Chapter 16 · Survival Menu - Chapter 16: The Dowager's Secret Menu

They didn't drag me far. Just through two doors and down a corridor I'd never seen before. Private. Silent. The kind of silence that meant money and murder lived here.

The guards shoved me into a kitchen that didn't smell like any kitchen I'd worked in. No garlic. No smoke. No sweat. Just sandalwood and something metallic underneath. The floor was clean. Too clean. Someone scrubbed blood out of these tiles recently.

I stayed on my knees where they'd dropped me. My palms stung from the rough stone. The blood from my finger had dried sticky between my knuckles. I didn't look up.

"Stand."

A servant. Female. Maybe forty. Her voice had that flat edge people got when they'd watched too many people die.

I stood.

The kitchen was small. One stove. One table. Ingredients laid out like someone had already decided what I'd cook. Lotus root. Dried lily buds. Black fungus. A small clay pot of stock that hadn't been opened yet. And in the center, on a jade plate, three perfect white peaches.

My throat closed.

Mother's specialty.