Chapter 2 #2
The kitchen was vast, with three long stone worktables, multiple bread ovens, and two fireplaces large enough to roast whole stags in. Counters and sinks lined the brick walls, and cabinets stretched to the ceiling. I started opening them, but the shelves were empty.
Lara appeared in the doorway, still in her white robe. Apparently she’d decided not to go back to sleep, after all. “Anything?” she asked.
I rubbed my forehead. “No.”
She scowled at the cabinets. “Where is food usually kept?”
She’d never been in the kitchens of Earth House before, I realized. Her brother Selwyn had mingled with the servants, but Lara had always kept herself apart, the way Oriana had wanted her to.
Pain speared my chest at the thought of Selwyn’s easy smile and shy confidences.
It was easy to see him in Lara—they had the same brown eyes fringed with short, dark lashes, the same rounded face shape.
He’d been good , the way no one down here was good, and now he was gone because Drustan had sacrificed him for his coup.
“There would normally be staples in the cabinets,” I said, trying not to think about my part in that tragedy.
“Bread, cheese, pickled vegetables, salted jerky, things like that. Meat, fresh vegetables, and fruit would be kept in cold cellars a level down.” Like the root cellars of the human world, except chillier thanks to magically unmelting blocks of ice.
“But I doubt there’s anything left. Nothing good, anyway. ”
“We have to leave to get food?” Lara sounded dismayed by the idea.
“Let me think.” I closed my eyes, reached for the pool of magic, and passed the question along.
The house can provide food using its magic reserves , the Blood Shard replied. Not forever, though.
That explained the midnight snacks and extra treats Earth House’s kitchen had snuck me. The houses could spark their own torches, change the quality of the overhead light, and provide a changing array of outfits—apparently they could manufacture food from nothing but magic, too.
How do the house’s reserves get filled? I asked.
It will regenerate on its own, but the process will be slow without a supply. If you add to the house, that will help—every member is part of the magic, and the whole is stronger together. Or there are other ways.
Other ways?
The Shard slipped another image into my head of a faerie wearing scarlet silk and a spiked black crown pouring a pitcher of blood into the fountain.
It was followed by a more gruesome one: a corridor piled high with corpses wearing red and silver, their blood pooling on the floor and sinking into the gaps between tiles.
“Kenna?” Lara’s hand brushed my sleeve, pulling me out of the vision.
“The Shard,” I said by way of explanation. Tears pressed at the backs of my eyes. The house was still functioning today because it had fed on its own sorrow.
Lara withdrew her hand. “Oriana told me she communicates with the Earth Shard. I never knew how.” She shook her head, looking at her feet. “I won’t ever know how.”
She would never take her place as princess. She would never rule over Earth House and protect the faeries who lived there. Lara had rarely seemed to want that future, but it had been expected of her, something to cling to as a certainty in the midst of so much chaos. What did she have now?
Just me. And I hadn’t even been able to feed her yet.
I turned to face the cabinets, determined to figure this out. “Bread,” I said out loud, shaping the wish in my head.
One of the wooden doors rattled. When I opened it, a loaf of bread sat on one of the shelves.
It had scored lines on the top and a dusting of white over the crust, and it took seeing it to realize how hungry I was.
My stomach growled, and I grabbed the bread and ripped a hunk off to hand to Lara before shoving one in my own mouth.
“Cheese?” Lara said hesitantly.
She might not have powers, but she was a lady of Blood House now, and the magic obeyed. A hunk of white cheese appeared on one of the long stone tables. We tore into that, too, shoving the sharp cheddar into our mouths.
Anya had always loved cheddar. A silent wish made an apple appear, and I found a collection of silverware, dishes, and goblets in an enormous pantry and began putting together a meal for her on a freshly washed porcelain plate.
A vibration came from the floor and shivered up my legs, and I paused in my work. “What was that?”
“What was what?” Lara asked between mouthfuls. She’d gotten adventurous and requested hot chocolate, and a mug steamed at her elbow.
“I felt something.”
We fell silent, listening, but the air was silent. The vibration came again, and the back of my skull prickled as the house wordlessly urged me to hurry to the entrance, because someone was outside.
Trepidation crept through me. Who was it? No one I wanted to see, probably. “Can you bring this to Anya?” I asked, handing the plate to Lara. “We have a visitor.”
“Who?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” The threads of magic woven through the house shivered again, and I got an impression of dark velvet and cold midnights. “A Void faerie, I think.”
She grimaced. “Do you have to go?”
The house nudged more insistently. I rubbed my temples, wishing I was in a better state for this. “Yes, I do.”
She nodded, mouth tense. “Be safe.”
I left the kitchen and passed through the inner hall. The house door slid aside at my approach to reveal the Blood Tree—and a familiar black-clad figure standing beneath it.
Lord Kallen of Void House had come to see me.