Morning court blurred. The throne room felt colder than usual.

  Light from the rune-lit “sky windows” spilled across the polished stone floor, bright but strangely muted, as if the dungeon itself sensed its queen’s mood.

  Rennalinda sat upon the throne, spine straight, hands resting lightly upon the carved stone arms. Voices rose and fell before her like waves. Requests, reports, negotiations.

  She heard every word.

  She remembered almost none of them.

  What she remembered was heat blooming at the base of her throat and spreading outward until her pulse forgot its proper rhythm.

  Yogurt, cool and sharp. Butter, hot and rich. Mint, soft as a sigh. Berry sweetness caught in clotted cream. Coffee anchoring everything with its deep, dark steadiness. Bright fruit that tasted like sunlight.

  Her tongue found nothing of it now. The taste had faded. The memory had not.

  A line of officials stepped forward, elves, dwarves, a few beastfolk, each representing one of the dungeon’s operational divisions.

  First was an elf wearing agricultural sigils.

  “Majesty, Ruune reports that the ninety-ninth floor’s berry terraces produced thirty-two new hybrids overnight. Mana saturation remains stable. The moss-lamps will require recalibration within two days.”

  Rennalinda nodded faintly.

  “Approve the recalibration. Log the hybrids and archive samples.”

  Next, a dwarf with thick gloves stepped forward.

  “On the ninety-eighth floor, the Tannfaun goats have begun imprinting on the Cockatrice roosts. Conflicts have increased. Fences must be raised.”

  Villen snorted quietly. “Again?”

  The dwarf bowed deeper. “Yes, my lord.”

  Rennalinda’s fingers tightened on the throne’s armrest.

  “Authorize higher barriers. And move a shepherd team to monitor the flock until they settle.”

  A third official approached, one of the dungeon’s surface operatives.

  This was the crucial part.

  “Majesty… our outer agents returned with new fabrics and preserved spices from the northern human cities. Shall we bring them in for testing?”

  Rennalinda’s eyes lifted slowly.

  For a heartbeat, the room didn’t breathe.

  Then she said:

  “No.”

  The operative swallowed. “Your Majesty, the items were isolated and purified. They pose no—”

  “No,” she repeated, softer yet infinitely sharper.

  The official bowed immediately and withdrew, trembling.

  Villen watched her, concern flickering behind his stern expression.

  The next petitioner stepped forward.

  Rennalinda listened. She answered. She performed the work that held a kingdom together. It was the same work she had done yesterday, and the day before, and most days since the circlet had first touched her brow. It did not tire her. Duty rarely did. It simply was, like stone, like gravity.

  Yet beneath the stone, her heart beat out a foreign rhythm it refused to surrender.

  A break came midmorning. Not by her command, but by natural rhythm. Clerks shuffled their papers. Guards shifted weight. The great hall breathed in and out like a living thing.

  When the last official left, the throne room fell into a hush.

  Only then did Villen speak. He stepped closer to the throne.

  “You are quiet today,” he said.

  “I am always quiet,” she replied.

  “Quieter than usual,” he corrected. “Are you unwell, Rennalinda.”

  He only used her name when they were alone or when concern pressed past protocol. She turned her head a fraction, violet eyes meeting his. He saw too much. He always had.

  “You reacted strongly to the human goods.”

  Rennalinda didn’t respond at first.

  She stared at the far wall, at nothing and at everything.

  “It wasn’t the goods,” she finally said.

  A pause.

  “It was the timing.”

  The flavors she tasted that morning, the warmth, the gentleness, had opened an old wound she never let bleed.

  Villen lowered his voice.

  “You are thinking of him.”

  Rennalinda’s jaw tightened.

  “Do not speak his name.”

  “I didn’t,” Villen replied softly.

  Her hand curled into a fist, nails digging into her palm.

  “He brought offerings too. Gifts from the surface. Honeyed teas. Breads from his homeland. I thought…”

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  Her breath shook imperceptibly.

  “I thought they meant loyalty.”

  Villen looked away, the memory equally heavy on him.

  “You trusted him. My brother trusted him.”

  “And they both died for it.”

  Silence stretched like a blade between them.

  “I am thinking,” she said.

  “About court,” he asked. “Or about breakfast.”

  There was no judgment in his voice. Only observation.

  Her lashes lowered. The memory arrived without her consent. Yolk spilling in molten gold over white yogurt and red paprika. The sudden catch of breath she had not allowed anyone to see. The way heat had raced beneath her skin, uninvited.

  She hid it as she always hid such things. With stillness.

  “Both,” she said.

  For a heartbeat, the corner of Villen’s mouth twitched as if it wanted to become a smile and thought better of it.

  “Court will keep,” he said quietly. “Breakfast will not.”

  “So you believe,” she murmured.

  He tilted his head. “Do you.”

  She did not answer. There were questions she would not examine out loud, not even with him.

  Her throat tightened. She could still taste the faint bitterness of coffee and the bright shock of passion fruit. The thought of more drink, more heat, more things that unsettled her pulse made her jaw tighten.

  She descended the steps of the throne not as a woman who had sat too long, but as a dragon wearing a human’s shape, each movement measured and restrained.

  Outside the hall, the corridor stretched ahead, lit by tall windows and the steady glow of embedded runes tracing along the stone. Guards stood at attention. Servants waited with lowered heads and careful distance.

  She walked.

  Her steps were faster than usual.

  Not a rush. Never that. A queen did not rush. But there was less space between one contact of heel to stone and the next. Her gown whispered around her ankles like river foam.

  Slow down, she told herself. There is no battle to reach. Only food.

  Ridiculous. Entirely ridiculous. Yet her feet did not listen. They followed the pull inside her chest, that quiet, persistent thread that tugged her toward the same long table, the same carved chair, the same place where her world narrowed to plates and voices and eyes that watched her too closely.

  A cluster of young pages stepped aside quickly to let her pass. Once she was gone, one of them exhaled and whispered something to another. She did not catch the words, only the tone. Awe, threaded with a hint of fear.

  Good. Awe and fear were easier to manage than any other feeling.

  She turned at the next intersection, passing beneath an arch carved with scenes from older days. Dragons circled along the stone, their wings spread, their bodies coiled around towers and mountains. In some panels, they flew above armies. In others, they crouched beside thrones, guardians rather than conquerors.

  She walked on.

  Servants waited at her chamber with fresh garments if she wished to change. She did not. The silk she wore moved easily, and she saw no reason to don heavier fabric for the sake of ceremony when there would be no foreign dignitaries at lunch. Only Villen. Maestcarěm. The dwarf. The human.

  James.

  She sat at a small writing desk as the sun climbed higher, pen moving over parchment as she reviewed brief reports brought in during court. Production tallies from the eastern terraces of the ninety-ninth floor. A sketch from an engineer proposing a modification to one of the aqueduct systems. An update on a minor jurisdiction dispute between two mining crews that had already resolved itself before the messenger arrived.

  Her eyes tracked the lines. Her mind did its work.

  And still, uninvited, memory seeped in at the edges.

  The way the yogurt had softened the spice without silencing it. The way the pancake had dissolved on her tongue, decadent and reckless. The way the latte’s foam heart had settled, stubbornly intact, even as she told herself it was nothing but a shape. There had been a moment, brief as a breath, when she had nearly smiled back at it.

  She set the pen down.

  Enough.

  She rose before anyone came to announce the midday bell.

  “I will go to the dining hall,” she said.

  Her closest attendant, a quiet woman named Sarea, blinked in surprise. “Now, Your Majesty? It is early.”

  “I am aware,” Rennalinda said. “The walk will not harm me.”

  Sarea bowed and fell into step behind her.

  The path to the dining hall was familiar. The palace had been her cage and her kingdom since she was seventeen. She knew every corridor, every echo, every window’s view. Today, the air along that path felt different. Charged, somehow. As if the stone itself waited.

  She told herself that what pulled her forward was duty. Lunch was, after all, not a mere meal. It was a stage. Maestcarěm’s position as Prince of Cooks came with expectations of public triumph. The human challenger had to be measured. Boundaries had to be set. The court watched what she praised and what she refused, and they took their cues accordingly.

  That was all.

  The breakfast had been an exception, a curiosity allowed for the sake of controlled disruption. She had chosen tradition, as she must. The kingdom did not pivot around one plate.

  Yet as she drew nearer, her hands refused to cool. They remained faintly warm, as if holding invisible cups.

  Two guards stood at the doors to the dining hall. They straightened when they saw her approach.

  “Open,” she said.

  They moved at once, pushing the heavy doors inward. Light spilled out first, bright as coin. The familiar scent of polished wood, cool stone and distant garden air slipped through the widening gap.

  She did not step through immediately.

  For a heartbeat, she stood at the threshold, fingers resting lightly against the fabric at her hip, as if steadying herself.

  It is only lunch, she told herself. It is only food. It is only another battle you will not allow to touch your face.

  Then she crossed the threshold, a queen entering her hall, every line of her body composed.

  By the time she reached her seat and settled upon it, her heartbeat had hidden itself again behind a wall of marble.

  Only she knew that it had begun to move faster when she heard the first distant clink of plates beyond the far doors and caught, faint upon the air, the sharp, bright promise of spice and citrus riding in ahead of the men who carried them.

  Lunch should not have mattered.

  Not after the morning.

  Not after the bite that had broken something she’d spent years sealing away.

  Not after the brief, involuntary warmth that had crept into her voice despite decades of discipline.

  And yet, when the palace bells marked noon, Rennalinda realized she was… tense.

  That was irritating.

  A queen should not walk faster simply because she wondered whether a foreign man with mismatched kitchenware could shake her twice in a single day.

  She entered the hall.

  The air smelled of stone, polish, heat, familiar things.

  Things her mind usually rested upon.

  Not today.

  On her left stood Maestcarěm, composed, assured, already certain of his victory.

  On her right, James, hands behind his back, posture humble but not deferential, eyes calm enough to be dangerous.

  Maestcarěm unveiled his cauldron first.

  Wild boar in its own juices. Bread brushed with salted butter.

  A return to winter nights and heavy fires.

  She tasted it. It was excellent.

  Balanced. Proud. Traditional.

  A dish built to remind her who she was supposed to be.

  Good, she thought. Good is safe. Good does not break anything.

  Then James stepped forward.

  Three tacos.

  Three colors.

  Three scents.

  One heartbeat too much.

  She did not ask why Villen inhaled slightly. She did not ask why Maestcarěm’s jaw tightened. She did not ask why the room itself felt like it leaned in.

  She took the first taco.

  Lemon cream. Sea-bright shrimp. A flavor that unfurled like a window pushed open on a stale afternoon.

  Her pulse moved. She hid it.

  The second.

  Caramelized onions, glaze that lingered at the edge of sweetness, beef that tasted like a promise she had no business wanting.

  Her throat worked twice. She controlled it.

  The third.

  Mushrooms. Restraint. A quiet that felt like truth whispered beneath the noise of royal expectation.

  Then dessert.

  The spoon cracked through the crust; cinnamon rose like memory. When the rice touched her tongue, something inside her tightened before it softened.

  No. This was too much. He should not be able to do this. Not twice. Not in a single day.

  She set the spoon down carefully.

  Her mother would have understood. But she was gone. So Villen understood instead.

  James saw nothing, because he did not dare look at her.

  She raised her chin. “The winner is Maestcarěm.”

  Her voice did not tremble. But something else did. Not in her hands. Not in her breath. Deeper. Lower. In the place she had long ago buried anything that resembled softness.

  The room applauded. Maestcarěm bowed.

  Villen watched her like the shadow he was.

  James bowed without looking at her.

  Good. He must not.

  Rennalinda kept her hands folded as the plates disappeared and the hall resumed its predictable rhythm.

  Her face was perfect marble.

  But under that, where no one could see, her heart beat three times too hard. And she hated, absolutely hated, that a simple cook could do that to her.

  Twice.

  In one day.

  Author’s Note: The Great Butter Crisis of 2025

  Alright everyone, one final clarification before this turns into a full-scale dairy war:

  Yes, this world already has butter.

  No, it is NOT modern butter.

  Yes, there is a difference.

  A HUGE difference.

  What James introduced was clotted cream, not butter.

  Clotted cream ≠ butter.

  Modern butter ≠ medieval butter.

  Medieval butter ≠ what James made.

  None of these things are equal. None.

  I promise you, nobody has accidentally reinvented butter yet.

  We are safe. The timeline is intact. The dairy gods are pleased.

  If you want the full explanation (or a recipe), check the comments under Chapter 23 and also Chapter 23.5.

  This is the last time, I swear, I’m explaining this.

  Tomorrow we return to dragons, feelings, and food, not dairy science.

  Much love,

  Your exhausted milk-chemist of an author.