Chapter 26 · Survival Menu - Chapter 26: The Dowager's Secret Menu

The storage room is burning.

I can smell it before I see the smoke—charred wood, old oil, the bitter tang of silk catching fire. My feet are already moving. The dowager's private pantry is three corridors down, past the night watch, past the herb garden where no one goes after dark.

Yan Xiao grabs my wrist.

I yank free. He doesn't understand. That pantry holds the only menu written in my mother's hand, the one the dowager's been hiding for five years. If it burns, the last proof burns with it.

I run.

The corridor smells like smoke and fear. Two junior maids are pressed against the wall, crying. The night watch is shouting for water. I shove past them. The pantry door is hot when I touch it. Stupid. I kick it open anyway.

Flames crawl up the left wall. The shelves are already collapsing—jars of preserved plums explode in the heat, sugar syrup hissing as it hits the floor. I can barely see through the smoke. My eyes burn. I drop low, the way my mother taught me when the stove chimney caught fire once.

There.

The lacquered box.