The main door slides open with that soft hydraulic hiss, and every nerve in my body snaps taut. I don’t look up right away. Don’t have to. My staff knows me too well—Kiv elbows me gently, murmurs, “It’s her,” and ducks back to her prep station without waiting for me to respond.
I wipe my claws on a towel I don’t remember picking up, then finally lift my eyes.
Kristi.
She moves like she’s walking through barbed wire—every step measured, every breath tight like it might betray her. No makeup today. Hair up. Jacket too stiff. She’s not wearing her usual steel. She’s wrapped in something colder. Something heavier. Shame, maybe. Or guilt. Can’t tell yet. But it ain’t the same armor she wore when she first stepped in here, glaring at the decor like it insulted her lineage.
She doesn’t look at me.
Just goes straight to her booth—herbooth now, even if I’d never say it out loud—and sits with her hands clasped too tight in her lap.
I let her sit. I let the silence stretch.
Then I grab the plate I was working on before I even smelled her footsteps. It’s not what I normally make for her—nothing flashy. But I spent three damn hours layering spice blends, slow-curing the meat, hand-slicing fermented root until my knuckles cramped. I didn’t know she’d show. Didn’t plan it for her. But maybe… maybe I did.
I walk it out myself.
When I set the plate down, she flinches. Just barely. Like she’s surprised I didn’t throw it at her.
“It’s fresh,” I say, keeping my voice low. Even. No growl. “Figured you might be hungry.”
She doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Thanks,” she says, too quiet, like she’s choking on it.
I nod and walk away.
Back behind the line, the kitchen hums. Pans hiss, broth bubbles, knives thud against cutting boards. But my hearing’s tunneled. I’m only tuned to one thing—the way her fork scrapes too softly. The slow drag of silence stretching out between bites. The rhythm’s wrong. Offbeat. I know her eating cadence now, and this… this ain’t it.
I glance over.
She’s barely touched the dish.
One bite. Maybe two. That’s it.
I swallow something bitter and burning in my throat. Not spice. Not firefruit. Something older.
I should walk away. I should go back to the marrow glaze and the root roast and the thousand other things demanding my hands. But I can’t.
So I pull off my apron, toss it on the hook, and stride out from behind the counter. I stop a few feet from her booth.
“You're gonna tell me why you are like this?” I ask.
She still doesn’t look up. Just stares at the dish like it’s a confession she doesn’t want to read.
“I—I was forced to support the districting measure.”
The words are soft.
But they slam into me like a dropped slab of raw meat.
I go still. Utterly still.
The kitchen fades. The sounds, the smells, even the colors around me dim like someone pulled the emergency shades down on my world. All I hear is that one sentence replaying. Her voice, tight and strangled, saying she backed the measure that could shut my doors, gut my business, silence the one place that still feels likemine.
I take a breath. It's shallow. Useless.
“You did what?”
