Chapter 20 · Survival Menu - Chapter 20: Cook the Murder Soup Again

They gave me the recipe at dawn.

Not the real one. The official version. The one they wrote down after my mother died. Sanitized. Edited. The ingredients listed like a shopping list, measurements precise to the gram. Nothing about the timing. Nothing about the order. Nothing about the hand that actually stirred the pot.

I stood in the prep kitchen alone. Early enough that even Cicada wasn't awake yet. The Dowager's order was clear—recreate the soup that killed Empress Wan. Serve it tomorrow at her memorial feast. Prove I could cook at that level, or prove I was another fraud wearing kitchen whites.

Either way, I was bait now.

The ingredients sat on the stone counter. Winter bamboo shoots, dried scallops, cloud ear mushrooms, chicken stock that had been simmering since midnight. I'd watched the night crew strain it three times. They didn't speak to me.

Nobody did. Word traveled fast—the mute girl wasn't mute anymore. She'd begged the third prince to save the head cook. Now the head cook was locked in the inner palace under guard and the mute girl was cooking a murder.

I picked up the knife.

The bamboo shoots first.