4. Valerian
— ? —
Valerian
The kitchen is a battlefield, and I’m losing.
I stand in the center of the room surrounded by open cabinets, their contents spilling across every surface in the aftermath of my siege.
There are boxes and jars made of materials I can’t identify, covered in words and pictures that explain nothing.
I’ve found what I believe to be fruit, bright and firm in a bowl by the window, and I’ve identified the tall glass vessel on the counter, blades set into its floor and a lid crowning it, as a device for reducing things to their essence.
I’m determined to provide for my bride.
This is what a good mate does. This is what I remember from my own court, lords demonstrating their worth through acts of care. Posy may not want me yet, may not understand the bond, but she’ll see that I can be useful. That I can offer her more than protection and eternal devotion.
I can offer her breakfast.
The box in my hands is covered in pictures of golden flakes falling into a white bowl. The word CEREAL is printed across the front in cheerful letters, above a cartoon sun wearing spectacles that I don’t trust at all.
“Riboflavin,” I mutter, reading the list on the back. “What manner of sorcery is this?”
No matter. The fruit is more important. I’ve already dropped several bright globes into the glass vessel; now I simply need to rouse it. There are dials and buttons arranged in a hopeful little row.
I press a button. Nothing happens. I press it again, harder. Still nothing.
I examine the contraption more closely and discover a cord trailing from its base, ending in a pronged device. Ah. This must connect. I trace the cord to the wall, where I find small rectangular openings clearly designed for the purpose, and push the prongs in.
The buttons glow when I touch them now.
“Most promising.” I step back, pleased with my progress. “Now we simply wait for…”
The vessel wakes.
At first the sound is almost pleasant, a low industrious hum. Then it climbs. The blades find the fruit, and the fruit becomes a rising tide, pink and violent, climbing the glass walls faster than seems fair.
I lean closer, considering. I did not secure the lid, which I now understand to have been the lid’s entire purpose. The tide reaches the rim. I attempt to press the buttons back into silence. They resist me.
“Cease,” I command.
The contraption does not obey.
It erupts. A geyser of crushed fruit fountains toward the ceiling and rains back down across every surface, myself included.
This is not ideal. This is, in fact, the opposite of providing sustenance for my bride.
I clamp both hands over the top, which only redirects the geyser sideways in a wide pink arc, and I understand, distantly, that I am losing.
“The blade jar is hostile,” I announce to no one.
Footsteps thunder on the stairs.
Posy bursts into the kitchen in yesterday’s clothes, dark hair wild around her face, eyes wide with alarm.
She takes in the scene in a single glance, the dripping ceiling, the pink devastation, me standing in the center of it, spine straight, deeply embarrassed, losing, and for one moment she simply stares.
Then she moves.
“It’s a blender, you absolute…” She doesn’t finish the sentence, just shoves past me and grabs the cord from the wall.
The motion puts her directly in front of me, her shoulder brushing my chest as she reaches, and even through the fabric of her shirt her warmth brands me.
Every muscle in my body locks. Every instinct votes to pull her closer.
She yanks the cord free.
The blender dies mid-shriek, and the sudden silence drips. She lifts the ruined vessel into the sink with the ceremony of a burial, drags a cloth once across the counter, and turns to survey the pink ruin of the kitchen, breathing hard.
“There,” she gasps, stepping back. “Handled. It’s…”
She turns and nearly collides with my chest.
I’ve moved without meaning to, drawn to her, and now we’re standing far too close. Her face is flushed, pink spreading down her throat. Her chest heaves. There’s a fleck of crushed fruit on her nose, and my hand rises before I remember myself.
She watches it come and doesn’t move.
I brush my thumb across her nose, once, and the fleck of fruit comes away on my skin along with her warmth, and a century of cold loosens its grip on my bones. Her breath goes shallow. Her pulse climbs, and I can hear it, and she knows I can hear it, and pink deepens down her throat.
“You’re in my space,” she says, barely above a whisper.
“You had soot on your nose.”
“That’s not…” She steps back. Puts the counter’s corner between us like a chess move, arms crossing over her chest, chin up, pulse still sprinting. “Five-second rule. You get five seconds of my space for legitimate fruit removal, and you’ve used them all.”
“I wasn’t informed of this rule.”
“I’m inventing it now.” She glares at me as if her heartbeat is also my fault. It is, I hope, at least partly my fault.
“You could’ve wrecked the whole kitchen!”
“The odds of that seemed low.”
“You were wrestling a live blender!”
“I was subduing it.”
She opens her mouth, closes it, and presses both hands over her face. Her shoulders shake once. When she lowers her hands, she’s fighting a smile and losing, and the sight of it lands in my chest with the weight of a granted pardon.
“Is this an unusual morning for you?”
“Extremely unusual.” She looks at me, and the wall she’s been building between us has a hairline crack in it. I can wait at a crack for as long as it takes.
“Come and sit.” I step carefully around the wreckage. “I’ll find you food that doesn’t require the blade jar.”
“You’re banned from appliances.”
“That seems fair.”
She laughs. It’s small, barely more than a breath, but it’s a laugh, and it lands on a century of drought.
We end up across from each other at the kitchen table eating what she calls dry cereal, the golden flakes from the suspicious sun box poured into bowls with no further preparation.
She offered me a bowl. I declined. Human food holds no sustenance for me, and there’s only one thing in this house my body wants, and she’s sitting across the table swinging her foot against the chair leg.
So I watch her instead.
She eats with quick, wary efficiency, eyes flicking to me between bites. The morning light picks out honey-brown strands in her dark hair and the freckles scattered across her nose. Her eyes are warm amber, shot through with gold, and I could spend a profitable decade on their study.
“You’re staring again,” she says around a mouthful of cereal.
“I’m observing.”
“Staring and observing are the same thing.”
“Observing is staring with a scholarly purpose.”
She snorts, a decidedly unladylike sound that delights me beyond reason. “And what scholarly purpose does watching me eat serve?”
“I’m learning. You eat very… efficiently.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s an observation. In my world, meals were lengthy affairs. Hours of ceremony. You eat as though the food might escape you.”
“That’s called having a job with a lunch break measured in minutes.” She points her spoon at me. “Some of us don’t get dinners measured in hours.”
“The library,” I say, and she pauses. “You mentioned it. Shelving books, arguing with adolescents about late fees.”
“You were paying attention.” She takes another bite, and her voice loosens by a degree. “Kids’ section, mostly. Story time on Saturdays. It’s not glamorous, but I like helping people find things. Libraries are safe. Neutral ground.”
“You love it.”
“I mean…” She looks up, surprised I noticed. “Yeah. I do.”
“Then whatever comes of this curse, you’ll keep it. Your library. Your life.” Ash coats my tongue around the offer, and I give it to her anyway. “You shouldn’t feel bound to remain here simply because a prophecy has opinions.”
She studies me for a long moment, cereal forgotten. “That’s unexpectedly decent of you.”
“I have my moments.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late. I’m already insufferably pleased with myself.”
She laughs again, fuller this time, warmer, and greed stirs in me. I want to collect every laugh she has. I want to learn what amuses her, what makes her throw her head back.
She gets up to investigate the humming metal cabinet in the corner, and I follow her with my eyes. She opens it, and cold light spills out over jars and bottles.
“The cold box functions,” I observe. “Good. I was uncertain. It growls.”
“It’s a refrigerator. It hums.”
“It growls. And that one,” I nod at the smaller box mounted above the counter, the one with the glass door and the ominous numbered buttons, “watches us. I don’t care for it.”
“The microwave? The microwave is the least threatening object in this kitchen.”
“It has a door and a light and it turns things in circles. Nothing honest turns things in circles.”
“I’m not having this conversation.” She shuts the refrigerator and turns around, and finds me closer than the last time she checked. Her back meets the cold metal.
My gaze drops to the line of her throat before I can leash it, to the pulse beating there, quick and strong. Her lips part on an unsteady breath, and I want in a way that has nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with it, and I take a half step closer without casting a vote on the matter.
Her hand lands flat on my chest.
It’s not a shove. Her fingers spread over my sternum, warm through the fabric, and for one long moment she leaves them there, staring at her own hand as if it has betrayed her by enjoying itself. I don’t move. I barely breathe. The point of contact burns pleasantly enough to be worth a kingdom.
Then she pushes, and I go, because her hand on my chest is a request and I will honor every request she ever makes of me.
“New rule,” she says, slightly hoarse. “You stay five feet away from me at all times.”
“Five feet seems excessive.”
“It’s non-negotiable.”
“What if there’s danger? What if you require protection?”
“Then you can break the rule temporarily.” She crosses her arms. “The rest of the time, five feet. Minimum.”
“As you wish. Though I should note this kitchen is not large enough for me to be five feet from you while you’re near the cold box.”
“The refrigerator. Fine, four feet in the kitchen specifically.”
“The hallways?”
“Five feet in the hallways.”
“The library?”
“Definitely five feet in the library.”
“What about…”
“Valerian. Enough.” She holds up a hand. “This isn’t a negotiation. Just give me space. Please. I need to think, and I can’t think when you’re hovering.”
I want to argue. I want to tell her that five feet feels like five miles, that the bond aches in my chest when she’s beyond arm’s reach, that after a century of darkness she is the only light in my field of vision.
But I promised her choices.
“As you wish,” I say again, softer. “I’ll endeavor to maintain an appropriate distance.”
“Thank you.”
She moves toward the door, and I make myself stay where I am. The effort is monumental. Every instinct insists that she’s leaving, that I must follow, that I can’t let her out of my sight. I hold my ground and let her go.
She pauses in the doorway and looks back.
“Hey. For what it’s worth, the breakfast thing was kind of sweet. Misguided and messy, but sweet.”
“I’ll do better next time.”
“There’s not going to be a next time. You’re banned from the kitchen.”
“What if I wish to fetch you water?”
“You’re banned from fetching.”
“What if there’s an emergency?”
“Then I’ll handle it.”
“What if…”
“Valerian. I mean it.”
I stop. She’s smiling, her whole face soft with it, and I set the image in the royal archive, the one room of me the dark never reached.
“In my time,” I say quietly, “servants prepared meals.”
“Well, in this time, you nearly redecorated my kitchen in fruit.” Still smiling.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“I’m laughing near you. There’s a difference.”
She disappears into the hallway, and I stand in the wreckage of my first attempt at modern domesticity, the ruined blender drowned in the basin, cereal scattered across the counter, the debris of a very small war.
I should clean this. I should make the space presentable, demonstrate that I can be useful in ways that don’t involve open flame.
I take a step toward the counter.
The world tilts.
I catch myself on the table, fingers gripping the edge hard enough that the wood groans. The weakness rolls over me without warning, and I have to close my eyes against the spinning of the room.
The blood she gave me when she opened the box is fading. The drop that touched the seal was never meant to sustain me. Only to wake me.
And now I’m awake, and starving, and she’s somewhere above me with blood singing in her veins, and I’m gripping a table because the alternative is following the sound of her heartbeat up the stairs and taking what I need.
I won’t do that.
The weakness passes, or at least settles into a shape I can carry. I straighten slowly, release the table, and take a careful breath.
Her footsteps cross the floor above me. Exploring. Curious. Alive, and entirely unaware that the creature in her kitchen is holding the table’s edge for reasons that have nothing to do with balance.
I’m stronger than this. I survived the dark. I can survive the hunger a little longer.
I just need to hide how weak I truly am.
Kings don’t wobble.
Her voice floats down the stairwell. “Valerian? Did something break down there?”
“Nothing of consequence,” I call back, and grip the table until it’s true.