harmed you, or is it more a physical manifestation of what you feel and inflict upon yourself? When your life is on the line, you crystallize completely. You freeze before anything can break you. But when it’s your emotions that overwhelm you, you lose sugar. And when you doubt, the curse darkens.”
I lowered my eyes to my hands, where grains of sugar sparkled faintly. I thought back to what Nyla had once told me. That I would turn into a burnt soufflé if I didn’t watch over my heart. At the time, it had seemed like an overblown metaphor. But now…
“Everything leads me to believe your heart found a way to speak to you. To show you its pain. To force you to face what you refused to admit.”
I dared to lift my gaze to him. He was so close I could drown in the velvet depths of his pupils, where shards of icy lilac glimmered. It was as if he were searching in me for something I didn’t yet know myself. He wasn’t touching me, but he lit that languid blaze that flushed my cheeks.
“I can keep anyone else from harming your heart and hold them at bay. But against you, I can do nothing. If there is one heart worth something, it is yours, Lempicka.”
A barely audible crack. A filigree of sugar had just fissured across my wrist. Everything in me screamed not to get attached. But how could I fight my own heart, when it already beat inchains? I swallowed hard, snatched a sugarplum quickly from the tray, and raised it toward him.
“So, do you want a bite?”
Arawn’s lips stretched into a thin smile. “It would seem you’ve discovered my weakness.”
His hand closed around my wrist. Not with force. Just enough to send a shiver rushing up my arm.
He guided the confection slowly toward himself, never once breaking eye contact. A gaze too intense, too deliberate, too… dangerous. Then, he leaned in. His breath brushed my wrist before his lips parted, his bite slow, measured. His fangs grazed the sugar, and I could have sworn he lingered. That his tongue tasted the confection… but also my skin.
When he drew back, he licked the corner of his lips.
“I would say,” he murmured, his voice a mixture of velvet and shadow, “that you are far more talented than you think, my Sugarplum.”
