The Scent of Secrets

The story

About The Scent of Secrets

The battle against the Sparrowhawk is over, but for Léo Dubois and the members of the Order of the Golden Ladle, the victory feels hollow. They are guarding a devastating secret: the Order’s most sacred recipe book is a soulless forgery, and the real one is still in the hands of their enemy. Le Grand Panier, once a bustling sanctuary, has become a fortress of simmering anxiety.

When Léo, the Order’s gifted “Reader” with a palate that can taste memories and emotions, is sent on a simple errand to procure a bottle of Paris’s most popular new perfume, Écho de Lavande, he discovers a new and terrifying threat. The perfume smells of a beautiful, honest summer day, but it tastes of a cold, sterile, and perfectly structured lie—the unmistakable signature of a Rationalist weapon.

To unravel the conspiracy, Léo and his brilliant strategist partner, Colette, must seek the help of Julien Clément, the perfume’s creator and a scientific “Nose” of prodigious talent. But Julien trusts only in formulas and molecules; he scoffs at Léo’s talk of tasting stories and lies. Forced into a reluctant alliance, the boy who reads emotions and the boy who reads chemicals must learn to trust each other to fight a common enemy.

Their investigation reveals the Sparrowhawk’s most sophisticated plot yet: a two-part weapon that uses a primer scent to “marinate the senses” for a flavor-based attack, designed to erase a person’s will to disagree. The trail of lies leads them from the back alleys of Paris to the sun-drenched flower fields of Grasse, and into a deadly decoy in the masked, secret-filled canals of Venice.

When the enemy is a master of the perfect forgery, how can you trust your senses to tell you what is real?