Page 32 of Sugar & Sorcery
“Well,” the confectioner muttered, “the second batch should be ready soon, but it’ll need to rest under a cloth.”
I could have told her I hadn’t planned on staying. That if I’d been caught skulking around by a lamb, it was purely accidental. But the situation was so absurd that I merely nodded.
She wrinkled her nose. “You smell something burning?”
“Indeed.”
She rushed to the oven and pulled out a tray with her bare hands. I sighed, folding my arms. What a clumsy fool.
“Oh no, they’re completely burnt! Totally ruined!”
I leaned over her shoulder, observing the misshapen lumps that looked like slimy water lilies. “Were you trying to poison me? I admire your persistence, but it won’t work.”
At least she seemed more and more open to the idea of ending my existence.
“No!” she protested, cheeks aflame. “They were Yeun’s favorites, and I ruined them completely! I’m useless! So useless!”
She grabbed one, but immediately, a violet streak snaked across her finger, dark and restless, curling around her skin likea growing bite. The pastry slipped from her grasp. I caught it midair. She bit her lip, staring at her trembling fingers where the dark mark still pulsed before lifting her eyes to the sugared lily. I leaned toward her, my shadow covering hers, but I said nothing. Words were not my strength.
What I did not expect was to see her smile with a single tear sliding down her cheek. “It’s going to happen more and more, isn’t it?”
Something raw pierced my chest, sharp and vivid, like a blade brushing against my heart without cutting. I was no friend to human emotions, except Zelda’s. But I never considered her a woman—only a creature of whim, a storm of greed and fury with no other shade.
“I’m a sorcerer, not a healer,” I answered. “Your soul has been marked. I can neither change it nor control it.”
Magic could nearly do the impossible, but it had no power over the soul.
She nodded, eyes fixed on the charred pastries. “What am I supposed to tell Yeun now? And the Spirit… what will happen to him?”
I whistled, and the sick Spirit fluttered over to us, coughing little wisps of mist here and there. I tossed pastries into its mouth and kept the rest for myself.
“What are you doing?” the confectioner shrieked, eyes wide. “You don’t eat a failed confection. It’s like revealing the worst part of yourself. Stop!”
Too late. I swallowed them whole, letting the flavor claw at my throat. A concentrate of burnt sugar, a nauseating acidity, a bitterness that clung to my tongue like a stubborn curse.
“At least you won’t have to lie. You can simply say the insufferable and selfish me devoured everything without remorse.”
Her mouth opened, then snapped shut, her face a mix of outrage and confusion.
As for me, that abomination sat heavy in my chest. I knew her pastries, and now I could state without the slightest doubt, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“I told you they were ruined!”
“No. Not ruined.” When something is ruined, you feel nothing at all. It’s empty. Flavorless. “They were very unpleasant, certainly. But not ruined.”
“That’s even worse!” she huffed.
“No.”
She pouted. Now she looked wounded. Why did humans only crave sweetness and softness, refusing to face the other side of the mirror?
“They were instructive… Familiar,” I added.
A taste I recognized. A sensation I had once felt. Even if it had been an eternity since I’d let myself feel anything at all.
“Look,” I said, pointing at the Spirit.
It gagged and spat out a wad of paper with a hiccup—or rather, Zelda’s invitation I had tossed at it and it had swallowed.
