Page 43 of Poison Nights & Twilight Alchemy

It wasn’t the mostpeculiarthing he’d seen thus far.

Reed wasn’t certain if he trusted the, possibly immortal, bird, yet Dulce seemed to as she nodded to him.

With a heavy sigh, he reached to remove the bolt andpushed the door slowly open. Before he could crane his neck forward, she passed him in a rush, and he drew her back to his chest.

“What are you doing?” Reed hissed in her ear.

“We heard the animals wander off.”

“If growing up in the Glen taught me one thing, it’s that you can’t trust mere words. Especially atalkingraven.”

“You trusted me rather quickly,” she indicated.

“It was your actions which earned that trust, Highness.” Reed noticed his arm remained draped around Dulce’s waist, and her addictive lily smell caressed his senses. Though his lips yearned to brush against hers, he wouldn’t put her life at risk for a kiss. Reluctantly, he removed his arm from her delicate body, and she gingerly turned to face him—he could’ve sworn she was just as affected by their closeness as he.

“First things first,” Dulce said, her voice breathy when she retrieved a torch from the wall and lit it with an accompanying flint and steel.

“Food?” Reed smirked.

“Food,” Dulce agreed. “Every castle in existence is equipped with massive food storage, if I’m not mistaken.”

“If there’s any that hasn’t rotted by now,” Reed pointed out.

“I will not accept pessimism in my company,” Dulce teased.

He placed a hand beside her head against the wall. “What do you accept?”

Dulce looked up at him, her golden-brown eyes wide, her lips parted, mere inches from his, banishing all thought but her from his mind. “Are you trying to getburned? You’re standing a bit too close to my torch, Mr. Hawthorne.” She smiled, and it illuminated her beautiful face, tempting him to close the distance between them.

“To be close to you, I’d gladly risk a few burns.” He backed away from her with a grin.

“Well, then. That is risky indeed.” Dulce’s cheeks pinkened, and she walked at a brisk pace just ahead of him as if she didn’t want him to see how affected she was.

Once they entered the main hall, Reed grew uneasy when they came face-to-face with the glassy-eyed animals, but they stood as before, disturbances in the dust around them the only indication they had moved at all.

As Reed and Dulce ventured down another hallway, he watched the taxidermy over his shoulder until they vanished from his sight. He stayed close to Dulce while they descended a dark marble staircase.

Vaulted ceilings in elaborate stonework of black and gray framed a kitchen the size of ten houses in the Glen. Chopped wood piled in every corner next to not one, but five fireplaces large enough for a man to stand in, dozens of steel rods to roast meats stacked at their sides. Worn wooden tables took up the center of the room, where a meal had been being prepared when its cooks must’ve left it. Beneath hanging pots and pans sat half-sliced slabs of rotting meat, vegetables unrecognizable below a layer of mold, and dough long since dried and covered in dust. More pots hung over ashes, their insides burned to charcoal. A rotted hog remained along a spit, and Reed grimaced.

“I hope you don’t mean for us to eatthat, Highness,” he stated.

“Certainly not the feast I would welcome us with.”Dulce bit her lip and peered around the large space. “A-ha!” She grasped his arm and pulled him behind her through a half-hidden door, then down another staircase. She lit torches along a stone wall as she led them farther underground into a labyrinth of storage rooms, each colder than the next.

They discovered provisions kept fresh and crisp in fermenting vinegar and grape leaves—rows upon rows of pickled cabbage, turnips, carrots, peas, and even eggs, dyed pink in beet juice, lined the walls in glass jars. There were smoked meats and plums preserved in honey. Barrels of salt held citrus, fish, and meats of all kinds. There was even a cheese room, which smelled more fragrant than Reed cared to experience.

In one chamber, drying herbs hung from rafters, dill, garlic, and mustard chief amongst them, waiting to add flavor to the pickling jars.

Beyond a root cellar, they stumbled upon a wheat silo, the grain sealed in clay pots, kept safe from rodents.

“Please,pleasetell me you know how to make bread,” Reed practically begged, his stomach growling. The meals he knew how to prepare were hardtack that lasted months and pitiful stews made of whatever meat and vegetables happened to be the cheapest at the market, when there was time to prepare anything at all. Most ingredients were too much for them to afford, so Reed usually worked at whichever tavern needed help in exchange for a meal.

“It won’t be as fine as Vesta’s,” Dulce told him, her smile radiant with excitement at their find. “But I’m confident I’ve assisted her enough times that it should be edible.” She pried open a pot of millet and inhaled. “They’d know the coming winter would be particularlyharsh if the mice began to steal more than their usual share before the first frost, isn’t that clever?”

“How do you know all this?” He found himself admiring how knowledgeable she was in different situations.

“Vesta’s books. I didn’t have many friends my age as a child. Or an adult. Besides my family, I mainly made friends with the moths, spiders, and beetles in our gardens,” Dulce admitted with a shrug.

“Moths and spiders are more trustworthy than a lot of the people I’ve come across, so consider yourself lucky.”

---