There. That should. . .
The smell shifted to Christmas ham.
Next, the visuals hit me all at once.
The pyre.
The bodies stacked twenty feet from our bedroom window. Over a hundred of them. Traitors and their families—spouses, parents—fed to the flames while the loyal watched in horror.
Flesh sliding off bone.
"Nyomi!" The voice came from far away. "NYOMI!"
Hands grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.
What?
The kitchen slammed back into focus—but something was wrong.
Thick grey smoke billowed from the stove, pouring up toward the ceiling in angry clouds.
The gas flame I'd turned up was now roaring beneath the pot, blue fire climbing so high it licked over the edges of the cast iron, tongues of orange flame catching on the sauce that had boiled over and splattered across the stovetop.
“Oh fuck!”
The oxtail wasn't braising anymore.
It was burning.
"Move back!" Chef Bunzo's voice cut through the chaos. He lunged past me toward the stove, reaching for the knob to kill the flame.
The kitchen staff had frozen in place—the woman with the ginger had her knife suspended mid-air, the young chef with the glaze was already moving toward the fire extinguisher on the wall.
I stumbled backward, disoriented, my body still half-trapped in the memory of the pyre.
Chef Bunzo twisted the knob hard.
The flame died.
The music went quiet.
But smoke still poured from the ruined pot, and the acrid smell of burnt meat and caramelized sugar filling the kitchen.
“Damn it.” I reached out without thinking—some instinct to help, to grab the pot, to fix what I'd broken.
My fingers touched the cast iron handle.
White-hot pain hit me.
“Shit!” I yanked my hand back with a sharp cry.
The burn was instant.
Searing.
A bright red line was already forming across two of my fingertips where they'd made contact with the superheated metal.
"Ice!" Chef Bunzo barked at the nearest staff member—the older woman with the laugh lines. "Get ice, now. Cold water first, then ice."
