"I thought I was helping," Joss says finally.
"You thought wrong." The hat makes him look younger even though his voice could cut glass. "I'm not weak. I'm practical. Dead people don't pay protection fees."
"That's sensible. Vice, the toast. Actual flames again."
Morning continues. Dishes happen. Someone starts lunch because time doesn't stop. One of the new people holds their shoulder wrong—old injury, favoring it. Their hip will hurt later.
"Exile," Ruvan tells Joss after dishes. "After dinner."
"After dinner?"
"We don't send people away hungry. That's cruel. Plus it's chicken night."
She stares. At Ruvan in his knitted hat. At me planning dinner for someone who tried to kill me. At Vice documenting toast data. At Arthur's boot finally surrendering completely.
"This makes no sense."
"That's why you have to go. You never understood that taking care of people doesn't make you weak. It makes them loyal."
"Like bread dough," one of the former Radiant Court calls out. "Too rough and it gets tough."
"Yes." Standing again—fail, retry. "Arthur, new boots. Today. No arguments. Joss, you're on vegetables."
She helps. Cuts carrots into perfect pieces while the kitchen fills with too many people. Ruvan keeps the hat on all day. Sometimes I catch him touching it—quick, checking touches.
Dinner happens. Shadow Guild, former Copper Hands, former Radiant Court, Arthur with no boots, and one traitor who thought feelings were weakness. The chicken vanishes. Someone remembers the beans. Life continues.
Joss leaves after dessert. Nobody stops her. She looks back once at Ruvan surrounded by people who kill for him but also remind him to eat lunch.
"I was wrong," she says.
"Yes," he agrees.
Then she's gone and we have dishes and breakfast planning and sixty people needing food.
"The hat suits you," I tell Ruvan later, after everyone's scattered and the kitchen smells like soap.
"My ears were cold."
Maybe that's enough.
Tomorrow we need groceries. Feeding sixty people costs everything. But Vice slept without stomach pain—she told me, smiled saying it. Thomas only got half the shell in today. Arthur's getting boots even if I have to drag him myself.
The hat sits properly on Ruvan's head, black wool with my hidden blue thread. His ears are warm. That matters.
Someone remembered the beans. Finn's holding his wrist wrong though—slept on it probably. I should make that salve.
Always something. But his ears are warm.
Chapter 27
Eleven-fifteen. If I finish killing this man in the next forty-five minutes, I can make lunch.
"You're wearing a hat," he gasps between breaths, blood dripping from his split lip onto my floor. "The Shadow King is wearing a fucking knitted hat."
I adjust the black wool on my head—my ears get cold in these chambers—and press the blade deeper into his shoulder. Blood pools around metal. Can't get stains on Olivia's handiwork.
"Your point?"
