Chapter 27: Venom in the Scullery

The heavy oak doors at the top of the subterranean kitchen stairs slammed shut with a crack like thunder.

Down in the humid, grease-stained depths of the scullery vault, thirty cooks, prep boys, and dishwashers instantly froze. The clatter of iron cauldrons and the scrape of butchery cleavers cut off in an beat of collective terror.

Mistress Brida was coming down the stairs.

She didn't descend with her usual brisk, loud authority. She descended like a runaway iron cart rolling down a mountain slope. Her broad face was blotched with a sickening, dark purple hue, her neck thick with bulging veins, her chest heaving violently beneath her soiled linen apron.

She shoved a young spit-boy out of her way so hard he tumbled over a basket of turnips, but she didn't even stop to kick him.

Her bloodshot, furious eyes swept across the vast, smoky room, burning through the haze of boiled lard and woodsmoke until they locked onto me.

I was sitting on a low wooden bench near the salt barrels, my numb, swollen hands resting on a clean rag Martha had given me to stop the bleeding.

When Brida’s gaze met mine, a violent tremor passed through her heavy frame. Her hand twitched toward the leather crop strapped to her belt—an instinct honed over three decades of beating lower servants into submission.

She took two furious steps toward me, her teeth bared in a snarl.

Then, abruptly, she stopped.

A sickening flash of sheer, unadulterated terror crossed her features—the lingering shadow of King Kael’s warning echoing in her mind: I will personally skin you alive and hang your hide from the high parapet.

Her hand yanked away from her crop as if it had caught fire. The forced restraint was causing her literal physical agony. She trembled, her jaw grinding so hard I could hear the enamel squeak across the quiet vault.

"You," Brida hissed.

The word was laced with so much venom it made the air around us feel sour.

She marched the remaining distance, stopping three feet away—careful not to touch me, careful not to let so much as her apron hem brush against my dress.

With a harsh, violent gesture, she slammed a small, heavy clay jar onto the wooden bench beside me. The lid popped off, revealing a thick, dark green apothecary ointment smelling strongly of wintergreen, silver-root, and tallow.

"Apply it," Brida spat, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Now."

I looked from the clay jar up to her face, my hazel eyes calm and questioning.

Around us, the scullery had gone dead silent. Cooks leaned over their cutting blocks; Martha stood frozen by the soup cauldrons, her wooden ladle dripping broth onto the stone flags. No one had ever seen Mistress Brida deliver medicine to a Southern slave.

"Do not look at me with those filthy, wretched eyes!" Brida snarled, stepping closer, her fists clenched so tight her knuckles turned blue. "Thirty years! Thirty years I have broken my back in these damp, freezing cellars! I have managed thirty fires, fed five hundred warriors every sunset, and never—never—has the King spoken my name except to demand more wine!"

She leaned down, her face inches from mine, her hot, sour breath smelling of stale beer and garlic.

"What did you do?" she whispered, her voice a cruel, envious hiss. "What dark, disgusting Southern tricks did you use on him in the Great Hall? Did you flash your pathetic scar? Did you weep like a beaten dog until his beast took pity on you?"

I didn't blink. I didn't flinch. I sat straight on the wooden bench, meeting her burning jealousy with a wall of cold, unyielding silence.

Brida’s mouth twisted into a grotesque, bitter sneer.

"Enjoy your victory, mute," she rasped, reaching into her pocket and throwing a heavy brass key onto the bench beside the ointment. "You are relieved of the lye tubs. You are relieved of the coal carts. By order of His Grace... you are reassigned to the upper gallery pantries."

A collective, audible gasp rippled through the lower kitchen.

Upper gallery. It was the easiest, cleanest post in the entire fortress—sorting rare spices, drying fine linens, sweeping polished pine floors. A post usually reserved for senior castle-born maidservants who had served the royal family for decades.

"You will receive two warm meals a day from the garrison mess," Brida spat, each word sounding as though she were tearing pieces of her own flesh out. "And if you fall ill, if your hands rot, or if you collapse from exhaustion, I am to be held responsible."

She glared at me as if she wanted to rip my throat out with her teeth.

"You think you're safe now?" Brida whispered, her small, dark eyes glinting with malicious promise. "You think because the Lycan King looked at you once, you are untouchable? The upper gallery is full of Shadow-Guard, girl. One mistake—one misplaced jar, one spilled candle—and not even the King's mercy will save you from a blade. I will be watching you. Every second of every day."

She turned on her heel, her heavy skirts whipping around her legs.

"Back to work, you lazy swine!" Brida shrieked at the gaping staff, her voice cracking with hysterical fury. "If the high feast is late, I'll skin every last one of you!"

The kitchen exploded back into frantic motion, but the atmosphere had permanently shifted. Servants darted sideways glances at me, their eyes filled with a terrifying mix of awe, intense envy, and deep suspicion.

I looked down at the brass key resting on the wooden bench beside the clay jar of salve.

I picked up the jar, dipping my raw, bleeding fingers into the cool green ointment. As the soothing silver-root numbed the agony in my cracked knuckles, a cold, sharp breath escaped my lips.

Kael had elevated me out of the filth. He had given me medicine, light work, and real food.

But as I wrapped my bruised fingers around the brass key to the upper gallery, I knew the truth.

He hadn't just spared me from the lye tubs. He had drawn a giant target on my back. And now, I was walking straight into the heart of his castle.