by Claire Luana
The Confectioner’s Truth
Copyright © 2018 by Claire Luana
Published by Live Edge Publishing
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Hardback ISBN: 978-1-948947-83-1
Paperback ISBN:978-1-948947-95-4
Ebook ISBN: 978–1-948947–94–7
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All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.
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All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Cover Design: Bookfly Design
Interior Formatting: Integrity Formatting
Editing: Amy McNulty
Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t...
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A deadly new enemy rules Alesia with an iron fist—and an unnatural interest in the magic of the Confectioner’s Guild. Betrayed by one of their own, Wren and her few remaining allies flee Maradis to secure whatever aid they can find.
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But new dangers and old ghosts lurk around every corner, forcing Wren to confront truths she thought she’d buried deep long ago.
Will Wren be able to piece together an alliance, and enough of her own shattered heart, to take back her home from those who hold it hostage? Or will her magic prove too tempting a morsel for her enemies to refuse...
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Don’t miss this thrilling conclusion to the Confectioner Chronicles!
Chapter 1
It had been two weeks since the Imbris dynasty fell. Two weeks of gray, spitting skies, of blustery winds that swirled slick ochre leaves and thick woolen cloaks, finding the seams and burrowing in with icy fingers. The Maradis Morning newspaper had sworn that the skies cried for King Hadrian Imbris—that the heavens themselves mourned the passing of a monarch stolen from them at the height of his reign. A ruler who had been betrayed by one of Maradis’s very own. At least that was what the newspaper had said on the first day. The second day, it had said nothing. And on the third day of the Aprican occupation of Maradis, the paper had welcomed Alesia’s new rulers with praise and thanksgiving, encouraging the country’s citizenry to do the same.
Wren thought that if the sky cried for anyone at all, it should cry for Virgil. And Queen Eloise. For Lucas, and the queen’s other remaining children, fleeing for their lives. And for Sable, who they had buried in the Guild plot at the Holyhive Cemetery, with a swirl of ocean waves chipped into the mirrored rock of her headstone. And for Hale, who was well and truly lost to her. Who was worse than dead. But Wren knew that the gray Maradis clouds didn’t weep for those she had lost. They wept because Maradis sat nestled against the windward side of the Cascadian Mountains, which locked in the damp marine air and storms from the west. The heavens cared little for the sorrows of mere mortals. It was just a matter of geography.
Wren stood in her room in the Confectioner’s Guildhall, her forehead resting against the cool glass of her window, tracing a finger through the condensation that had formed there. In a way, she knew she should be grateful to be here and not the Block, Maradis’s notorious prison, which was now under new ownership. After the Apricans had taken Maradis, Callidus had successfully petitioned the Aprican king for leniency for Wren and Thom—whose only crime, at least as far as the Apricans appeared to know, was escaping a holding cell in the Aprican camp. The bloody fight on the execution platform had left Hale as the only witness to her and Thom’s efforts to free Lucas, Trick, and Ella. And apparently, Hale hadn’t yet turned them in. Yet.
“Wren,” came a voice from the door. It was Thom—she recognized the hint of apology in his tone. She had ignored his two prior knocks.
“Yes?” she asked, not moving her forehead from the glass.
“Why don’t you come down to breakfast? You need to eat something. I haven’t seen you eat anything in days.”
“I’ve asked Olivia to send something up for me,” Wren replied. “Thank you, though.” It wasn’t as bad as he’d suggested. She’d eaten some oatmeal with sweet cream yesterday. Or had that been the day before?
“No, you didn’t,” Olivia’s voice said.
Wren turned to find them both standing there, Olivia with her arms crossed under her ample bosom.
Wren stifled a sigh. She tucked her robe around her, cinching it tighter.
“Come on. It’ll do you good to interact with some real, live human beings,” Olivia quipped. She wore a soft gray dress with a black belt, and her blonde curls were pulled into a ponytail. For Olivia, she looked remarkably subdued.
“I think I’ve had enough real, live human beings for a lifetime, thank you.”
“Even us?” A pained look crossed Thom’s handsome face. His narrow shoulders seemed to hunch over even farther.
Wren closed her eyes, chastised. “No, of course not you two. Fine. Just let me get dressed.”
“How about a bath first?” Olivia crossed the room and picked up one of Wren’s limp auburn curls.
“Okay, a bath too,” Wren said. “I’ll just meet you downstairs when I’m done. No need for you to sit here and wait.”
Olivia plopped herself down in one of the chairs by Wren’s window and Thom sat on the bed with a bounce. “We’ll wait,” they said in unison.
Wren did feel much improved when she emerged from her washroom thirty minutes later, clothed in a clean skirt and sweater, her damp hair braided over one shoulder. As she descended the Guild stairs like a grudging captive, the smells of coffee and bacon tickled her nostrils, rousing her appetite from its deep slumber.
“I guess some coffee would be nice,” Wren said.
Olivia looked back with a roll of her blue eyes. “Coffee would be nice,” she said, mocking Wren gently. “You’re going to eat as much as Thom or you’re not leaving that table.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “Thom eats like a starved ox.”
“Better than pecking like a little wren,” Thom shot back with a grin over his shoulder.
Wren’s heart stuttered painfully. It was so much like the ridiculous little pet names Hale used to throw at her.
“Wren?” Thom turned, laying a hand on her shoulder. She had stopped walking. “Are you okay?”
She nodded quickly, closing her eyes for a moment to center herself. She could do this. It was just breakfast. “No bird jokes, okay?”
Thom nodded, his blue eyes softening. “Deal.”
The dining hall was mostly empty, between the late hour and the loss of some of their Guild members. Wren looked for a stretch too long at the table where she and Hale and Sable used to sit—she could almost see their laughing faces, their quick fingers swiping berries off each other’s plates. The table was empty today, the stretch of worn wood lonely and forlorn. She looked away, turning to the cornucopia of breakfast foods before her. The Aprican occupation hadn’t seemed to trouble the Guild’s cuisiniers or its storehouse. The food should have made her mouth water and her stomach rumble with insistence, but the thought of it turned her saliva to chalk in her mouth.
But knowing Olivia and Thom were watching her like two mother hawks, she filled her plate with a toasted bagel smeared with cream cheese and topped with smoked salmon and fresh dill, a shimmering poached egg, and a scoop of herb-roasted balsamic-glazed breakfast potatoes.
Thom and Olivia both nodded proudly as she set her plate down and went back for coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice.
“Nice work,” Thom said approvingly as she settled onto the bench. He himself had two plates—one piled
high with waffles, berry compote, and whipped cream light as a cloud, the other with three king crab Benedicts smothered in mustard-yellow hollandaise sauce.
“Wait until she actually eats it,” Olivia said, stealing a dollop of Thom’s whipped cream to add to her coffee.
“It’s not like I’m starving myself,” Wren grumbled. “I just haven’t had much of an appetite.”
“Or much of a mind to do anything.” Callidus, Guildmaster of the Confectioner’s Guild, materialized at the head of their table like a dark shadow. “Nice to see you’ve rejoined the land of the living, Wren.”
“It hasn’t been that bad,” Wren said into her coffee. By the Beekeeper, the stuff tasted delicious.
“Just weeks ago, I could hardly use the washroom without you and Imbris popping out of some keyhole you were lurking in. Now, I send you three summons to attend Guild meetings with me, and you won’t even come out of your room.”
Wren blanched at the mention of her boyfriend, Lucas Imbris. Lucas was heir to the Alesian throne, now that his parents and older siblings had been murdered in the Aprican coup. She hadn’t heard a word from Lucas since he’d fled with his siblings Patrick and Ellarose, and she intended to keep it that way. She still didn’t know if Lucas had recovered from the grievous wound he had received on the execution platform. He could be… Her heart stuttered over the thought. No. He wasn’t dead. He was out there somewhere, free. Alive. And the less she knew about where, the better. She rubbed her fingertips across the face of the large ring she wore on a chain around her neck. It was Lucas’s. Somehow, it was supposed to be a clue to where he hid. She hadn’t the foggiest idea what it meant.
“Wren.” Callidus snapped his fingers in front of her and she jumped. She’d been lost in her thoughts. She looked between Olivia and Thom—worry etched on their faces—to Callidus, who just looked angry, his thick brows joining above the scowl on his face. But behind the anger was something she thought she recognized, something written in the shadowed bags under his blue eyes. Something she herself had felt. Worry. Doubt. The pressure of leadership...of decisions...of being alone when it all went to hell.
“I’m sorry, Callidus,” Wren said, a feeling of wretchedness surging through her. Callidus had almost died. She of all people should understand how that felt—should be there for him. She should be the person he could confide in now. Her mind stumbled over the thought. Now that Sable and Hale were gone. Now that the number of Gifted at the Confectioner’s Guild was down to three. “The next time you summon me, I’ll come. I swear.”
“See that you do.” His voice was soft. “I need my Guild members at one hundred percent. These are complicated times.”
Wren nodded and Callidus whirled, his black coattails flapping in his wake.
“You blew off three summons from Callidus?” Thom’s blue eyes were as big as saucers in his freckled face.
Wren held up a weary hand. “I’ll do better.” As much as she wanted to hide under her covers and never come out again, she couldn’t do it if it meant letting down the few remaining people who cared about her. “Now...let me eat my lox. You two, tell me what I’ve missed.”
Thom and Olivia looked at each other. “You mean beside the resistance fighters who managed to break into the Aprican munitions stores and are now bombing the hell out of the city?” Olivia said.
“Is that what those booms have been?” Wren asked weakly. She had heard something the last few nights.
Olivia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes, those are the booms.”
“I hear that King Evander and his staff are meeting with people,” Thom offered. “The military. The nobles’ council. The Guilds. Making them swear loyalty.”
Wren frowned. “What? Why? Have we talked to anyone from the other Aperative Guilds? Found out what these meetings are like?”
“Maybe that’s something Callidus would have shared in one of the three meetings he summoned you to,” Thom said around a huge bite of waffle.
Wren threw a piece of dill at him, and it floated down between them onto the table. “Not you too.”
“There’s talk that those who supported King Imbris were...taken care of,” Olivia said in hushed tones, her blonde ponytail bunched in one hand. “We haven’t seen Grandmaster Beckett since the coup.”
“Marina hasn’t heard from him?” Wren asked. Grandmaster Beckett was the traitorous grandmaster who had tried to seize the Guild from Callidus by turning him over for treason and execution. He sponsored Wren’s friend Lennon and was father another of their members: the beautiful but cold Marina.
Olivia and Thom both shook their heads. “Not a word.”
Wren frowned. “He did throw his lot behind King Imbris. Maybe he’s cooling his heels in the Block.”
“Or maybe he’s at the bottom of the Cerulean Bay,” Thom said. “I hear these Apricans like to make people disappear.”
“That sounds like market gossip,” Wren said. Part of her didn’t want to hear about any of this. She was done with politics, with kings and plans and coups.
“I can’t believe these are our lives now,” Olivia said, pushing a raspberry around on her plate. “We’re Apricans.”
“No one will ever mistake us for Apricans,” Wren said. “Well, you’re blonde enough to be one, so maybe you could pass, but Thom and me? No way. Apricans are built like the Sower himself. Tall and muscular, and too handsome to be fair, especially for a bunch of invaders. Apricans look like...”
“Hale,” Thom said.
Wren sighed. “Yeah, like Hale.”
“No.” Thom pointed behind her with a hiss of breath. “Hale.”
Wren whirled on her bench, her elbow knocking into her coffee cup and splattering the dregs across the table. The slow-seeping liquid barely registered in her mind. It took all her energy to keep breathing, to keep moving the air into her lungs and out.
Hale stood in the doorway of the dining hall like a blond angel of destruction. An Aprican uniform of sky blue trimmed with gold stretched over his muscled form, the country’s golden sunburst on his breast. His blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and his hand, the hand that had once stirred caramel and poured chocolate in the teaching kitchen with Wren, now rested on a sword hilt. But the worst change was his face. Gone was the easy grin, the playful crinkle in the corners of his turquoise eyes that told you that he was definitely, absolutely, up to something—something that you wanted to be a part of. It was replaced by a blank canvas, a wall of a man with nothing behind it. No light, no mirth.
Hale strode stiffly to their table and held out a letter sealed in gold wax. A bit of spilled coffee dripped onto Wren’s skirt, but she couldn’t move. She was frozen. She was stone.
“Wren, this is a summons for you, Thom, and Callidus. You’re to meet with Emperor Evander’s representative this afternoon.”
Emperor? Thom mouthed to her. Wren was frozen to the spot.
Hale wagged the letter again, motioning for her to take it.
Thom finally reached out and retrieved it. “Thanks, Hale.”
Hale nodded. “Okay then.” He turned in his shiny black boots and walked from the room.
Chapter 2
In. Out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Suddenly, Wren was gasping. She pushed up from the bench, her breakfast forgotten.
“Wren, are you all right?” Olivia put a steadying hand out, but Wren flinched away.
“I just need some air,” she said.
“What are you going to do?” Thom called after her, but she was already out the door, into the hallway. Her feet pounded on the polished marble of the hallway, the plush carpet of the antechamber, and then she was out the front door, the October chill dousing her like a bucket of cold water. It shocked her senses and brought her back through the fog that had fallen over her. “Hale!” she called, wrapping her arms tightly against her chest and hurrying down the five Guild steps to where Hale was taking the reins of a chestnut horse from a groom.
He turned, his expression wary.
“Are you well?” was all she managed.
Hale let out a snort of a laugh. “Really?”
Wren nodded. Concern bled through her anger, mingling with it until she wasn’t sure where one left off and the other began.
“I am as well as could be expected,” he replied.
Wren shivered violently as an icy bit of wind swirled past them, cutting through the thin cotton of her skirt.
“Get inside before you catch a cold,” he said gently.
There was more to say. Words, books, libraries worth of things to say. But at that moment, there was nothing but the silence of her lips, the pounding of her heart. So she turned to go, her movements wooden.
“Wren,” Hale called.
She turned back.
“It’s not like it was before. Sneaking around...playing at inspector or revolutionary. Don’t cross Emperor Evander.”
“Or what?” Wren’s stubbornness kicked in. Her chin lifted in defiance. “You’ll kill me like you killed Virgil?”
Wren was rewarded by a slight flinch of Hale’s chiseled features. “I didn’t tell them about you and Thom helping Lucas and his siblings, and I won’t. But it’s not a game we play here. It’s war.”
“And here I thought you’d already won.” Wasn’t that what it had all been about? Defeating King Imbris at whatever cost? Taking revenge on their former monarch for his part in Sable’s death?