Morning rays of sunlight pierced through the sugar-spun windows of her peanut brittle house. Everything had changed since Ana returned from the Emerald Canopy. She lay in her bed, troubled. Her skin remained smooth, her hair untarnished by age. She touched her face, expecting the illusion to waver—but it wouldn’t. The glamour had settled permanently over her sugar-lich frame, hiding centuries of penance beneath youthful features. Twenty years had passed since that ordinary day, and Dain had likely forgotten her...She was certain he had forgotten her. After all, she’d left him standing on the rope bridge, high above the canopy.
The look on his face as she walked back into that portal—she would never forget it. In all her years of sweet imprisonment, she had never felt a sadness so deep. It ached in her ribcage, her candied heart rattled. Inside, she was cracking free from the layers of sugar that had crystallized over during her long penance.
What was happening to her?
Chips, her chubby little gingerbread man, had no answers. He sat on the windowsill, sugar buttons askew, eyes blinking at her with clueless fondness. It wasn’t as if she could summon her jailer for peppermint tea. She had done terrible things, heinous, unforgivable things, a long time ago.
But time slipped sideways in the Plates. It bent and folded like fondant in summer heat.
She had no reference left to cling to.
Ana stood. Pacing the caramel-veined floor, she stopped before the mirror again. Her skin—smooth, unscarred, young, she was not Gramma Nut everyone saw. Her heart rattled behind its candy-crusted ribs, alive in a way it hadn’t been in years.
Something inside her was waking. And it frightened her.
That feeling—that odd, shivering sensation—what exactly was it? It rattled in her ribs, unsettling and alive. Her sketchbook, once filled with drafts for candy confections and syrupy spells, now bore sketches of him. Page after page. Time be damned.
Was this a new kind of penance? A pain not meant to punish, but to prolong—to make the years stretch like taffy, endless and aching?
She had drawn the moments she remembered as if they’d never left her. As if he were still standing there on that rope bridge, watching her disappear.
“My lady, we have to make more tarts today—for the Feastborn delegation,” Chips announced cheerfully, his frosting-swirled tummy jiggling as he waddled to grab a silver mixing bowl.
Beyond the candied walls, she heard the daily rhythm of the Plates: the chittering of cinnamon-roll squirrels gathering sugar nuts, the distant roar of a ginger drake, and the faint, mournful howl of a pepper wolf.
Ana reached for her apron—the one with frosted cupcakes stitched across the front—and exhaled as she tied the bow into place.
She would make the tarts.
She would not dwell on the things she couldn’t change.
Furthermore, she had done this to herself. Not only that, but she had let that sugar-glutton Daë from Undersanctuary taint her magic, and now this was her penance. To remain here, in the Plates. That was the deal… wasn’t it?
Slowly, the butter crumbled under her fingers, and with it, she felt herself pulled into that dark place—the rich, bitter depths of her soul where guilt tasted of chocolate too long burned.
Candrith.
That was the name of the Dae who had tempted her. She still saw him sometimes in her mind: handsome, achingly mortal in appearance, lips curling as he offered sugared recipes and whispered that her magic could rise far beyond her own skill. She had believed him. She had fallen under his spell.
He had seeped through during the Great Rift, drawn to her like a moth to sugar flame, intoxicated by her gift. And that was how it began—how the darkness first crept into her, staining what was once sweet.
The kettle began to whistle, dragging her back from the depths of those thoughts.
Beside her, Chips was already measuring out flour and butter into the wide silver bowl on the counter. She reached for the pastry cutter and pressed the cold butter into the flour with practiced ease. The fat yielded beneath her hands, breaking into coarse shards as steel teeth bit deeply into the powder.
Her movements became rhythmic, mindless, meditative.
She was staring out the window as she cut butter into flour, working it into dough while Chips dutifully dribbled ice-cold water into the bowl. But her mind was elsewhere—drifting, detaching.
And then she saw it.
Just for a moment. A flicker.
As if another window had opened within the one before her. A shimmer, subtle and trembling at the edges. A tiny view into somewhere far beyond the Plates.
The Emerald Barrel.
She blinked. The name hit her like a bell in her chest. Was she imagining it? Dreaming it into the dough? It shimmered faintly—but unmistakably, undeniably there.
And there, behind the bar, was Dain.
He hadn’t changed much. But then again, elves rarely did.
Her heart rattled against her ribs again, the warmth of his bracelet still lingering on her wrist as her hands worked the dough with steady, practiced ease. Through the flickering window, Dain stood behind the bar of the Emerald Barrel, unchanged. She didn’t know if he could see her, if this was real or just another cruel mirage stitched into her penance.
She rolled the dough out, letting the familiar rhythm anchor her, but her thoughts twisted like sugar threads. What magic was this? Had Gale Stormbreaker woven secret clauses into her punishment—traps she hadn’t noticed, or worse, a path to freedom she hadn’t earned? Or had he built the spell work with a conditional release, waiting for something to change within her? She had seen the binding magic etched into the walls of her prison—it suppressed her power, reshaped her, kept her docile. She had lived in this sugared cage, in this house, for centuries.
Ana paused, her fingers hovering over a single sugar cookie, smooth and warm from the oven. She picked up a pastry bag of royal icing, her hands trembling slightly, and began to pipe a message with painstaking care. Chips watched, eyes wide, as each letter appeared under her practiced touch:
Dain, I still think of you. I hope to find a way out of this. You look well.
~Ana
Around the edges, she piped tiny flowers, each one shimmering faintly as the magic set the icing into a glossy, jewel-like sheen.
With a steadying breath, she carried the cookie to the window. The shimmer of the portal pulsed faintly, already beginning to close. Her hand brushed the magical surface, sticky with syrup, as if the Plates themselves were resisting her. Every nerve thrummed with the impossibility of the act—the risk that the portal would vanish before he could see her message.
Carefully, she set the cookie on the bar beyond the portal. She held her breath. Through the flickering shimmer, she saw him notice it. He looked at the cookie—and for a heartbeat, it felt as though her heart had crossed the impossible distance to him. But she did not.
Then the portal snapped shut.
A deeper thought struck her heart—her crimes. By the gods, her crimes… there was no penance enough to atone for what she had done. She placed a hand over her chest; her heart was beating too fast. The darkness of her deeds—the ones she had committed—bubbled to the surface, like sugar boiling in a pot.
She felt the weight of it all. Could she ever tell him? Could she tell anyone what she had done? 
Gods I love this series
Thank you, you started it!!!