Nori laughed as Archie and Arty each gave their rendition of the fight over dinner in The Gift.

"...and it's a good thing you did, because you were standing in the middle of about a dozen traps!"

"What? Really?"

"Yeah! You took so long to make your first move, he was just setting up on you. I don't know how you didn't step on one of them. You gotta move quicker next time."

"Well, I can't just rush in, can I? I need to assess the situation."

"Maybe you should get Blanche to teach you foraging. You coulda used that."

Archie tapped his fork on his plate. "Yeah…"

Chandler looked at Nori sitting next to her and flashed a mischievous smile. She reached under the table and put a sour candy in Nori's lap. Rowan had banned Nori from giving Chandler any more candy, but somehow the girl had found another supplier.

"So Nori!" Arty said, pivoting the conversation so suddenly that she jumped and nearly dropped her candy. "It seemed like you made a new friend."

"Oh yeah?" Rowan asked as he finished chewing a piece of sausage. "Who's that?"

Nori shrugged. "I don't think you'd know him."

Arty chuckled and leaned over to Rowan. "She sat next to Grand King Flambé."

"I saw that!" Archie shouted. He still hadn't come down from his adrenaline high. "What'd he think of my fight?"

"He was very into it," Nori said.

"I think it's why he came," Arty added. "He watched you fight and left before I did."

"I still can't believe you didn't stay to watch Tataki," Archie said.

"Ah, I'll get another chance to see him fight."

"So Nori, what's on our grand king's mind these days?" Rowan asked.

"Oh, we…we didn't talk about much other than the fight."

"Hm." Rowan chewed in an exaggerated motion. "In my years with him, I've found he has a way of dropping something profound in the midst of mundanity."

"What's profound?" Chandler asked.

"Something meaningful or with a lot of wisdom about it," Rowan answered.

"What's mundanity?"

"Something normal and everyday. Which doesn't mean that's not meaningful, too."

"Okay." Chandler kicked her dangling feet. "Can me and Nori go upstairs?"

Rowan eyed the half-eaten greens on Chandler's plate. She snatched a single green bean and shoved it in her mouth to appease him. "Go ahead," Rowan said. "But don't think that you get to stay up late just because we have company."

"Yes! Come on!" Chandler grabbed Nori's hand and dragged her all the way up to the rooftop garden.

Chandler showed off her ever-expanding patch of the garden, plucking heavy potatoes and thick, long carrots from the dirt and holding them high into the sunset sky. Nori expressed exuberant, exaggerated surprise at the harvest and followed the girl along the garden until the clatter of dishes came from below and Rowan called Chandler to bed. She ignored the summons until finally Archie came up the stairs.

"You're gonna make him mad," Archie warned.

"Fine." Chandler pouted and stomped over to Archie. She held her hand out and waited. Archie dropped a candy in her hand and patted her head as she went down the stairs.

"You know Rowan wants her off the candy," Nori said.

Archie walked over to a row of wheat and ran his hand through the stalks. "Yeah, yeah. I haven't been spending enough time with her, so I have to cheat to get her affection."

Nori watched as a man lit lanterns all down the street to combat the coming darkness. When she looked back at Archie, she noticed how pensive he seemed. "You good?"

"Huh?" Archie broke out of his daze and smiled. "Yeah. I'm good. Just thinking about things."

"That's new for you."

"Ha. Ha." Archie crouched near the blueberry bushes, the distant look returning to his eyes. "I think I'm growing up."

Nori held in a laugh and nodded. "Well, that's good news for the rest of us. What makes you say that?"

Archie leaned against the wall overlooking the street. He did not rise to her teasing. Instead, he stayed wistful. Almost somber. "I get so excited about certain things. But when I get them, they're never as good as I thought they'd be."

Nori's sense of humor went into hiding. She decided to just listen. After a while, Archie filled the silence again.

"I had such a clear idea of what I wanted last year. And then the summer happened, and I got what I wanted, but what I wanted also changed. And so then I got that. And I've been…it's like I'm always taking the path of least resistance, you know? When things I want come my way, I take them, and then later I'm left wondering how I got on the path to begin with."

Nori walked next to him and let him continue. Beneath them, a family of four talked about the latest menu of some restaurant they were walking to.

"Sometimes I think I'm immaturely mature. Like, I have all of these ideas of what being mature means. And I stick to them and build myself around them to the point that the final result is immaturity. Like, I have this nagging feeling that everything I do has to serve me in the long-term. So if I want something now, but I'm not sure that I'll want it in the future, then maybe I shouldn't pursue it. But if I let that go and was happy to do the things I wanted now, in a weird way, I think that's the real mature thing to do. Grandeur and…and longevity…they're for kids."

Nori watched him watch the street. When his thoughts became so introspective and his face scrunched up, a folded line showed up from the edge of his eye toward his ear. Arty had the same line, just more pronounced with age. So when Nori saw Archie think like that, she saw him as older. She could picture him as an old man reminiscing on a life well spent. She hoped that old man wouldn't be filled with regrets like Flambé.

"I don't even know what I'm saying," Archie said. "I've just been disappointed in things recently is all."

"The first fight is the hardest. That's what Flambé said."

"Huh?" Archie looked up, thoughtfulness turning to confusion. "Oh, yeah. The fight. Yeah, that was, uh…painful. But hearing the crowd at the end. That was worth it."

"So you'll keep at it?"

Archie smiled, no more rainclouds over him. "Yeah. Next fight is after Winter's Blossom, so I have a while to prepare. Which is good, because there's a lot I need to learn."

"Like how to swing without crashing."

"That'd be a good start." They exchanged a warm smile, and Archie nodded back to the stairs. "Come on. Let's help clean up and go home."

"Don't be nervous," Hyssop said. She looped her arm through Nori's and practically skipped through the gate of the royal keep, the two coils of hair that framed her face bouncing up and down.

"I'm really not," Nori replied. Unlike her dinner with King Tritsun, she knew this invitation had not come from political scheming. And she actually had her own dress this time, a velvety green that absorbed darkness when in the shadows and reflected light when in the sun.

"I was talking to Junie," Hyssop winked.

Juniper took a wavering, uneven breath as she trudged along behind them. Her hair had none of Hyssop's bounce, and her lip quivered more than the fall air should have warranted.

"You'll be okay," Hyssop reassured Juniper. She leaned toward Nori to explain. "Grand Prince Waldorf has been having Morita Beltran for dinner every night this last week."

"Who's that?"

"Some head of tax something or another."

"She's an administrator," Juniper clarified. "She oversees imports and exports of food products to Ambrosia City."

"That's right," Hyssop said. "At least, it was. Looks like she's moving up in the world. But her position isn't as relevant as her appetite."

Nori frowned. "Is she…"

"Yes, she is." Hyssop sighed. "It takes a dozen of us to make the one dinner, and there isn't enough room in the kitchen to accommodate two dinners. Apparently, Morita was offended by some of the small portions. Grand Prince Waldorf charged into the kitchen and demanded an explanation."

Their footsteps failed to overshadow Juniper's whimper.

"Junie got thrown to the wolves."

Nori frowned and looked back at Juniper, who watched her feet as they walked. "You two should look at getting a new sponsor. It's not fair that you have to work almost every night."

Hyssop pursed her lips and scratched her temple. "Yeah…Grand Prince Waldorf is an only child. Well, he never had to learn how to share his toys. Well, we're this way." She nodded down a grand stone hallway.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"So I'm not going to be eating your cooking, then?" Nori asked.

Hyssop scoffed. "No, we're all hands on deck for a party of two. Grand King Flambé has his own Chef, but I hear he likes to cook for himself when he can. Honestly, I don't ever see him. He never comes into Grand Prince Waldorf's wing."

"Well, good luck." Nori rubbed Juniper's arm in passing. "You got this."

Nori hoped she did, at least. Juniper had never been the best of the bunch, but in recent weeks, she seemed to be sliding back even further.

With the help of some guards, Nori found her way to the grand king and queen's section of the keep. A courtyard opened up to the sky, the pale cerulean bricks that towered above turning gray in the dying light. In the middle of the courtyard sat a little bench facing a garden of plum blossoms. Seeing them made Nori think of her childhood. She wondered what they made Flambé think of.

Nori spotted two guarded doors on either side of the courtyard and picked one. The guards looked confused at her arrival.

"Hello," Nori said. "I'm here to join Grand King Flambé for dinner."

"These are Grand Queen Crosnee's chambers. They'll be able to help you over there."

"Thanks."

Just as Nori turned, a great commotion burst out of the other set of doors. Flambé came barreling out into the courtyard, his voice aflame.

"Get off of me! It's my garden! Who are you to tell me that I can't go outside? Who changed my garden? What happened to my sugar palms? What—oh!" Flambé stopped stomping through the grass and smiled at Nori. "You came!"

The Royal Veratore rushed out to grab Flambé's arm. "Come on, we have to get you inside. You'll feel better once you eat."

"But she's so…" Flambé pointed at Nori. Once again, she was reminded of a child bickering with their mother. His lack of crown and wrinkled white jacket added to his infantile demeanor. "She came! She's never eaten inside the keep before. Can't she come in?"

The Royal Veratore sighed. "Fine. Let me have a word with her while you go inside, then we'll join you."

"You are going to let her in, right? You're not going to trick me again?"

"I didn't trick you, Flambé. You just forgot. Now come on, get inside. Go to the dining room. We'll be with you shortly"

"Hm." Flambé took a second to convince himself, then waved at Nori before going back inside.

Nori had no clue what to make of any of it. She wasn't even fully-fledged royalty, but if she had acted like that around a guest as a child, her mother would have locked her in a closet.

The Royal Veratore waved her over and gave the guards a look that guaranteed their silence. "I'm sorry about that," she said. "He's having a bad day."

"That's…okay."

"He's been very unsettled this evening. Him seeing you might have been his first smile of the day. Part of me thinks this is a bad idea, but you wouldn't mind having dinner with him, would you?"

"That's…why I'm here."

"Right, right," the Royal Veratore sighed. "Sorry, where are my manners? I'm Hollyhock. I'm Flambé's—"

"Royal Veratore," Nori finished.

"I might have said caretaker. Shall we?" Hollyhock put a surprisingly strong arm onto Nori's lower back and pushed her along. "I will have to ask for your discretion."

"I'm not even sure what is happening."

"But you do recognize that something is happening. I'd prefer that to be a secret itself."

They entered a foyer with paintings of past kings. "Can you tell me what that is?"

Hollyhock puckered her lips and moved them from one side to the other. "I suppose I should. Better to tell you than have you speculate. You'll know something is wrong if you spend any time with him."

"So what is wrong? Is it his memory?"

"His memory is a piece of it. It's his health in its entirety."

"How bad is it?"

Hollyhock closed her eyes for a moment and led Nori to the entrance of a hall, staying out of earshot of the guards. "Again, I ask for your discretion."

Nori didn't like the look on Hollyhock's face. She didn't like any of this. "You have it."

"Three years. That's how long I give him. And I'm an optimist."

Nori slunk away from Hollyhock's touch. "What? What's wrong with him?"

"I cannot say."

"You have my discretion."

"That isn't the issue. The issue is that I cannot say. I do not know. No one knows. It's like a cancer but…"

"But what?"

"Well, when you have cancer, it spreads across the body. With him, it's as if it has spread to his internal Ambrosial essence."

"Can't you…I don't know, flush him out? Replace his essence?"

Hollyhock pursed her lips and breathed through her nose in a method of containing anger. "I assure you, countless minds are working around the clock to do everything they can to prolong his life. We overload his system with essence-packed food, and it provides temporary relief, but it has never solved the long-term problem."

Nori thought hard to try to find another solution. "Well, what about…"

Hollyhock took Nori's hands, her voice begging. "Please, do not think that you can solve him. Do not try to diagnose. Do not try to cure. Just give him your company so that he might forget his pain for a moment. That's the best thing you can do for him."

Nori looked down at Hollyhock's hands and held them tight to stop their trembling. "Okay."

"It'll be fine," Hollyhock said. She gave Nori's hands one last squeeze. "It'll be fine."

The deeper they went into Flambé quarters, the stranger the decor became. Life-sized stone statues of monkeys lined the edges of the hallway, many of them frozen in the various moments of catching and eating a crab. The floor rose a step and changed to wood, seemingly having been laid on top of the stone foundation. The walls changed to wood, great clunky window frames looking out to another garden. Heavy wooden doors were replaced with sliding panels. Even the smell changed, notes of tropical fruits mixing with cumin and lemongrass. It was as if Palm Coast itself was at the other end of the hallway.

They entered a relatively modest dining room where Flambé was considering a vase of hibiscuses. He turned with a polite smile. "Hi Nimono. Is Yuzu able to play today?"

Nori hesitated to step any closer. She looked behind her, hoping someone else had entered with them. No one had. "I think I had a great uncle named Yuzu," she muttered to herself. She couldn't be sure, but she thought there had been a Yuzu in the family that had died in the Unification War.

"He gets confused," Hollyhock said softly to Nori before pushing her forward a step. "Flambé, this is Nori. Nori Harper. You watched the fight with her yesterday."

"That's right! Nori!" Flambé accepted this new reality with a grin. "You saw me win, right? I'd never swung on a tree like that before."

"I…" Nori looked to Hollyhock for help.

"Flambé, that was Archie Kent. Tarragon told you about him, remember?"

Flambé's smile faded. This new truth took longer to accept. "Okay. Right. Right." He returned his attention to the flowers. "Laksa, do you think these need more water?"

"Flambé?"

He looked at Hollyhock and tapped his palm to his forehead. "Hollyhock. That was an honest mistake. Force of habit."

Hollyhock raised her eyebrows.

"Seriously," Flambé said. "I remember things. We're having tom yum for dinner. We had zucchini pasta for lunch."

"I had zucchini pasta. You barely had more than a bite. Do I need to put some truffle in this?"

"No, no. I had plenty yesterday. I can manage. Now come on, sit down. You're in your second year, aren't you, Nori? Tell me, what do you think of Tarragon? Has he mellowed out around students?"

"Um…" Nori took her seat and tried to shake off the previous strangeness of the conversation. "Yes. I'd say so. Every so often, he still acts like a soldier. Like a commander. But otherwise, he's not bad at all."

"Not like Head Chef Colby, you mean." Flambé winked and rang a little bell. "Did you know I was the one that pushed Tarragon to become a Head Chef? He wanted to keep fighting in the arena. But I told him that…"

Flambé stared at the flowers. There was something different about this lost look. It wasn't as if he forgot. It was as if he remembered. A door opened, breaking his daze, and a Blue Jacket walked in carrying a tray of bowls. Flambé's somberness disappeared in an instant.

"Oh, Lemak, you're back! How did everything go with your sister?"

"Yes, everything went well. I got back this morning. I wanted to cook for you for letting me go for so long."

"Oh, of course, of course. Let me introduce you to my special guest. Today we are joined by Nori. Harper, but don't hold that against her." Flambé looked to Nori for approval of his joke before he laughed. "And we have Hollyhock joining us today, as she does all days, no matter what I say."

Hollyhock showed no offense taken.

"Nori, this is Lemak," Flambé said. "He grew up in Palm Coast and just went back there for the birth of a…I'm guessing nephew."

Lemak smiled as he set down a bowl of hot and sour shrimp soup. "A nephew and a niece, actually."

Flambé clapped with joy. "Twins! How wonderful! I was a twin, you know? And—and, uh…" He scratched his forehead. "I don't talk about that, actually."

An awkward silence fell over the room, broken only by the soft clatter of bowls being set down. Flambé took a deep breath.

"You said if it was a girl, she'd be named Nasi. If it was a boy…Satay?"

"That's right," Lemak said.

"This looks delicious," Flambé said. "Are we having dessert?"

"I got some good practice making khanom jark over the last couple of weeks."

"You wouldn't mind making more, then?"

"Not at all."

"That'd be great." Flambé patted Lemak on the arm, dismissing him. "Have you ever had khanom jark, Nori?"

"Uh, I don't think so."

"It's this little treat in a palm leaf wrapper. They stuff it with a mix of flour, coconut meat, sugar, and salt. You know, most Palm Coast desserts use sticky rice instead of flour, but I think the westerner in me gravitates toward the flour."

"It sounds good."

"And it is. Easy to make, too. I learned how when I was just six. I remember my caretaker, Laksa, teaching me how."

"Alright," Hollyhock said. "You can stop showing off. I can tell you're doing better."

"But you won't leave, will you?"

"I will not."

Flambé leaned over to Nori. "I'm her prisoner, this one. But one day I'm going to sneak out. And me and you can go get ice cream."

Nori didn't know how to react until Hollyhock laughed, loosening Nori's nerves enough to join her.

Flambé shook his head and started eating. "So Nori, have you ever been to Kuutsu Nuna?"

"Not yet. I was hoping to maybe go this summer."

"You should. Life-changing experience the first time you go. This doesn't leave this room, but I think my year with the Pitmasters was my favorite. Did you know that I went to all five Culinary Academies?"

"I think I've heard a story about that, yes."

"Ahhh…" Flambé batted at the words with a hand. "So many stories about me. Full of lies and exaggerations. Let me tell you the story. I started with Uroko Institute my first year. I had already been living in Kiham for a few years at that point. And then I made my way counter-clockwise around the world. Did a year at Khaldeer Monastery. Fought a mountain troll. Then I went to the College of Pitmasters. Great food. Followed the Kuutsu for the summer but still managed to gain weight. Then Lyceum Labrusca. Learned how to play the harp while I was there. Then I did a fifth year at the Academy of Ambrosia, and…I haven't left since."

Nori couldn't imagine uprooting her life every year. She had barely managed the once. "Tell me about your time in Khala," she said. "I just got back."

"So I heard. Well, I guess if I'm telling the tale of my time in Khala, I have to start with the first time I tried to milk a yak. I went out with…"

For the next two hours, they talked and laughed and ate, and Flambé's memory never seemed to slip for a moment. He had a few coughing spells, but he did well enough that Hollyhock even left the room for a few minutes at a time. Nori told the story of her summer, and when she mentioned the Bhantla, she found it interesting how Flambé insisted that the Bhantla was doing important work. But before Nori could press to see if the grand king knew about the exorcisms, he took back over with vim and vigor. But for as quickly and as often as he spoke, he only managed to get through two years of his student life before Hollyhock returned to take him away.

"Alright, alright, time for bed," Flambé said. "Nori, this has been delightful. It's great to spend time with someone closer to my age."

"You're twenty years older than me," Hollyhock scolded.

"Closer in spirit," Flambé said with a wink. "To be continued, Nori. To be continued. I didn't even get to the Kuutsu."

"You don't have to come back," Hollyhock said to Nori.

"No, I had fun," Nori said. "We'll do it again soon."

"Good!" Flambé straightened his jacket and walked off toward the door. "Until next time!"

"Thank you," Hollyhock said once Flambé was out of earshot. "He likes you. Having you around saved me from a total disaster of a day."

"No problem, really."

Hollyhock scoffed and smiled. "You say that. If this keeps up, I'm going to make you his caretaker."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.