Chapter 5 — Bitter Aftertaste

The trouble didn’t start with shouts. The Night Market didn’t work that way.

It started with pauses. Half-beats in conversation. Eyes that didn’t linger, but didn’t quite look away either. It started with the space around her stall widening — subtly, like a ripple on water no one dared acknowledge.

And then the whispers came.

“She talks to him.”

“He gave her something.”

“Did you see the mark on her lantern last night? It flared when he passed.”

“She says she sells sugar — but have you tasted her honeylace lately? It’s not just candy anymore.”

Lira didn’t ask them to stop.

Didn’t explain.

She just kept boiling syrups and wrapping toffee and pretending her hands didn’t shake more than usual.

But the taste of the air had changed.

Even the sweets turned strange.

Her plum-glaze now carried a faint note of longing. Her peppermint tarts soothed too well — buyers wept without knowing why. She stopped selling them altogether when a woman from the bone-charm booth cried for twenty minutes after just one bite.

Sweetness can turn, her mother had written. If you don’t watch it carefully enough.

Ven was the first to confront her.

He came around dusk, leaning against her stall with a scowl and a bruised apple in one hand.

“You’ve gone quiet,” he said.

“I’m working.”

“You’re always working. That’s never stopped you talking before.”

She didn’t look at him.

“Everyone’s buzzing,” he added. “Like hornets. You know why.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen him again.”

She sprinkled sugar dust across her lotus crisps. “That’s not illegal.”

Ven dropped the apple on her counter. It rolled, slowly, and stopped by the honeylace tray.

“He’s not mortal, Lira. We all know that.”

“I never said he was.”

“Then why are you letting him linger?”

She stopped.

Looked up.

“Letting him?”

Ven flushed, but didn’t back down. “You know what I mean.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t.”

He exhaled. “You’re not one of them. The magic-eaters. The charm-drunk. You’re steady. You know how to keep the old rules.”

She blinked. “You mean the one where gods don’t look mortals in the eye?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she said softly, “he looks at me. And I’m still breathing.”

“That’s not comfort.”

“It is to me.”

Ven narrowed his eyes. “People are scared, Lira.”

“Let them be,” she said, wrapping his apple in a thin cloth and tying it neatly. “Fear isn’t always right. It just arrives first.”

He left without another word.

But the bitter taste lingered.

She saw Kael again three nights later.

Not at the stall.

But above it.

She was cleaning sugar crust from the kettle when she looked up and spotted him across the way — perched on the edge of a crumbling balcony high above the market, cloak wrapped around him like second skin, unmoving.

Watching.

He didn’t come down.

Didn’t wave.

Just remained there, as though making sure the world continued spinning the way he left it.

She hated how steady she felt once she knew he was near.

It wasn’t until she caught herself counting the nights he didn’t appear that she realized the whispers weren’t the only thing changing.

She was changing, too.

She started hearing his footsteps before he arrived — not from sound, but sensation. Like her blood remembered the pressure of his presence.

She started making two extra honeylace candies each night — not labeled, not acknowledged. But he always took them.

She started keeping his scale near her heart instead of in a drawer.

And when someone shouted in the crowd one evening, she looked for him, not for help.

That was the moment she knew.

She wasn’t just not afraid of him anymore.

She was starting to trust him.

It was late — third bell again — when Kael finally returned in full. He arrived not from the alleys, but from the sky. Not flying — nothing so dramatic — but stepping off a rooftop with soundless grace.

He wore no hood tonight.

And though his face remained half-shadowed by his hair and the strange, flickering light around him, Lira saw his expression clearly.

He was watching her like she was the first thing in weeks that made sense.

“You’ve been distant,” she said, handing him a wrapped candy without asking.

“You’ve been questioned.”

Lira blinked. “You know?”

“I hear things,” he said. “The market is louder than it thinks.”

She raised her chin. “I didn’t stop you from coming.”

“I know.”

“They think you’re dangerous.”

He gave her a look that could’ve been amusement or warning. “I am.”

“They think I’m a fool for letting you linger.”

“You’re not.”

Silence passed between them like a storm deciding whether to rain.

Then Lira leaned forward.

“I’m not afraid of you, Kael.”

He said nothing.

“And that’s not magic. It’s not sugar. It’s not foolishness.”

Still nothing.

“It’s choice,” she said, quiet and firm. “It’s mine.”

He looked at her for a long, slow moment.

Then said, “You don’t know what you’re choosing.”

She shrugged. “I never claimed to.”

He stepped closer.

Close enough for the warmth of him to push against the night air. Not heat like fire — but like earth, sun-warmed and heavy and ancient.

“I can’t undo it if you regret this,” he murmured.

“I’m not asking you to.”

His hand brushed the counter. Not hers. Not skin.

But close.

“Then I’ll stay,” he said. “As long as you let me.”

She smiled — the smallest flicker.

“I thought gods didn’t ask for permission.”

“I’m not like the others.”

“No,” she whispered. “You’re not.”

She didn’t notice the tear in her glove until after he left.

It wasn’t from work. Not from sugar blades or caramel strands.

It was right across the palm.

Right where she’d touched the cloth he’d dropped the candy into.

And beneath the fabric — faint and strange and impossible — a shimmer of scale-like skin flickered across her hand, gone in a blink.

She rubbed the spot, heartbeat racing.

No pain.

But something had changed.

Something was becoming.

And she didn’t yet know if it was a blessing or a wound.

End of Chapter 5

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***