We sit in comfortable silence. Me drinking tea I don't deserve. Her shaping bread for my killers' breakfast. The shadows gather around us both, warm from her, cold from my violence, trying to find balance.
"The cream fabric," I say eventually.
"What?"
"For the morning room. The cream."
She smiles. "I thought so too. Better light reflection."
Dawn creeps through windows. Soon my expanded territory needs managing. The Radiant Court needs addressing. Joss needs watching.
But right now, I sit in a kitchen that smells of bread and safety, bleeding on chairs we bought yesterday, planning murder while considering fabric samples.
The Kitchen King.
If only they knew how much worse that makes me.
Chapter 21
Someone's crying in the bathroom on the second floor. Not the quiet, dignified kind either—the ugly, snotty kind that echoes off tiles and makes everyone uncomfortable. I should probably check on them, but I'm elbow-deep in bread dough and if I stop kneading now it won't rise properly, and then what? Forty-seven people need breakfast and half of them just got forcibly adopted last night.
The estate's kitchen—my kitchen now, I suppose—smells like yeast and possibility. Morning light streams through windows that actually close, highlighting flour dust floating in the air. Everything's so clean. No mold plotting revolution in the corners, no suspicious puddles that might be water or might be something worse. Just gleaming copper pots and counter space that goes on forever and a stove where all the burners work.
"Morning," Ridge says from the doorway, looking like he hasn't slept. His eyes have that puffy thing going on that means he's been up worrying about something. Probably the former Copper Hands people we absorbed last night. Well, Ruvan absorbed them. With violence. Systematic violence, from what I gathered from the blood on his clothes.
"There's coffee," I tell him, nodding toward the pot. "The good stuff. Found it in a tin with actual labels."
He pours himself a cup, adds enough sugar to make teeth ache just watching. His teeth are going to fall out at this rate. "The new ones are restless."
"Of course they are. They just got involuntarily relocated. Like cats to a new house." I punch down the dough with perhaps more force than necessary. "Have they eaten?"
"I don't think they know they're allowed to eat."
"That's ridiculous. Everyone's allowed to eat. It's a basic human right." I look at the mountain of dough I've been stress-making since dawn. "How many came over? From the Copper Hands?"
"Twenty-eight survivors."
Survivors. Such a specific word. Not members, not people. Survivors. Like they're refugees from Ruvan's efficiency.
"Right. So forty-seven total now." I start shaping loaves, hands moving without thought. "Plus us makes forty-nine. I'll need more eggs."
Ridge shifts, that uncomfortable movement that means he wants to say something but doesn't know how. His shadows ripple slightly—he's got them too, though not as many as Ruvan. They pool at his feet like nervous puddles.
"They're angry," he finally says. "Some of them. About their friends."
"Dead friends."
"Yes."
"Well, anger needs food too. Especially anger. Empty stomachs make everything worse." I cover the shaped loaves with a clean cloth—we have clean cloths now! Multiple ones! "When did Ruvan get back?"
"Maybe five hours ago. Went straight to his study."
"Has he eaten?"
Ridge's silence is answer enough.
"Has he slept?"
