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When you'd waited on as many Friday nights at the Sleeping Dragon Inn as Reina, picking the finer details out of the bustle was no less difficult than picking the spent bay leaf out of the soup pot. Everyone in town was here, but everyone in town had their own unique resonance.
On Terithia’s table, the week's strongest fish would be stretched out in the imaginary space between her warrior's arms. The kids entertained themselves with specially-picked Friday night games and foibles, even now they were too big to fit under the tables. March would be at the bar spilling out feelings as warm and gooey as the molten metal that made his trade, usually to a slightly bewildered Ryis, and further down the bar there was whatever the hell Juniper and Valen had going on, which Reina tried not to pry on too much, if she was being honest. Landen and Errol would be reminiscing on any one of the ten-odd stories they had in their mutual repertoire, but roaring with laughter as if it was the first time, always. More recently, their new neighbours, the dragons, had taken the spot on the upstairs landing and had been menaces to each other ever since Balor had taught them both to play bridge. Well-- it had probably started much earlier than that, actually, judging by what Ari had said, but the wagers they made were pretty weird, given that Ari herself was often one of them. Nonetheless, the point remained: there was always something going on.
That was Mistria, all right, wherever you looked and whatever you looked at. Mentioning how it was unusual to get sesame and cranberries growing in the same climate the way they did in Mistria could send Celine off into a reverie of explanations for a whole afternoon. It was something to do with the tropics and soil pH, or possibility humidity, but more importantly, it kept the botanist going until the cranberry-orange scones were ready and plated right under her nose. That was much more in Reina’s milieu.
It was an understatement to say the cranberry-orange scones sold like hotcakes whilst in season, and not just because they were hot and shaped like cakes. Reina had found a point of commonality with Balor, even, lamenting their respective supply chain issues. Ari was adamant Peas and Mustard were to blame, but peas weren't going to be back in season till the winter and the general store had no trouble procuring mustard, so in the meantime Reina had had to improvise with the contents of the pantry or risk sitting around forever wondering what on earth that was supposed to mean.
All was not lost. Dried herbs in their masses, caddies full of tea, and jars of sun-drenched tomatoes and chillies: the previous season had, as Holt had unfortunately put it to an unappreciative audience, “been and scone”, leaving a colourful bounty in its wake for Reina to work with. Dairy was no longer in any short supply either, thanks to Ari and Hayden. If Reina had a favourite animal, it was cows. They worked so hard to provide the town with delicious milk, butter and cheese, and they had cute eyelashes? Every time she walked past Sweetwater she had to give a member of the flock a little kiss on the nose. They were just too good to everybody.
Reina’s audience for her culinary experiments was thankfully much more appreciative than Holt’s. She had several yardsticks for success by now. Top priority was Luc and Maple’s second lunch of the week: if they came to her, backpacks and lunchboxes in hand, asking if there were any leftovers from yesterday, that was a good sign of being onto something. Next was her parents: the thumbs-up from her dad, the sanctified permission from her mom to put in a new line on the specials board. The hungry working hands and stomachs of Mistria came after: if Terithia, Hayden, March or Olric asked for thirds after their usual seconds. Once the dish had hit the baseline for customer satisfaction, it went to the finer friendly palates Reina knew of for workshopping: Elsie, Errol, Eiland, Ari and more recently Caldarus, although he had proven surprisingly easy to please. If it was a Saturday, free samples were a traditional part of the contract for the vendors, although Reina resisted the siren call of Taliferro’s stand with its delicious smell of garlic and pervasive disinviting aura-- he was kind of like whatever the opposite of a vampire was, actually. The last hurdle then, the quickest but steepest of all, was the likes of March, Juniper and now Seridia: if they took a bite and the corner of their lips turned upward at all, it was a winner.
That had been the menu selection process at the Sleeping Dragon Inn for as long as Reina could remember. This Friday had been an important night for the future of the little recipe. March and Juniper were both far too tipsy and preoccupied to be impartial by the time Reina had gotten her next batch out of the oven, so Seridia had been the one to see the newly-minted spicy cheddar scones over the finish line: a fan of low-scoring cards in one claw and her plate in the other, the verdict was a verbatim “acceptable”, which Reina had come to learn was basically the equivalent of a gold medal.
Whether or not the little squeal and twirl of delight Reina had let slip at this was “acceptable” as well-- she was unsure. She just didn't know if dragons blushed for the same reason as humans. Excusing herself before she could get raked over hot coals or stuck with pokers, she ran down the stairs to find her new menu item a purpose.
She didn't have to search for long.
Drifting listlessly between tables like a fallen petal down a spring river was lovely lady Adeline. She was always recognisable, mostly for her hair-- such a bright, perfect pink like so many birthday cakes-- but the listlessness tonight was unusual.
Eiland usually did a good enough brotherly job keeping her reined in to his table and away from the balance sheets and planning applications that usually held Adeline in their rapture, but he himself was enraptured by Balor at the moment on account of a very old-looking necklace in the merchant’s hands. Reina knew the heiress's expression too well: her eyes skimmed just above the heads of the townsfolk, no doubt a balance sheet in her head if not in her hands, glitter-glossed lips moving in the shape of numbers.
No, wait, she'd said at breakfast yesterday she was all out of makeup and was waiting on Louis and Vera tomorrow to restock-- so why was there that unnatural shimmer on her face?
Adeline's wanderings dragged to a halt in front of the hearth, but all it took was a stray tremble in her heel for Reina to instantly realise what was going on.
Smoke escaping the seal of the oven, eruptions of pasta water frothing from pot lids, soufflés sinking like fallen buildings-- these were all situations Reina was familiar with.
Lady Adeline had bent suddenly at her knees and collapsed in front of the fireplace.
****
“Mmn… what happened? Where'd the Inn go? Rei…?”
Quick thinking on Valen’s part with a serviette and the contents of the icebox had seen Adeline up to Reina’s room, swiftly diagnosed with a fever. The Manor was just that little bit too far, and the clinic deemed unnecessary. Fortunately, if one needed a freshly-made bed with cool crisp sheets as Adeline clearly did, there was no place like home.
Celine had volunteered to put the Dragonguard to bed, as Maple had started wondering a little too loudly over whether she should start collapsing too, and this gave Dell too many ideas. Now it was just them-- Valen had placed all her faith in Reina upon closing the door. This seemed a little laissez-faire for the doctor, even if she was a firm believer in good steady diets as medicine, but Reina would take up the protection of her dearest friend as easily as she took up her apron, any day of the week.
“I'm glad you're awake, Addy,” was the best thing Reina could think to say, in the circumstances, forcing a smile through as much as she could. “You could've hit your head on the broccoli-cheddar soup.”
Fortunate that she hadn't-- it was a pain to get out of hair. She knew that one the hard way.
“Reina.” Adeline's eyes softened in the lamplight-- even without makeup, they still shone like rubies. “Did I…?”
“Pass out? Yeah.” It was tough news to break, considering Adeline seemed to be expecting it. “Valen says you've got a fever. Just take it easy, okay?”
This was easier said than done considering immediately after it was said there came a stupendous, air-throttling roar of pure rage from just outside the door. All the floorboards shook, and the glass of water Reina had set on the nightstand rattled with the peculiar resonance of one about to explode into a million tiny glass shards of concentrated enmity and hatred. The sound itself was so unsettling, so acidic as it rippled through the night, that a bundle of onions in the larder downstairs pickled in mere seconds.
“Don't worry about that,” said Reina quickly upon seeing the panic crossing Adeline's face. “That was Seridia. Last I walked past them, she was losing at bridge.”
The panic took its time to dissipate, during which Caldarus' voice could be heard calling for Ari down the hallway, but eventually Adeline's features settled and she burrowed herself further into the covers. “I need to teach her a different card game than that one… this is the fourth week in a row that she's…”
“Hey, let Balor do it,” Reina laughed. “He was the one who thought it was a good idea to teach dragons gambling in the first place. Besides, it's probably good for Seridia to get humbled now and again.”
But even that little bit of levity couldn't lift Adeline's expression from the crumpled wastepaper-basket it seemed to be trying to crawl into. “I haven't even told the Capital about those two. I don't know what to tell them. What are my parents going to say?”
“Addy?”
“What tax bracket do they fall into?” Adeline's eyes were now on the ceiling, as if the roof beams had the answer. “All that tesserae, presumably unaccounted for-- I asked Caldarus what his official occupation had been, or is, and he said “well, I am a dragon, Lady Adeline” in that nice calm way of his-- just dragon, like that! Is that a real job?”
Reina couldn't help another laugh, even though she really didn't want to.
“Plus there's the whole thing of Seridia's hoard,” Adeline murmured into the white linen topsheet. “I haven't seen all of it, but I think she might have some kind of rare extinct mammoth skull in there that she's using as an earring holder, which, if the Capital’s paleontological society finds out about that they'll be trying to seize it, which Eiland has been trying to warn her about except every time he speaks she just says ‘silence, nerd’ as Juniper told her to do, which is actually pretty funny but the society have started sending me letters hinting they're going to ask Mother what happened to that last specimen that was meant to be located in Mistria and I've been putting off replying since we're out of headed paper, which we have been for a while since I cut it out of the budget after the earthquake, and I've been using my stamp for my other letters but I'm also out of the ink that's the right consistency for the inkpad and doesn't slosh around all over the place, and Balor said he'd try his best to find me some but there's been some difficulties since his best supplier is in the middle of some heated trade union negotiations with the squids-- so I asked Terithia if she could help with sourcing-- staffing?-- of alternative squids and she said she'll try but she's still waiting on March to make her some new fish hooks, but Ryis needs lots of nails first because Hayden needs that new barn, but March hates making the nails, so I went to go and draft a requisition for the Capital but we're out of headed paper and I-- he-- the squids-- the--”
Forget a shimmer, Adeline's face was positively aglow with sweat racing down her temples. If Maple knew princesses could hyperventilate like this, she might've dropped her obsession altogether.
“Oh, babe,” Reina said, partially out of sympathy, partially out of shock. “It's okay. Just breathe for a moment, alright?”
Overachieving as ever, Adeline took one great big raggedy breath that made a frantic break for freedom out of her lungs like one of Luc’s spiders. She flopped her head back onto Reina’s pillow, pink hair luminous against the fresh cover.
The bundle of ice in the serviette already looked to be diminishing, and Reina walked over to investigate. Thankfully, most of it was still intact, in those seriously square cubes, but there was a much more worrying leakage coming out of the corners of Adeline's eyes. It wasn't the pickled onions causing it, either, of which Reina was certain.
“Addy,” she murmured, pressing the makeshift ice pack a little more firmly against a forehead she could have fried an egg on. “How long has all this been weighing on you?”
“A little while,” came a very little voice.
“I wish you would have said something,” Reina frowned. “You know me and Cee are always here to listen, right?”
“Mmm.”
“I mean, I don't know the first thing about all the paperwork the Capital makes you do, but…” Reina searched her head for inspiration and found it, clapping her fist to her free hand. “Ari! Ryis! Your own brother! Everyone's here to help you, Addy. We all love Mistria as much as you do.”
“Mmn.” It had come with a smile this time.
“So just take it easy for a night, okay?” Reina had once been told she had the best pleading eyes in all of Mistria, and here she used them to the utmost. “It's a Friday, after all. Everyone else is relaxing, and you deserve to, too.”
“I suppose.” Adeline blinked the tears away, until they were only remnants of dew on her perfect lashes. “I'll be okay. It's just this little fever, and I guess I got carried away earlier reviewing the valuation reports on the dilapidated lighthouse site for future renovations, so… well, I didn't really eat much.”
This revelation was delivered into the wall besides the bed. This was not something best said to Reina whilst making eye contact.
“You haven't eaten?” asked Reina. She delivered the question with as much care as she could, but had she Seridia's mysterious powers, she could have caused double the seismic event and left room for seismic dessert, too.
“Sorry, Rei! I meant to drop by for lunch, but Nora was balancing her books, and I just couldn't help but…”
“No lunch!” Reina declared. “I can fix that.”
The future proprietoress of the Inn had answers to this. Adeline had to shake off some of her grogginess to be able to gaze at her with the requisite amazement; Reina shot up out of her bedside-manner position, the curls of her hair bouncing into life, and ran over to the kitchenette.
The kitchenette was a hidden gem of Mistria. Perhaps growing up among manor houses had given Adeline the wrong impression about what went in bedrooms and what could be divvied up among eastern and western wings, but she was certain she'd never known another person to keep a small kitchen in their room before Reina. It had started out as a sideboard and a kettle, once they'd been old enough to have real tea parties with real tea, but the furniture stall over years of Saturday markets had provided a surprisingly steady trickle of kitchen equipment. Had she been in her usual spirits, she might have been inclined to point out that Eiland and Elsie had banned her from using her own bedroom as an office for the sake of her work-life balance and that perhaps Reina ought to reflect on the same idea. Reina, however, was not at work when she was skipping over to the little oven; she was very much at play.
“You have to try these,” she exclaimed, tempering her energy to handle a hot tray of what looked like biscuits with little red and green flecks. “They passed the Seridia test! And a little spice could help flush out that fever.”
“Spice?” Adeline echoed. It was hard to spot, but beneath the general haze of red she was, there emerged a smaller, pink blush on her cheeks.
“From the jalapenos Ari grew,” Reina beamed, oblivious. “Jalapeno-cheddar scones! The cranberry and orange ones were so popular this fall, I just had to try and make a savoury version. Let me just get you some-- do I have any?-- oh yes, I kept a li’l bit of butter up here, that's good, they need it.”
The scones were still hot, and released all sorts of delicious savoury aromas into the air when Reina sliced a couple of them open. The sight of pale golden butter in its dish curling around Reina’s knife was enough to remind Adeline of the great yawning void in her stomach. She hadn't even known the scones existed a moment ago, but now that they were in her line of sight, smothering her affliction under a pile of buttery, spicy goodies was at the top of Adeline's to-do list, and Reina couldn't carry them over fast enough.
“Here you go, Addy.” Reina placed the plate down on the nightstand-- a blue-edged one she'd had ever since their tea party days-- and took the glass. “Let me top your water up. You don't want to get dehydrated!”
No sooner than Reina had refilled the glass and turned back around had Adeline set an empty blue plate on the nightstand.
To say she'd devoured them would've been an understatement. Adeline had demolished the scones on her plate with the sort of calculating efficiency only a veteran at urban and rural planning could boast of. The kick of spice that Reina had baked in rolled right off of her in her feverish state. Adeline tasted only the summer sun that had shone down on Mistgrove Farm just weeks ago, the warmth that had charmed all of the lush greenery out from under the mud and the loam of spring, and the swelling of chilli peppers in rainbow colours as they ripened on their vines. There was only so much planning you could do, in life. Some things just had to be waited for.
She also tasted copious amounts of butter, which was pretty good any time, really.
“Oh, wow,” said Reina, stunned into sobriety. “You really polished those off.”
“You were right, Rei.” Adeline laughed her most legitimate laugh of the night. “I really was hungry. I guess I didn't realise how long I’d gone since the last meal, and they were just too good…”
“Don't tell me!” Reina pouted, unable to help her brow from furrowing. “If you skipped breakfast too, I'm going to have to open a delivery service and drop it personally to your office, Addy.”
“I had a coffee? I stole a biscotti from Eiland to dunk into it?”
“And when was that?”
“Um, six in the morning.”
“No way!” Reina huffed and crossed her arms. She was only half-playing at being scandalised. “Well, I'm glad you've had something now. You should totally still rest, though! I didn't sneak any actual medicine in there, you know.” That was an idea, actually-- she'd have to pick Valen’s brain for a collaboration sometime. But that would have to wait until after Adeline was out of her bed and had stopped beaming at her from across the room with those glittering garnet eyes.
“They really were delicious, Rei.” Unbeknownst to her, Adeline had just invented a new tier on the recipe-testing hierarchy, far outranking anyone else's approval. If a recipe could make her smile like this, all rosy-cheeked and sleepy-eyed, Reina was going to have to carve a permanent slot on the menu and commission Ari and Hayden for a million jars of jalapenos. “Thank you so much.”
“Anytime, babe.” For reasons she knew not, Reina's voice skipped a bit over that last epithet. They'd swapped pet names in their little group of friends for years now, but only now did it feel like a mound of claggy mashed potatoes sticking to Reina's ribs. She didn't know what to do with herself. It was best just to walk over to the bed again like everything was normal. “Uh, I'll take your plate. I don't have any way of doing the dishes up here, but Dad gets it all done on Fridays anyway, he has this special system he invented where…”
Her fingertips came to a pause around the rim of the plate, unable to quite make it happen. The bustle of the crowd outside had quietened, leaving mostly the whistling of the late-autumn winds down the chimney to be heard. For a moment Reina contented herself with just looking at the plate. She really couldn't remember where she had gotten it from. It would have pre-dated even Merri’s stall of wonders, bearing the scrape-marks of when Adeline had been picking up noble table-manners but not quite mastering them. The design was classic Mistrian, rounded geometric forms in smalt blue, and this one in particular bore the image of the town mill, pre-earthquake. That was it: a wedding present to her parents. But from who? There had been a small guild of painters and craftspeople in town-- but they had all left.
“You're so good to me, Reina.” The present Adeline's voice, though quiet, neatly squashed any feelings of crockery-related nostalgia. “I'm sorry I don't take very good care of myself, sometimes. I promise I'll try harder. I don't want you and the townspeople to keep having to do all this.”
“Doesn't it defeat the point?” Reina smiled. The painted blue windmill on the plate was suddenly a lot easier to look at directly than Adeline, so she trained her gaze on its grand turbines on their eternal rote. “Trying harder to try less hard?”
“I suppose you're right.”
It had always been a marvel to Reina, how Adeline did what she did and remained humble-- especially with a smaller version of herself running around worshipping her every action. It had never really occurred to her, though, what that humility truly looked like until she mustered the courage to look back at Adeline. The heiress, although her smile was only shakily sustained and her eyes still had that glassy veneer of the sick and sleepy, looked over Reina searchingly, finding in her companion all of the flour caked in the awkward bits of her fingernails, the top she'd bought from Louis last summer, every stray pin in her hair that kept it in place between Vera’s visits. She regarded it all with fondness, sweet even through her current hazy lens, as though Reina’s entire being was glazed with honey.
Reina felt a deep resounding series of thuds in her chest that for one fearful moment seemed to be Seridia losing at another round of cards, but the wind whistling through the chimneypipe told her the source of the upheaval was much closer to home.
“Addy,” Reina began, although with no idea where to go from there. “You are-- are you definitely okay?”
A silly question-- they'd spent the better part of an hour on whether she was okay or not, Reina should have known better than anybody-- but Adeline took no umbrage.
“I am okay,” she murmured. “I am now. But, Reina, there's been this other thing, not a work thing but a life thing, and…”
It was only the other syllable in the name she'd used her whole life, but it sent a shiver up Reina’s spine, all the way up to the buns in her hair. “It's okay. You know you can tell me-- and Celine-- anything.”
Adeline snuck a laugh into the wall, then. “I told Celine some time ago.” The invocation of secrets was enough to send another shiver through Reina-- the town had plenty of secrets, but their friendship group didn't as a matter of principle, and the idea that there was information Celine was worthy of but not her did put a bitter knot in her stomach, like biting into raw fennel. But Adeline didn't seem to notice, and continued to ramble a mile a minute. “The truth is… well. Maybe I would have told you sooner, if I was a normal person with normal responsibilities. Juniper did call me a hypocrite when I encouraged her to dance with Valen at the Harvest Festival the other week.”
“Really? When was that?” Adeline had been hanging around the kitchen for most of the festival, obviously keen to ensure things were running smoothly. If there had been terse words exchanged between her and the local sorceress, Reina had probably been too deep in pie dough and sweet potato mash to notice.
“Ah, it was while you were… never mind, it doesn't matter.” Adeline's probing gaze was now very firmly on the ceiling, her fingers interlaced and resting on her chest. “The point is, um… maybe I didn't tell you because my position in the town makes it different for me compared to, say, Juniper and Valen. You know, it comes with all these expectations, and word always gets back to the royal court, and it's-- well, it's a lot to put on a person. I couldn't even talk to people about talking about it, haha! Even Eiland-- well, he means well, of course, but he doesn't really get it, he's not the heir, which I know sounds mean. I know he has a situation of his own he's been dealing with that not a lot of the others know about… but it is different, even just between him and me. I didn't know what to do about it for a really long time. I swore Celine to secrecy.”
“That's a lot to carry on top of what you have already, Addy. I'm sorry.” Reina frowned in sympathy, which became a deeper frown when she realised she still didn't actually know what Adeline was talking about. “Um, so you were worried to talk to me about what, exactly?”
Adeline paused for a moment, the lacing of her fingertips coming loose. “Not just to you,” she clarified, with her official podium voice, “but about you, Rei. I mean, I… it's like now, you're always there taking care of me, even when I overdo it, you're still there with your smile and a plate of something delicious, and…”
Even by the limited light it was obvious that Adeline was flushing deeper as she trailed off, and Reina waved her hands frantically in the air in a vague attempt to signal to slow down before her fever worsened. And stop Adeline did, although it seemed nothing to do with the fever. The searching gaze from earlier returned.
“Addy?” Reina asked, more as a mark of punctuation than anything, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.
The next minute went by in such a flurry Reina was wondering if she was the one who'd passed out, and if she'd open her eyes to Adeline sitting besides her with a napkin full of ice cubes-- but she hadn't. The utterance of “ah, fuck it” that seemed to come from Mistria’s perfect future baroness did seem to be the sort of wild thing that only happened in dreams, but the feeling of Adeline's palms against her own temples and her lips on her own was very, very real.
Her imagination couldn't invent taste and texture like this, even given every fancy culinary implement in the Taliferro kitchen to manifest it; Reina believed every fairytale her mother had ever read to her about the transformative kiss of a princess in that moment. It was lucky cuisses de grenouille weren't on the Inn menu, or they might have found themselves with a boiling pot full of surprise princes.
They had to break apart eventually. Reina's eyes were beyond dinner plate-wide-- they might have had a couple of paella pans in the storehouse which would have been more apt.
“Addy,” she intoned, no question about it at all, “I get it now.”
“I'm so sorry,” Adeline breathed, her voice damage-control flat as if hit by another earthquake. “I shouldn’t have done that, Rei, to put all that on you, it's not fair...”
She went to adjust the covers and cocoon herself in linen until the morning, but found her hands clasped with Reina’s own before she ever could.
“Don't be silly.” Reina's hands, her eyes, her voice, were all stoked with warmth and ferocity as if suddenly flambéed. “Put it all on me, Addy.”