Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
W e went straight from breakfast to the kitchens.
Light filtered in through the small windows near the ceiling, casting a golden hue over the warm stone bricks lining the walls. Even if I couldn’t see the larger, proper kitchen through the narrow doorway at the far end of the room, I would have suspected this one belonged to Rowan’s mother.
There was something almost homey about the space. Fresh herbs grew in pots that hung from the ceiling, their vines spilling haphazardly from the pottery.
Which made no sense, so I chalked it up to whatever breeze she stirred with her quick steps around the room. She was clearly familiar with the kitchen and wasted no time at all throwing on an apron and tying back her long, dark tresses.
Avani and Rowan followed suit, proving once again that they, too, were familiar with the process. I briefly tried to imagine Ava doing the same thing, wondering if she could ever allow herself to be so casual with a task that was beneath her station before deciding this was unique to the queen’s side of the family.
Once we washed up, aprons in place, Queen Charlotte gave us each our marching orders.
“Avani and I will start preparing the dry ingredients. Rowan, can you show Lord Theodore to the storeroom? And Lord Evander, could you begin peeling those apples?” She pointed to a large basket on the floor filled to the brim with large pale pink apples with golden stripes.
It was interesting, the way she switched from formal to maternal without seeming to realize, but I nodded nonetheless, picking up the knife on the table.
Avani was already busy measuring out spices from the canisters on the long wooden countertop, and Rowan stood in the doorway next to Korhonan. Her scrutiny was as obvious as every other emotion that flitted across her features, but I set about my task like I didn’t feel the weight of her gaze burning through my skin.
Socairan dukes-in-training didn’t exactly take shifts in the kitchen, so my knowledge of food preparation was decidedly lacking. While I had learned throughout the past week that Lochlannians could be finicky in their tastes, Socairans did not alter the food as it was presented to them on their plate. Nor could we justify the waste of a perfectly edible part of an apple.
Still, precision with a knife was nothing new to me, and it wasn’t a stretch to apply my particular skill set to the fruit before me.
I had deftly managed to strip the entire apple without breaking the peel before realizing I had no idea where it went.
“What do you do with the peel?” Though I strove to keep my tone even, I had to wonder if they tossed it out in a waste heap somewhere.
“Just put it in the bucket right there,” the queen pointed to an empty steel container.
“None of it goes to waste,” Rowan added, her tone…softer than usual. “They split it between the cattle and the pigs.”
I nodded, vanquishing memories of a singularly spoiled princess setting down her butterknife to allow my men to enjoy more of what was a rare luxury for them. When she was glaring and posturing and fuming, it was easy to forget the pieces of herself she had revealed over her long weeks at Bear.
Or maybe it was just easier, period, not to remember a version of her that had been selfless and funny and real . The one who had done what she could to keep my people safe and fed, and even happy, when the opportunity presented itself.
Then again, wasn’t that why I was standing in a kitchen peeling an endless bushel of apples instead of sitting back at Bear while Taras negotiated a perfectly acceptable trade agreement?
“So where do we start?” The intrusion of Korhonan’s voice on my thoughts made me consider putting some of my other knife skills to use, but I kept my attention fixed on the new apple I had pulled from the barrel.
“Flour,” Rowan murmured, turning to go and breaking her stare at last.
The next hour passed in a blur of spiraling apples along with the backdrop of Rowan’s idle chatter and occasional giggle while she and Korhonan walked back and forth from the larder. More than one reference was made to his biceps by both parties involved, and I had to remind myself how precious food was to my kingdom to avoid expelling all of my breakfast.
Avani was predictably quiet, appearing to be lost in a rare moment of peace, and Queen Charlotte surprised me somewhat by following her lead. The rest of the staff must have been dismissed, because we were the only five people in the vast kitchens, something Korhonan felt the need to comment on.
“So,” he said on one of his many trips hauling bags of flour around, “I have to say, it was one thing hearing that you made pastries for the festival every year, but it’s another seeing the work that goes into it. Wouldn’t it be easier to let the cooks handle this?”
“Easier, probably,” the queen responded. “But Avani and I love baking.”
I huffed out a laugh, noting the way she had excluded Rowan. The princess who decidedly did not love baking glared at me, but I continued to peel my fruit like I didn’t notice.
The queen went on. “And it means something to the people when we give them something we’ve made with our own hands. Of course, the kitchen staff will help also, considering the scope of the work, but a majority of it comes from us.”
It made sense, in the slightly inefficient and illogical way that all of the emotionally driven people of this kingdom did.
“That’s a tradition worth carrying to Socair,” Korhonan said in a tone earnest enough to make me actually roll my eyes.
I expected Rowan to blithely agree with him as she had a habit of doing when she didn’t feel like telling him the truth. It was a much more peaceable alternative to the way she argued with me for the same reason.
Either way, her intentional honesty was hard won.
This time, though, she only hummed in the back of her throat, the sound somehow both noncommittal and almost…somber.
A beat of silence passed, and I wondered if Korhonan even noticed the shift in her mood or how little she liked the idea of baking in Socair. Of doing anything in Socair, perhaps.
Avani looked at her mother, then flicked her eyes toward Korhonan with purpose—subtlety clearly not a trait these sisters, or this family, possessed.
“Lord Theo,” the queen asked. “Could I put those muscles of yours to use in the storage cellar for a moment?”
Korhonan chuckled good-naturedly. He whispered something to Rowan, who was unusually reserved while she set out a set of wooden bowls. He turned back to her mother, either oblivious to that fact or unwilling to draw attention to it. He might have been an aalio , but he was Socairan, and we had both been raised to avoid a scene.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” he agreed easily.
The queen looked at my half-empty barrel. “Lord Evander, you can take a break from the apples to help Rowan.”
She wanted Korhonan gone, and me working with Rowan. For the sake of fairness?
I might have thought so, but for the concerned look Avani shot her younger sister.
“Of course, Your Majesty.” My tone was only slightly mocking, but the queen raised her eyes in a maternal sort of chiding, like she was telling me to be nice to my irritating younger sibling.
I gave her a wry smile, and she turned to lead Korhonan into the storage room. Avani turned back to her task, and Rowan gestured to the bowls wordlessly. Her sudden reticence, compared with her reluctance to speak, brought back a different set of unwanted memories.
For all that I had complained about her acerbic responses, the reminder of her shutting herself behind a black canopy for days on end was decidedly worse. Still, I understood what it was to need silence and mindless routines. So I followed the list she set out, using common sense and labels to navigate my way around the fairly intuitive kitchen.
The first time she held a jar out to me, I was surprised, not because I didn’t know what she needed but because I was shocked she was willing to ask for my help. But she was more focused on efficiency than her pride, apparently, which was…concerning.
I opened the jar wordlessly, handing it back to her. Working together with her was almost peaceful, yet an unwelcome reminder of how seamlessly she had blended into my space. A reminder of how she was the only person whose presence wasn’t obtrusive to me.
Though we were working on the same task, it was easy to see where she was going next on the list and to therefore take the step after that. She likewise did the same for me, so that we weren’t doubling up our efforts or getting in one another’s way.
Rowan was not inherently intuitive, and my own men couldn’t read me. It had never made sense to me the way she always seemed to intrinsically know what room I wanted to be in or when I actually needed silence rather than just wanting it, or when I was hiding amusement instead of fury, like I let the others believe.
It didn’t matter, not when she had made it clear, more than once, that her life was here. Korhonan might not understand that, but I saw it in her reluctance to leave or to bring these traditions to Socair. Her family was here. She might marry me for the politics of it, or even because of whatever the hell attraction was between us, but interactions like these would never play into our day-to-day lives.
Which would be fine, as long as she was safe.
Perhaps I was too distracted reminding myself of that. It was the only explanation I could see for why I missed the small shift in her stance that meant she was reaching across my side of the high wooden table. I reached for the salt block over her head before I registered her movement, and she barreled directly into me.
I expected her to back away, murmur an apology or an accusation, and go on pretending we had never been that close to one another before. Instead, three and a half heartbeats passed in a still, unbroken silence.
Then she hitched in a breath.
Rowan was many things, but she was not prone to crying. Not even after she had killed a man in battle or been taken captive by a man she hated. The last time I had heard that particular sound was on a bed at an inn the night Dmitriy had died.
She had sobbed that night for reasons I had always suspected went beyond the loss of a friend.
Then, she had left.
All at once, I saw her shattered expression when I sent her home, the way she had flinched when I called her clingy. The pure, unbridled shock when I appeared in a ballroom where she clung to a man she hadn’t yet agreed to marry, despite all the reasons it should have made sense to do so.
She had only ever seemed angry about the games we had been playing since I arrived. Had I stopped once to consider what she might be hiding behind her vitriol or why she was entertaining this charade?
Storms knew she didn’t give a single damn about being agreeable, not to my council or to hers.
I froze at the sight of the tears pooling in her eyes, trying and failing to make sense of them, or more inexplicable still, my reaction to them.
In my relatively short lifetime, I had been forced to brand and unclan and eliminate more people than I cared to think about. Tears were nothing new to me.
But the sheen over Rowan’s pale-green eyes razed every defense I had to the ground.
“Lemmikki—” I began, ready to demand that she tell me something more than half-truths when her sister’s voice rang out in the kitchen instead.
“Oh, good, you’re back,” Avani called. “I need more cinnamon.”
I knew she was trying to give us time to move before Korhonan and the queen rounded the corner, but I couldn’t force my gaze away from the rare, raw emotion on my lemmikki’s features. Rowan, too, was frozen until she finally took another audible breath, then gently pressed her hand against my arm in a silent signal for me to move.
It was ground I didn’t want to relinquish, but neither was there a point in staying when we had an audience.
I moved to the side, ignoring the tension that had seeped into the atmosphere. Korhonan pursed his lips, and Avani turned back to her bowl. Rowan still hadn’t moved, though I had made space for her to go around me.
Queen Charlotte was the only one who didn’t seem to be content to let us stew in the increasingly uncomfortable silence.
“Well…” She chewed her lip. “Why does it seem like no matter how big a kitchen is, there’s never too much space to bump into one another?”
“It does seem that way,” Korhonan said, but it sounded more thoughtful than agreeable.
Rowan squeezed her eyes shut, returning to the task she had been given. She didn’t say another word for the rest of the day.
When she didn’t show up at dinner that night, I wondered, for the first time, if I had misplayed my hand in coming here.