006: A Meal Meant for Animals

A Meal Meant for Animals

Talia’s POV

My back hit the wall so hard I felt the shock travel through my bones. For a second, I thought I might slide down to the floor, but I forced myself to stay upright.

I stood there, pressing myself against the cold stone like distance alone could undo what I had just seen. My chest was heaving and I couldn’t slow it down. The basket sat on the bed where I had left it open, and I couldn’t keep looking at it.

Someone had done this on purpose.

Someone had found a dead rat, placed it carefully inside a basket, covered it with a cloth, written a note in Valik’s name, and left it at my door. The person wanted me to open it alone in the dark and feel exactly what I was feeling right now.

And if someone here could do that on my first night… What else was being planned for the rest of the time I would be here?

I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and breathed through my nose until the shaking in my chest slowed.

Nobody was coming to help me. I understood clearly that I was completely alone inside these walls, surrounded by people who saw me as something beneath them, and the only person who was going to keep me standing was me.

I had survived before with less than this. I moved away from the wall.

I walked toward the basket slowly, my eyes fixed on it the way I watch something I feared the most. My hands were trembling but I kept moving anyway. I crouched down in front of the bed, reached out, folded the cloth back over the top of the basket, and pushed the whole thing to the far corner of the room.

Then I sat on the floor with my back against the bed.

Hours passed and the thin strip of moonlight coming through the window shifted and eventually disappeared. The room stayed dark, silent and nobody came. No knock at the door, and no one bringing food or calling me to come get it. Just the sound of the fortress settling around me and the persistent, gnawing ache in my stomach that I had been ignoring since morning.

I lay on the bed for a while and stared at the ceiling.

I turned onto my side and stared at the wall.

Sleep was not coming. My body was exhausted but my mind refused to stop moving, turning things over and over, looking for an edge to this situation that will give me something to hold onto.

Eventually the hunger became louder than everything else.

I sat up, smoothed the cloth over my legs, and left to go look for what to eat.

I stepped into the dimly lit corridor, torches were spaced far apart along the walls. I walked quietly, following the smell that eventually led me toward the lower part of the building. Twice I passed servants going in the other direction.

The first one glanced at me and looked away so fast. But as she passed she murmured to the woman beside her, just loud enough to reach me.

“That’s the human the Alpha dragged in… dressed like she belongs here.”

“She should enjoy it while it lasts,” the other one replied. “She will eventually be tossed out”

I kept walking.

The second pair of maids didn’t bother lowering their voices at all.

“Did you hear she actually stood up to Lady Monica?”

“Fool doesn’t know where she is yet. She will learn by fire and force.”

I followed the smell of cooked food to a large doorway and pushed it open slowly.

The kitchen was warm and bright, firelight bouncing off the stone walls, the smell of bread and meat hanging in the air. A group of women were gathered near the far end, talking, laughing and, completely at ease.

The moment I stepped through the door, everything stopped.

Every head turned. The laughter cut off clean. They looked at me the exact same way others did when I arrived… not with curiosity, but with hate and bitterness.

My hands were trembling. I kept them still at my sides and made sure none of it showed on my face.

An elderly woman near the center of the room looked me over from head to toe. She was broad-shouldered, grey-haired, and carried herself like someone who had run this kitchen for a long time and had never once been questioned about anything.

“Well…” she said, her voice laced with something that was not quite amusement and not quite contempt but sat comfortably between the two. “Look who we have here.”

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” I said. My voice came out steady despite the dryness in my throat. “I haven’t eaten since this morning. I was hoping to find something to eat.”

The woman stared at me for a moment. Then she let out a soft laugh, slow and deliberate.

“Food?” she asked, like the word itself was the joke. “For you?”

She took one step toward me, crossing her arms.

“It seems you have forgotten what you are… and you’ve only been here a few hours.” She shook her head slowly. “If you’re hungry, girl, go outside and eat the grass, that’s for free.”

A quiet laugh moved through the room behind her.

One of the kitchen women jerked her chin toward the far corner without a word. I followed the direction of her eyes.

A wooden trough sat against the wall, piled with what looked like the day’s leftovers. Cold, half-eaten, scraped from plates.

The elderly woman’s voice came again, flat and satisfied. “Animals eat scraps, so if you are hungry go there and feed yourself” She paused. “We feed nobles in this kitchen… not dogs.”

My jaw tightened.

I looked at the trough. I looked at the women watching me and at the elderly woman who was waiting, very clearly, for me to turn around and leave with my dignity and go hungry.

I walked forward.

If this was what surviving in this place required, then I would survive it. I had bent before. I had swallowed things that should have broken me and I was still standing. This won’t be what will break me.

I reached the trough and crouched down.

Before my hand touched the food, a foot came out and kicked the edge of it. The trough tipped, and the leftover food spilled across the stone floor in a cold, wet mess.

I looked up.

The woman who had done it was smiling.

“Oops,” she said lightly. “I needed the tray.” She tilted her head toward the floor. “Go ahead and eat it from the floor, we at least keep the floor neat enough for dogs.”

The kitchen went very quiet. A few of the maids covered their mouths, not wanting to laugh out loud.

I looked at the food on the floor.

Every part of me screamed to stand up and walk out. But my stomach was hollow and my legs were already bending and the truth was that pride won’t fill me up.

Slowly, I lowered myself further.

My knees touched the cold stone floor.

They all went quiet, nobody laughed. They had expected anger, or tears from me, but they were getting none of those things, and the silence had shifted into something uncertain.

My fingers reached toward the floor.

“What’s going on here?”

The voice came from the doorway behind me. Deep and carrying the particular weight of someone who did not need to raise it to fill a room.

They all froze and took their position immediately.

I turned slowly.

Valik stood in the doorway.

And the worst part… the part that settled into my chest like a cold… was that I felt no relief at all.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​