Chapter 37: A Little White Lie and a Lot of Cooking
Chapter 37: A Little White Lie and a Lot of Cooking
He swallowed nervously as his eyes darted around the room, looking everywhere except at me.
"Zor?" I called again with a sickly sweet voice.
He cleared his throat nervously as his eyes landed on me.
"So... maybe I lied?" He asked me with a raised eyebrow.
"Are you asking me or telling me?" I asked him calmly.
"Um... I may have lied a little..." he confessed.
I waited for the rest of the sentence that never came. "Okay... continue."
He blinked, then lifted one shoulder. "...a tiny bit."
"A tiny bit?" I repeated, feeling my patience condense into something dangerously sharp. "You may have lied a tiny bit about telling people to cook food I like?"
He gave an imperceptible nod.
"Uh huh?"
"See, firefly," he said nervously. "It’s not my fault per se... I read a book on how to woo a human bride and it wrote that saying things like that can work on human females. I thought... to test it."
"Test it." The word scraped. "You tested a lie on a girl by making her think that you went to the kitchens to specifically request that the food that was served was to her liking?"
He flushed just slightly. "I may have lied about that part, yes, but I did actually ask around in Aelthryn about your preferences. I really did. I just did not explicitly tell Kethra to prepare only foods you like."
I stared at him. It was ridiculous. Ridiculous and infuriating. "So you did ask. But then you told a bigger lie to make me feel special."
He made a small, guilty noise. "It’s not really classified as a lie because..."
"Shut up," I told him.
"Yes ma."
"Wait... the part where you also told me that you felt full just from watching me eat—was that from the book too?" I asked him.
He nodded.
I felt like an utter fool. And I almost fell for the lie. It even made my foolish heart skip a beat.
I glared at him immediately.
He turned and played with his fingers, mumbling something along the lines of how my glare was even more fierce than a demon’s.
I planted my hands on the table and leaned forward. "Kethra," I said, turning to the woman who still stood by the far end of the hall, hands folded, expression guarded. "This person," I said, pointing at Zorathys because I was annoyed that I almost fell victim to the most obvious line that he got from a book—a fucking book! I calmed myself down and continued.
"...may be picky, but that doesn’t mean you should not give him something he can eat. You should have tried better even if he’d just pick around everything you made or maybe even dump it. A good cook tries no matter the challenge they face."
Kethra bowed her head immediately. "My lady, my lord’s tastes—"
"Excuse me," I cut in. "He is your lord. I am a guest here..."
"You are my wife," Zorathys murmured.
I ignored Zorathys.
"...You cannot abandon his comfort just because of me. I’ve only been here for a few hours; I’m not in any position for you to put me on a pedestal and abandon your king."
Kethra’s jaw worked. "My lady, the issue with my lord’s taste is something that I cannot comprehend. I’ve been cooking for him for over a thousand years now and he only eats about five to eight dishes. And when I keep on repeating those dishes just so he can have something to eat, he will reject the food."
"A thousand years?" I squeaked out because apparently that was the only thing my brain heard and chose to focus on.
"More than a thousand years," Kethra corrected.
I turned to Zorathys. "How old are you?"
He waved me off. "I don’t remember—last I checked it was around two thousand," he told me.
Holy shit! This was the age gap of a lifetime. Zorathys didn’t even look to be older than twenty-six. But then, I was sure it was his demonic genes working.
I turned back to Kethra. "You are telling me that you have been cooking for Zorathys for thousands of years and still cannot create more than eight dishes for him to actually eat and appreciate?" I asked her.
She nodded, humble. "Yes, my lady. I have tried many experiments. I do not stop trying. But repetition makes him... close his appetite. He is selective in ways I can’t predict: some days he desires acidity, some others quiet sweetness, some others nothing but the memory of a boiled root. He is... complicated. My lord is uncompromising. And sometimes I’ll prepare what he ate some time before and he tells me he doesn’t like the texture or the smell. He’s harder to feed than a child!" She huffed.
"And because of that, you’d rather make sure your lord doesn’t eat than risk his displeasure?" I asked her with a calmly raised eyebrow. "I enjoyed your cooking, but I’m having second thoughts now. What you are portraying is cowardice. You shouldn’t be focused on a total stranger when your king is right here," I told her.
"My lady, how is that cowardice? He doesn’t want to eat so I don’t prepare for him. He doesn’t like the food we cook anyway, so I just focused on cooking for you because you appreciate it. How is that cowardice?" Kethra asked me.
"It’s cowardice because you just decided to choose the easy way out. Zorathys is your king, you should not neglect him in any way even if he is a very picky eater. It doesn’t matter—a chef will always try her best." I told her.
"But I do."
"It’s not enough. Do you know what will happen if Zorathys doesn’t eat?" I asked her.
She opened her mouth to speak but I cut her off.
"He’d become malnourished, his head will grow so big and his hair will start falling off, and his voice will become that of an old human lady with a hunched back and his eyes will start disappearing..." I told her.
Kethra looked shocked and even Zorathys looked shocked too at my words.