Wanda Embermoor's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

Wanda and Elizabeth ran until the charcoal trees thinned. The crown burned in Wanda's hands, bright and alive. But every time she slowed, she felt eyes on her back. A winged eyeball drifted above the branches, pink iris fixed on the flame. It had told half of StarVeil where her fire woke. Now it hunted the crown itself. "It's still following," Wanda said. "Any ember I touch, it sees. Hunters will read the trail straight to us." Elizabeth wiped frost and sweat from her face. "Then we go where fire hides in plain sight. I know a place." She led them to a candy cottage. Chocolate walls, sugar windows, a frosted roof dripping icicles like glass. Pink smoke curled from the chimney. The door was a giant cookie. Elizabeth knocked. A woman opened it. A lollipop patch covered one eye, spiraled pink and blue. Her gown rose in ruffled layers like a cake. She looked at Wanda's burning crown and did not flinch. "Leslie Sweetspell," Elizabeth said. "She trades in things that shouldn't exist. She owes me." "I owe you nothing," Leslie said. Then she smiled. "But I like guests who bring fire. Come in before that eye counts your teeth." Inside, the air smelled of burnt sugar. Wanda set the crown on a table. Its flame lit the candy walls. Above the window, the winged eye pressed close to the sugar pane, dripping goo, watching. "It won't leave," Wanda said. "As long as I hold living fire, it finds me. The crown makes me a torch in the dark." Leslie tapped the lollipop patch. "I lost this eye to a spell like that thing. Watchers feed on what burns brightest. So you dim it." "I can't put the crown out," Wanda snapped. "It's everlasting. That's the point." "Not out. Hidden." Leslie pulled a jar of clear sugar-glass from a shelf. "Candy holds heat without showing light. Seal the flame inside. The eye sees sugar, not fire." Wanda hesitated. To trap her own crown felt like caging her power. But the eye at the window told the whole story. She lifted the crown. The flame licked her scarred hands and did not burn her. She pressed the crown into the melting sugar-glass. Leslie worked fast, pouring, smoothing, sealing. The candy hardened around the fire. The blaze shrank to a dull glow, then vanished behind pink and white sugar. The crown looked like a child's sweet. Outside, the winged eye drifted left, then right. It hovered. It found no flame. Its wings beat once, and it flew off over the charcoal trees, chasing nothing. Wanda let out a breath. "It lost me." "For now," Leslie said. "The sugar won't last forever. Heat eats it slow. A week, maybe less." Wanda held the disguised crown against her chest. She was free of the eye. But her crown of sovereign fire now sat locked inside candy, dimming by the day, and she had one week to find a way to wear it before the sugar failed and the hunters came again.