Chapter 2

He ran low on dough. Henri tried again with the last piece of twisted batter. He raised the temperature from a single hot coal to an inferno by adding sticks. The pan of melted butter jumped from a calm pond’s surface to a hellfire lake in a matter of moments. Henri no longer cared about the scalding oils singeing his forearms as he dipped one. Last. Pair. He lifted it from the roasting butter.

The pair could barely hold together in the bridge of his fingers. Wilted. Failures like the rest. He tossed the cookie and it flopped on top of the pile like a starfish corpse.

Henri braced his hands on his station table. He raised on his tip toes like a dancer, not an apprentice in the bowels of a palace. He threw his head back sniffing at the air above. It was still cool. Hovering past the morning smells of beaten creams and eggs cracked, beyond curling smoke, the air floated fresh.

Henri exhaled heat and exhaustion.

He gulped at the air like one of the garden’s koi did for francs. There was no time to continue making batches. His cookies were not getting any better and he was out of dough. The chefs would be there in about three-hundred Ave Maria’s. They’d be expecting their morning tea and pastry. He’d been so sure his angel wings would take flight.

Something was off, his ingredients, or the recipe, or him. No. Henri refused to let doubt linger in the rooms of his mind. For doubt was just an eyelash to be blinked away.

Who said that? Henri laughed. For the maxim bubbled up from the kettle of his memories unexpectedly. He closed his eyes, searching. A smile spread across his face. Henri remembered. It was a pearl she’d sewn into his lips. His auntie. Always waltzing through the chaos of crusaders and Huguenots, through adjacent inns and plague. Whenever it seemed Le Mollusquewould surely be swept out from under them, she’d always find a way.

Henri remembered once he’d been so frightened by the banging and angry voices at their front door that he’d run right up to her bedroom on the third story. He’d crawled into her lap and refused to leave. She held him, staring at their reflection in the mirror as if sitting for a portrait. She seemed deaf to the shouts and splintering of wood below.

Her vanity stretched before them, bare. Gone were her jeweled cases and broaches. The chandelier wept wax, its candles burning down to fat.

She’d sat silent, holding him to her chest like a doll. Henri had thrown his head back, resting it on her breasts. Always so soft and warm like twin loaves fresh from the oven and dipped in lavender. He slept best there.

But this time, something pricked the back of his head. Not sharp enough to be an unclasped pin. More like a thorn through his auntie’s corset and layers of pink velvet. His eyes filled with tears as he looked up at her accusingly. The pain of her betrayal hurt more than the prick. She lifted a small silver flower from the valley of her bosom. She handed it to Henri and he immediately smiled. It sparkled like magic. Each petal dipped in silver. It was the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. The flower seemed planted atop a slender box with sharp edges of silver. One of those four must’ve been the culprit. Digging through his auntie’s dress and into his curls

Auntie showed Henri how to twist the flower till it popped off, revealing the small space beneath. When he looked within, Henri had thought it snow.

She laughed and reached a finger into the box, “In a crisis, one just needs a little powder.”

Henri laughed, returning from memories into the royal kitchen.

A little powder in a crisis

Sugar. He had a small pouch of it in his apron. He had planned on using just a sprinkle on his angel wings. But his stack of cookies needed a blizzard of the sweetest of stuff. A cover. Not his raw crystals, but soft, ground to a fine powdering.

Powdered sugar. Henri’s eyes leapt past the sleepy apprentices tying their aprons at their waists as they found their stations. Many of the boys were bringing out their chef’s sieves, pans, and mortars with loud clangs. The custard-makers would have some for sure, but Henri had made an enemy of one of their apprentices last week. Marin the Baron of Snot, Henri had quipped, when the drippy-nosed apprentice displayed his latest lemon-custard. The entire kitchen had heard it and laughed. The name had stuck to the boy like honey between thighs.

Henri had no time to gloat. His cookies were looking more and more like the chopped fingers of orphans. He needed sugar fast.