I’d never heard of it.
“A small farming colony. In the First Quadrant,” she told me, tilting her head to the side. “The compote? I have preserves of it. Preserves I made with my father.”
Her dead father.
I frowned. “Why waste them on us, then?”
Her expression softened. For a brief, brief moment, she looked so sad that I wanted to reach out and trace the lines around her mouth, to try to erase them.
“Food is meant to be shared,” she told me. “Plus, thewyldenwas fresh. Hunted just this morning beyond the Three Guardians, and Draan got the best cut. Why waste that life with some subpar demi-glace? The compote was right for it. It was what my father would’ve served.”
I should’ve been alarmed by the startling warmth that bloomed in my chest at her perturbed expression, especially as she’d said “subpar demi-glace,”whatever that meant.
Dangerous, dangerous game,my mind warned. Made even more dangerous with her sublime scent clouding my better judgment, a thick haze of everything I couldn’t have.
“It was my favorite dish of the night,” I assured her. “My favorite meal in a long time. Perhaps I should hire you formykeep, formykitchen.”
She laughed but didn’t take my offer seriously.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she began. “Food is merely a supplement for the Kylorr, but it’s blood that truly nourishes you. I thought maybe my father was different, but then I come here and find that most Kylorr appreciate food more than most species I’ve encountered. Food from the earth, from the sea, from the sky, from the forests, from the mountains. I’ve never seen a species enjoy food the way the Kylorr do. And it’s not even what best strengthens you. I think that’s interesting.”
“We can appreciate it all the more because we do notneedit,” I told her. “Food is a fleeting thing. Beautiful…but then it’s gone. Turned into something ugly inside our bellies as acid eats it away.”
“I’ve never thought of it like that,” she admitted, making a small face.
“I love food more than blood,” I confessed to her.
Aina had once told me that she loved food more than blood too. Then, however, as a young child who’d had a steady supply of blood givers coming and going from the keep, as all my siblings had, I’d never understood the sentiment until I’d been older. Whenever she’d dined with us, I’d watched Aina savor. Taste. Enjoy. It had made me hungry, observing her.
“Why?” Millie asked, her shoulders relaxing into our conversation, her head tilting, baring her neck. My gaze trailed over the long, smooth column briefly before I swallowed the venom pooling on my tongue. I forced my eyes back to hers.
I knew the exact reason, the memory blooming in my mind like a starwood flower. One I hadn’t thought of in years, truthfully.
“Once,” I began, “my aunt gave me a piece of fruit at our morning meal. I’d just fed from a giver when I’d woken. I wasn’t hungry for bloodorfood. But she ordered me to taste it regardless.”
I could still see it in my mind’s eye. A translucent orb tinged red with a black, marble-shaped pit in the very center. It had been firm but supple, velvety soft.
“She told me it was a gift from the Kaazor. I’d nearly recoiled when she told me, thinking it might be poisoned,” I admitted, the corner of my lip quirking. “‘Taste it. You’ll never taste it again, Kythel.’ That’s what she told me. And I trusted my aunt, so I did.”
I’d sunk my fangs into the plump fruit, my pupils dilating when a sharp tartness had suddenly softened into mellow sweetness, the two sensations tingling on my tongue as I’d licked my lips, hungry for more of the juice that had spilled from the ripe flesh.
“And it was the most delicious thing,” I told Millie, holding her gaze. “My aunt had smiled as she watched me. And you know what she said?”
Millie shook her head, seemingly eager for more.
“‘It tastes like peace, doesn’t it? Isn’t it the best thing you’ve ever tasted?’” I quoted quietly, remembering her exact words, even now.
Even with my full belly, I found myself craving that Kaazor fruit, which only grew in the northern region of our nation. I didn’t even know its name. But my aunt had been right. That was the first and only time I’d ever tasted it.
“The fruit was part of a gift from the Kaazor king when my aunt had helped negotiate a peace treaty. A treaty that only lasted half as long as it should’ve,” I added wryly. “But it was that morning that I realized food held a power all its own. Itdidtaste like peace. However brief. However fleeting. One beautiful moment…and then it was gone. But I’ll never forget it. Just like I’ll never forget what my aunt wanted me to understand.”
There was a gentleness dawning in Millie’s golden eyes. A soft understanding.
Food kept me connected with Aina. How many conversations had we had over meals? How many memories had we shared? How many times had I watched her savor and enjoy, witnessing that small slice of peace and contentedness as she’d tasted a perfectly ripe berry because nothing would ever taste as perfect again than in that singular moment?
“Where is your aunt now?” Millie asked, the question mirroring the one I’d asked her last night about her father, in this very place.
And so I gave her a mirrored answer.
