Elias walked the corridors of Blackwood Keep with his hands in his pockets and his thoughts elsewhere.
The morning light slanted through the windows, casting long rectangles of gold across the stone floor. Servants moved around him with the quiet efficiency of people who had learned to make themselves small in the presence of their betters. He barely noticed them. His mind was elsewhere—on Aina's departure, on Jamie's slow return, on the weight of Ortis's words about pawns and players, unaware of the unholy transaction that took place the previous night while he slept. Before long, he found himself outside his uncle's door before he quite realized where he was walking.
'Huh?'
He stopped. The door was closed. The corridor was empty. From within, he could hear nothing—no voices, no movement, no sign that anyone was there at all.
'What is he even doing in there?' Elias wondered.
'Do Paragons even sleep?Well, I've seen him eat so sleeping isn't out of the question. The again does he need to or he's doing it just because? He seems like a person who would do things just because.'
He should have kept walking. He knew he should have keep walking. Whatever Ortis was doing in there was none of his business. Whatever secrets a Paragon kept were secrets that would crush a child who reached for them.
'Yeah, it has nothing to do with me.'
He turned away from the door but did not walk away.
'He's probably not even in there. Probably with mom. Now that I think aboutit, he does seem quite fond of his sister, nowhere near the clingyness Aina mentioned though.'
His hand drifted toward the door handle.
'Ugh, what am I doing?! I read in a reincarnation novel that the body sometimes infuences the soul so a hundred year old reincarnator would act like a child in a childs body at times. Is that whats happening to me. No, I'm just making excuses. In any case I'll just... look. Just a peek. Just to see what his room looks like. Everyone's curious about what a demigod's room looks like. That's normal. That's—'
He opened the door.
The room was....normal. The curtains were open, the light from outside illuminating the room. Steam curled from the doorway to the adjoining washroom, thick and white, carrying the scent of something floral and expensive. The door was opne, Ortis having just stepped out of the steam.
He was naked. His hair was wet, plastered to his skull. Water droplets clung to his shoulders, his chest, the long line of his arms and the rest of his naked form...
That was all Elias managed to glimpse in the split second before he felt the pressure after opening the door.
Then the world pressed.
It was not anger. It was not an attack. It was simply Ortis' presence—the weight of something so far above him that his mind could not understand it. It felt like he was at the bottom of the ocean or beneath a mountain, being crushed by the weight and pressure.
Elias felt as if his skull was about to split, that his body was about rend.
The last thing he saw was flash of black before his mind faded into the darkness.
*************
Jamie was looking for Elias.
She had checked his room first—empty, the bed made, the window open to the morning air. She had checked the training yard second—Eddie Gable was drilling a squad of knights , but Elias was not among them. She had even, after a long hesitation, checked Aina's door.
She stood outside it for a long moment, her hand raised, her knuckles hovering an inch from the wood. Then she shook her head thinking that nah, Aina wouldn't allow it.
She turned away.
She was rounding the corner when the light came.
It was not bright. It was black—a pulse of darkness that seemed to swallow the morning, to drink the light from the windows, to press against her eyes like a thumb against a bruise. She blinked. Rubbed her eyes. The pulse was gone.
She looked down the corridor.
Ortis's door was closed. The hallway was empty. But the air before the door shimmered—just slightly, just for a moment—like heat rising from summer stone.
She stared at it for a long moment. Then she turned and walked toward the kitchens.
**********
The kitchens of Blackwood Keep were already in full motion.
The great hearth blazed, sending waves of heat across the stone floor. Cooks moved between the tables, their hands busy with knives and spoons, their voices raised over the clatter of pots. The smell of fresh bread and roasting meat hung in the air, thick and warm.
Jamie slipped through the chaos like a fish through water.
She was small. She was quiet. She knew how to move in spaces where people did not expect to see her. A hand here, a roll there. A slice of ham from an unattended platter. A handful of berries from a bowl that no one was watching.
She was reaching for a piece of bread when a hand closed around her wrist.
She looked up.
The cook was a woman of middle years, her face red from the heat of the hearth, her arms thick with the muscle of a lifetime of labor. Her eyes were tired. Her jaw was tight. She had been working for three days straight—first covering for a servant who had fallen ill, then pulling double shifts while the kitchens prepared for a dinner that had been canceled and then uncanceled and then canceled again. Her husband had been waiting for her last night. She had not been able to go to him.
She would see him tonight, she told herself. Just get through today. Just get through the morning. Just—
She looked down at the platter she had just finished arranging.
It was empty.
She stared at it. The bread was gone. The ham was gone. The berries she had arranged so carefully, in a pattern that she had learned from her mother, were gone.
Her eye twitched.
She looked up. A girl was leaning at the edge of the table, her cheeks full, her hand already reaching for another roll. She was small with short indigo hair and a face that was trying very hard to look like she had not just eaten half a platter of food.
The cook's temple throbbed.
She recognized the girl, distantly. The Hunter Chief's daughter. The one the Lord and Lady had taken in if she remembered correctly. The one who had not spoken since her father died, who was barely seen until recentlyt, who everyone treated like she was made of glass.
The cook's jaw tightened.
She reached out and took the bread from the girl's hand.
"What do you think you're doing?"
The girl blinked. She looked at the bread. She looked at the cook. Then, very deliberately, she leaned forward and bit it.
The cook stared at the half-eaten roll in her hand. A vein pulsed in her temple.
"You—" She took a breath.
"Do you have any idea how much work goes into preparing a single meal? Do you? The hours. The planning. The people who wake up before dawn so that you can sit in your fine clothes and eat off silver plates?"
The girl said nothing. She was looking at the cook's face with an expression that might have been curiosity. Or boredom. Or nothing at all.
"You think you're the only one who's lost someone?" The cook's voice was rising. "You think you're special? People die every day. Every single day. Your father was not the first man to die, and he will not be the last. So you can stop acting like—"
Another cook across the kitchen looked up.
"Martha—"
"—like the world owes you something. It doesn't. It never did. So grow up. Stop making yourself an inconvenience to everyone around you. Stop—"
"Martha!" The voice was sharper now.
The cook ignored it. She leaned closer to the girl, her face inches from hers.
"Your father is dead. So what? Do you think he would want this? Do you think he would want you moping around, eating food you didn't earn, making everyone feel sorry for you? He'd be ashamed. You hear me? Ashamed."
The kitchen was silent. The other cooks had stopped moving, their hands frozen over their work, their eyes fixed on the scene unfolding before them. One of them—a young man with flour dusted across his apron—took a step forward.
"Martha, that's enough."
The cook did not seem to hear him. She was looking at the girl's face, waiting for something. Tears. Anger. Anything.
The girl's expression did not change.
"Get out," the cook said.
"Get out of my kitchen. And don't come back until you have something to contribute besides your grief."
She turned away, triumphant.
She did not see the pot.
It had been sitting at the edge of the hearth, unattended, its contents bubbling. Pressure had been building for minutes now. The pot burst.
Steam exploded upward. The vessel tipped, its contents sloshing toward the edge, toward the cook.
The cook screamed.
Jamie moved.
Her hand came up. Ice bloomed across her palm, across her fingers, forming a glove of frost that shimmered in the firelight. She caught the pot. Held it. Set it down on the table as if it weighed nothing.
The kitchen was silent.
Jamie looked at the cook. The cook's face was pale, her mouth open, her hands raised in a gesture that might have been defense or supplication or nothing at all.
Jamie shrugged. She reached past the cook, took another roll from the platter, and walked toward the door.
Miss Gable appeared in the doorway, her face flushed, her chest heaving as if she had run the length of the keep. She took in the scene: the overturned pot, the silent cooks, the pale-faced woman standing at the center of it all, her hands still raised.
"What happened?" she demanded.
No one answered.
Jamie slipped past her into the corridor.
**********
The morning was bright.
Birds sang in the hedges. The sky was a blue so clear it almost hurt to look at. A breeze moved through the courtyard, lifting her skirt, cooling the heat of the kitchen from her skin.
She stopped at the gate. Reached into her pocket. The bread was still there, still warm, still soft. She held it for a moment, feeling its weight in her palm.
She thought of the cook's face. Her voice. The words she had used like stones thrown at something already broken.
...Until you have something to contribute beside your greif...
She put the bread back in her pocket. She walked through the gate. She did not look back as the birds sang on.