The Alpha King's Chef Collapsed Hours Before the Feast — "I Can Cook," the Kitchen Maid Offered

three hours before the grand feast the head chef collapses panic grips the castle failing the alpha king means being tossed into the unforgiving winter in a kitchen where a lowly maid's silence is her only shield stepping out of the shadows is a death sentence but as terror takes hold one forgotten girl with a ruined

past steps up to the roaring fire I can cook she says with those three words she didn't just save the feast she awakened the hunger of a king who misses absolutely nothing The kitchen had gone quiet in the worst possible way Not the quiet of a finished meal of pots scrubbed and fires banked for the night

This was the quiet of sixteen people standing still with their hands full of nothing staring at the same spot on the flagstones where a man had just fallen face first into a basket of turnips Grace had been at the far end of the long worktable scraping the last of the suet from a wooden board

when the crash came She had looked up in time to see Aldric's knees fold He had been shouting about the thyme where was the thyme he had asked for thyme an hour ago and then he was not shouting anymore Two of the pot boys had dragged him clear before the turnips rolled Now he lay on a bench near the

door with his collar loosened breathing shallow but steady and the whole kitchen had stopped as if someone had pulled a rope tight around them all That's his heart whispered the girl beside Grace a thin thing named Bess who peeled onions until her eyes ran like rivers He's had that flutter before Folk say his heart skips

Grace wiped her hands on her apron and said nothing She had been in this kitchen only five weeks hired on at the harvest's tail when the castle needed extra hands and she had learned quickly that the safest thing a low girl could do was keep her eyes down and her mouth shut Speak and you were noticed