Chapter 37: A Taste of Modern Malice
"My Lord, please, the blade, it’s far too keen for fingers as delicate as yours!"
The head cook, a man whose forearms were roughly the size of Cherion’s thighs, looked like he was about to have a genuine nervous breakdown. Beside him, a cluster of kitchen maids hovered like nervous pigeons, their hands fluttering toward Cherion as if to snatch away the heavy iron knife he was currently wielding. It was a bit much, honestly.
Cherion didn’t even look up.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
The sound of steel hitting wood was the only answer he gave for a good ten seconds. He was dicing wild onions with a terrifying precision, the kind of speed that was birthed not from noble training, but from the desperate, sweat-slicked trenches of a Friday night rush at Taco Hell. God, he missed the sll of artificial seasoning sotis. It was a weird thing to be nostalgic about, especially when you’re currently stuck in a drafty fortress surrounded by people who think chili powder is an exotic spice.
"It’s fine, Bram," Cherion said, his voice calm but carrying that ’don’t-ss-with-’ edge he used to use on rowdy teenagers demanding free refills. "I’ve handled worse than a kitchen knife. Trust . If I survived a drive-thru tir hitting six minutes during a blackout, I can handle an onion."
The staff exchanged bewildered glances. Drive-thru? Tir? The words were gibberish to them, sounding like so strange dialect or perhaps a delirium brought on by the Northern cold. But they backed off, mostly because Cherion looked like he knew exactly what he was doing.
He was on a mission. He craved sothing, anything, that didn’t taste like bland stew or dry, flavorless at. Using his skill, a mix of muscle mory and sheer culinary desperation, he began to assemble sothing the North had never seen. He had found so flatbreads that were close enough to tortillas, and he’d spent the last hour slow-cooking shredded at with every spicy root he could scavenge from the pantry. He was essentially making a dieval "Crunch-wrap," or at least a Northern cousin of it.
The aroma began to fill the kitchen, sharp, savory, and aggressively fragrant..
When the first batch was done, golden and, he turned to the gaping staff. "Try it," he commanded, sliding a platter toward them.
Most of them hesitated, but the sll was a siren song. One by one, they reached out. Even Soren was standing in the shadows of the larder, his nose twitching despite his best efforts to look utterly bored. Cherion offered him one directly, a small, subtle peace offering.
Soren looked at the folded bread as if it were a suspicious political docunt. "I shall pass, My Lord. My palate is... accustod to more traditional fare."
Cherion didn’t push it. He just shrugged, took a massive, crunchy bite of his own, and humd in satisfaction. "Yes, that’s good stuff."
Packing the rest into a heavy basket, Cherion headed out. He was headed for the training grounds.
The training yard was a pit of churned mud and frozen slush. Elios stood there, all stone-faced and serious, watching the soldiers beat the hell out of each other with swords. When Cherion walked up, the clanging of tal on tal slowed to a stop.
"Lord Cherion," Elios said, his voice a low rumble. "This is no place for a stroll."
"I’m not strolling, Elios. I’m catering." Cherion pulled a wrap from the basket, still steaming in the frigid air, and held it out.
Elios stared at it. He looked at Cherion, then back at the food. "What is this?"
"It’s sothing I made myself," Cherion said, taking another bite of his own. "See? No poison."
The soldiers, never ones to turn down free food that slled that good, began to shuffle closer. Elios finally took a bite, his stoic mask shattering for a split second as the spices hit his tongue. He didn’t say it was good, but he didn’t stop eating.
That was the green light. The soldiers pounced on the basket like a pack of starved wolves.
As the last of the food disappeared, Cherion clapped his hands together, the sound sharp in the quiet yard. "Alright, listen up! Anyone with an injury, I don’t care if it’s a twisted ankle, a bruised rib, or a headache from yesterday’s sparring, line up. Now."
The n hesitated, but the warmth in their bellies made them compliant. Cherion began to work. He wanted to familiarize himself with this power, to see how it felt when it wasn’t a panicked response to Zarius’s near-faint or near-death episodes. As his hands glowed with a soft, milky light, he felt the mana flow out of him like warm water. It was... easier than he expected.
"Wow," one soldier muttered as a deep purple bruise on his forearm simply evaporated. "Heals like a priest and cooks like a dream. His Grace really hit the jackpot, didn’t he?"
Cherion forced a smile, though his insides felt like lead. Lucky? Zarius probably saw him as a temporary nuisance. He doubted the Duke felt lucky to have a fiancé, no matter who they were.
But not everyone was a fan. A small group of soldiers stood off to the side, their arms crossed, their eyes dripping with a sarcasm that was almost physical. They didn’t move toward him. They stayed in their own tight circle.
"Look at him," one of them sneered, loud enough for the wind to carry the words. "Playing healer. Does he really think a bit of warm light makes us forget where he ca from?"
Cherion’s movents slowed. He didn’t get angry at first. He understood the wariness, he was an outsider, a Valtrane nesis by association. He could handle an ’outsider.’ He could handle ’suspicious.’
"He’s just His Highness’s ex-fiancé," another whispered, his lip curling. "Probably sent here to spy. Once a pet, always a pet. I bet he still misses the Crown Prince’s collar."
The air in the training yard seed to drop ten degrees, and it wasn’t because of the cold.
Oh, for fu*k’s sake.
They were just talking shit. Typical. He’d been around enough people who thought they could tear him down just to feel bigger.
Hold it together, Cherion. Don’t react. Be cool. They’re just haters. And you don’t give haters what they want.
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