TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 9 (RAW)

Chapter 9 - Food, Glorious Food.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

- George Bernard Shaw.

Instead of taking her luncheon alone under the rafters of the great hall, Seraphina had chosen the warmth of the kitchens, where the air was thick with the scent of woodsmoke, butter, and slow-boiling marrowbones. It was a clattering world of ladles and laughter, copper pots swinging like pendulums from soot-streaked beams, and at the center of it all reigned Catherina, broad as a bread oven and twice as hot-tempered.

“There you go again, toying with your food, my lady,” Catherina clucked, one floury hand on her ample hip. “You’re still growing, you are. You really ought to eat more at your age, otherwise you will never reach your mother’s height.”

“But that is precisely the problem,” Seraphina sighed, casting a rueful glance at her plate. “With meals like these, I fear I’ll be growing in all the wrong places. To the sides instead of up!”

The young girl was about to ask the fat woman if she could make meals with considerably fewer carbohydrates, with a greater focus on protein. However, she soon realized, there simply were not the words for it in the Aranthian diction.

She’d added an inch since coming to this world and more than a little curve to her hips besides, a fact made more vexing by her seemingly bottomless appetite. At times, she felt no better than her pet serpent, Cornelia—always peckish, always prowling for the next bite.

“To my eyes, you’re all skin and bones,” the cook huffed, plopping a fresh pie down in front of her. “A gust of wind looks like it might take you.”

Seraphine bit back a retort, and against her better judgment, she spooned a dollop of cold cream onto the steaming wedge of fruit pie—her third helping. It was maddening how good the food tasted at home. Her own tongue, or perhaps the tongue of the girl she now was, had longed for it in secret. But she shoved that thought aside. Down that path lay riddles she had no interest in solving: the nature of the soul, memory, and identity. Was she still herself, or merely a ghost in another's flesh? If the philosophers of ten thousand years had not cracked that nut, even with her supreme intellect, she would not be the one to do it—at least not today.

While Catherina busied herself with a cauldron large enough to drown a very large boar in, Seraphina slipped a generous piece of her pie to the sleek-scaled Cornelia, who had curled herself like a cat beside the hearth.

“Yummies,” Cornelia declared through their bond, one of her three heads gobbling down the offering with wet enthusiasm.

“Everything is ‘yummy’ to you,” Seraphina muttered, brushing crumbs from her lap.

Across the table, a tiny figure hovered—a flit of wings, a whisper of presence. Tia, the newest addition to her odd menagerie, eyed the pie with raw, desperate hunger. The pixie’s wings were the color of rotting leaves, her gaze hungry enough to shame a beggar. No one else, save for the young girl, could see her, of course. Glamour hid her from mortal sight, and where a man might go mad from using such magics, the Fae wore theirs like a second skin.

A human who dared to wield Glamour would soon find their thoughts unraveling, questioning what was real, what was illusion, until even the fabric of life itself seemed suspect. Down that road lay madness and meaninglessness, a spiral into the void. The Fae, by contrast, needed no such fall. They were born of that chaos, and in it, they were most at home—grounded not in reality, but in the unreality that defined their kind.

“You may have the rest,” Seraphina said, pushing her plate forward to the creature.

Tia darted forward with a greedy chirp, landing with all the grace of a drunk bumblebee. From the hearth, Catherina hummed some old nursery tune, stirring the stewpot with the sort of lazy strength only a lifelong cook could muster. By the looks of things, she was adding enough onions, cabbage, chunks of meat, and herbs and spices to feed two households.

Seeing the little creature tearing away at the pie, the girl realized that it was both a blessing and a curse that Tia was now bound to her Beast Lore amulet, the only magical artifact she owned that was of significant power. The alternative had been “The Realm of Four Gods,” but the consequences of binding her there would have been... complicated. Still, the result was the same—Tia was always near. Always seemingly watching with her odd, curious gaze.  Even, Heaven help her, when she went to relieve herself. That was something Seraphina had most certainly not grown used to."

Catherina turned, a knowing glint in her eye. “And don’t you forget, my lady—you’ll be dining with your parents tonight. They will be expecting you in your best dress. I would hate for you to disappoint! And fair warning, you had best be on your best behaviour, too.”

Seraphina groaned. A dinner with her parents was less a meal and more a skirmish. Her father was soft, pliable, long worn down by her mother’s iron will. But her mother, the fearsome Oracle, Anaselena, was a creature carved from very different stuff. She was one of the only people that Seraphina truly feared.

“Catherina,” she said sweetly, tapping the table, “I brought you something from Undertown.”

She drew out a small velvet-lined box and placed it gently upon the table.

The cook’s eyes narrowed, though her lips curled in spite of herself. “Now what mischief is this? Every time you bring me a gift, it’s because you’re up to something,” she asked in mock resignation.

Seraphina smiled with all the guile of a veteran courtier. “It’s only a small token of my gratitude. Please, open it.”

Catherina did, and gasped. Inside lay a ring of worked gold, fat and heavy, inlaid with dwarven runes and set with a handful of small, perfect diamonds.

“I can’t accept this,” she whispered. “It’s far too much, milady.”

“You can, and you must,” Seraphina insisted. “If not for you, I’d have wasted away long ago to skin and bones. And if you truly won’t use it, give it to your daughter. I heard she’s to be married soon. Let this be my gift to her.”

Without warning, the woman swept Seraphina into a crushing embrace, warm and stifling as a quilt. The girl might have bested powerful warriors and cut down mystical beasts, but there was no strength in her to escape that simple hug.

“There is… just one small favor,” Seraphina tried to say, voice muffled against apron and bosom. “Might I be excused from dinner this evening?”

Catherina pulled back, hands on the girl’s shoulders. “A thousand thank-yous for the ring, but your mother would flay me if I let you slip away. It’s been months since she saw you. No, no. You’ll attend, looking your best. And be ready by the seventh bell, or I’ll be forced to take a switch to you myself, your mother gave me permission before she left. Now off with you—don’t you have some Academy scribbling to see to?”

Seraphina sighed, long and theatrical. There was no escaping it. Arguing with Catherina was like trying to bargain with the tides.

***

Having left Tia and Cornelia in her room, Seraphina waited alone at the long dining table. The table itself was another example of the casual wealth her family enjoyed. Made from southern Ironwood, its surface polished to a dark sheen and bare but for a single silver candelabra. Shadows danced in its light. Behind her, Desmond, the old butler, stood like an attentive statue—silent, watchful.

Every minute, every second, was a test of her patience.

Just as the stillness began to press in on her shoulders and boredom truly threatened to drive her to madness, the double doors swung wide. In swept her parents as if entering a ballroom at the capital and not their own dining hall. The beautiful Duchess Anaselena glided forward on the Duke’s arm, her smile radiant, her dress clinging scandalously to her curves. The fabric shimmered like wet ink, and its neckline plunged low enough to turn heads in even the most jaded courts. Her shoulders were bare, her bosom half-exposed.

Heavens help me if I ever turn out like that, Seraphina thought to herself rebelliously.

Her father—Duke Anatoli of House Sarien—was a great bear of a man, broad-shouldered and thick-necked, with a booming laugh and a presence like a warrior out of saga and song. He dropped into his chair with the grace of a falling boulder, while her mother slid into the seat opposite Seraphina, all cultured poise and raw seduction.

“My sweet girl,” Anaselena said warmly, as if no time had passed. “It is so good to see you again. It’s been far too long. A letter really can not take the place of your smile.”

“And you, most honored parents,” Seraphina replied, her tone clipped, formal.

The Duke gave his daughter a big smile. “There’s no need for all that now, Sera. We are all family here.”

“I find it rather charming,” Anaselena mused. “Something fresh. Though I do hope you’ve been well. We heard such terrible tales—Dragons, fire, all that business with Meridian. Your father was positively beside himself.”

“Yes, quite beside myself,” Anatoli echoed. “Where did you run off to, my girl?”

“While trying to evacuate the city, I believe I struck my head amidst all the chaos,” Seraphina lied stiffly. “In the confusion of the attack. Though if you were so worried, Mother, you hardly seem it now.”

The Duchess laughed lightly, plucking a grape from a silver bowl. “Why should I be worried? I raised you to survive worse than mere Dragons. Besides, I knew exactly where you were all the time.”

Seraphina narrowed her eyes. “Of course you did.”

“After all, who do you think sent Sir Frest to find you?” Anaselena said, arching one perfect brow.

“You might’ve sent him sooner.”

“Complaining now, are we?” her mother asked, tilting her head. “That’s not like you, Sera. Come now, I thought you’d be furious that I sent help at all. You’ve been trying to be independent and fly the nest since you had feathers.”

Beneath the table, Seraphina clenched her hands into fists. Her jaw worked silently. The anger she had swallowed so many times before now rose like bile.

Anaselena watched her like a hawk circling a hare. “You needed to learn something,” she said softly. “And so you did. About yourself, if nothing else. About what is important to you, and the meaning of sacrifice for one’s dream.”

Seraphina bristled. Learn, the witch had said. Learn! As if her suffering and noble sacrifice were some lesson scratched onto a chalkboard.

“And where was she, precisely, my love?” Anatoli asked, his hand sliding beneath the table, no doubt along his wife’s thigh. “You never did say.”

“Oh, I doubt little Sera wants me to tell. I imagine she was taking a brief, bucolic holiday.” Anaselena purred the words as she leaned in to trace the line of her husband’s jaw. “You know how young people are.”

Unconsciously, Seraphina found herself nodding in agreement. The last thing she wanted was for her shame to be aired in front of her family, no less.

“That I do,” the Duke rumbled. “Ana, you always get my blood up! You make me feel as if I were a young buck again.” He bellowed a laugh, the sound echoing off the high, arched ceiling.

Anaselena gave him a playful glare, then giggled like a maiden. Theirs was a dance long-practiced. She, an Oracle, knew every step by heart—she had read him like a book for decades now, cover to cover.

Seraphina turned her eyes downward. Her face flushed crimson. The display was embarrassing—shameless, even—but a small part of her, hidden and bitter, ached with a secret envy.

“Must you act so brazenly?” she muttered, as servants began to file in with covered platters. “We haven’t even begun the first course.”

“Did you say something, my love?” Anaselena asked sharply.

Seraphina lifted her chin. “Only that I wondered what the first course might be.”

Her mother’s smile returned. “Duck meatballs, I believe. With whatever fruit is in season, and a touch of Alamba seed. You always liked that. I confess I’m rather fond of it myself.”

“Bah!” Anatoli barked. “Why bother with these little teases? Bring out the roast, I say! I’ve been waiting for it all day!”

The Duchess laughed. “How many times must I tell you. There is an order to these things… the wait and the aperitifs make the main all the more delicious and climactic,” she explained seductively. 

And duck meatballs it was. The silver domes were lifted, revealing steaming plates that filled the air with savory sweetness. Seraphina ate with the precision of a clockmaker, each bite measured, the sauce apportioned just so. The flavor burst on her tongue—meat, fruit, spice, each ball a tiny feast.

Her father devoured his, stabbing at them like they were his enemies to be devoured, sauce running down his beard. Her mother, meanwhile, delighted in feeding him, cooing mockingly as she lifted morsels to his mouth like he was some great overgrown babe.

So the meal passed, five courses in all—the crown jewel a suckling pig roasted whole and carved with ceremonial flair at the table. Through it all, her parents behaved more like besotted lovers than high nobility, whispering, teasing, laughing.

By the time the final plates were cleared, spiced fruit pie with almond cream, Anatoli dabbed his lips with a fine cloth and cleared his throat.

He glanced at Anaselena. She nodded once, then turned her gaze on their daughter.

“There’s something,” the Duke said, “that your mother and I must speak to you about…”