“Kurt… I really can’t cook,” Max pleaded, while trying to shuffle as far away as he could while the butcher’s boy held his arm firmly in place.

  “You’re a big boy,” he replied with a baffled voice. “Surely you can stir a cooking pot while I go get Cy.”

  Kurt had been kind enough to take him to the kitchens of the Western Wing. The cold kitchen was abandoned, since they were short staffed after the mass firing because of conspiracy. Max had stood far away next to a dirty table and chairs, while Kurt graciously got the fire going, chopped up the ingredients, and shoved it all in the pot for him. Then the butcher’s boy wickedly dragged him close to the cooking pot.

  Max looked down at the bubbling ingredients. “You don’t understand. This is really not a good idea.”

  “It’s about time you learn how to stir a pot. Here, take the spoon.”

  “No.”

  Kurt pouted before shoving the wooden spoon in Max’s hand. He ran while shouting, “Stir it! Or leave it and let it burn! Bio dad will blame you if the place catches on fire.”

  Unsure about what to do, Max’s eyes began bouncing between the door, the spoon, the vicious cooking pot, and the fire aching to spread around the kitchen. Where was this going to go wrong first? Maybe Kurt was right, he should be a big boy and learn how to stir a pot of soup. After taking a deep breath, Max attempted to stir before a splash of boiling liquid burned his hand causing him to drop the spoon.

  “Nope, nope; not today. I’m not dying from cooking this time.” With his mind clear, Max immediately began to extinguish the fire as safely as he could. Once he was out of danger, he poured out the seasoned water, semi-cooked chunks of meat, and cut, raw vegetables into a bowl. It was so unappealing that his growling stomach suddenly became silent. There was no choice. Kurt would call him a coward if he ever knew, so it was better to eat the evidence.

  Sitting down at the dirty table, there was a collection of various herbs and spices. The small pot of salt was catching his eye in particular. It would only be a little salt. He could take the risk. Even if the food was too salty, Max could probably force it down.

  It was just a sprinkle, but it quickly made the food significantly more palatable. It wasn’t a great feeling on his tongue, but food was food. The more he ate, the funnier his tongue felt.

  “You were cooking?” Max jumped before relaxing from the familiar voice. Cy quickly inspected the cooking pot to assess any damage. “And you didn’t burn down the kitchen?” His eyes narrowed when he looked back at Max.

  “I extinguished it as soon as Kurt left,” he admitted. Cy was probably the only person he could admit to these kinds of weak actions and thought processes. “It’s not tasty, but it’s edible.” His words were slurred slightly, but he paid it no mind.

  “Stop eating.”

  “It’s honestly not that bad-”

  “Stop. Eating.” The seriousness of Cy’s voice caused Max to drop the spoon and push the bowl away. “You’re having an allergic reaction. A serious one.”

  Max looked at him puzzled as he raced over. “I only have a light allergy to celery.”

  “I think your allergy got worse. Did you add this to your soup?” Cy turned the salt pot around, so Max could see the label carved on the over side: CELERY SALT.

  “To be fair… I can’t read,” Max quickly gave as an excuse but found himself starting to choke.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cy rolled his eyes before getting to work on healing Max before he died.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Where’s Kurt?”

  “Gone to get Adelaide. I need to check her fate and make sure she’s the real one.”

  Kurt’s words from earlier in the week bounced around in his mind. Max was starting to struggle with getting words out with his swollen mouth. “What’s your opinion of Adelaide?”

  “Stop talking until you’re further away from death,” Cy scolded. Max thought his question was going to be ignored until he got better, but Cy continued speaking. “I think, back at the village, she was a bit sheltered by her parents like I was, but she’s still a good person overall. There was definitely enough potential in her fate to grow and become more content with village life. Especially when her fate was pink.”

  After years of enduring penalties from the system, Cy’s gift at healing was much better than anyone gave him credit for back in Tsujuma. Probably because so much of his internal magic was used every morning before anyone else was awake, not to mention the runes giving his abilities a boost. “What about after it changed?”

  “Hmm, she still had some potential… I really fucked up with reading her fate.” Max had almost forgotten that it was Cy’s encouragement that changed her genre… Wait a minute. “Her fate got a lot darker after that… But she still had some potential for a good future.”

  “Her story switched from romance to horror,” Max absentmindedly filled in the gaps causing Cy to do a double take with the new information. His brain was too busy doing mental gymnastics.

  “I’m more careful about it now…” Cy muttered in reply.

  “I wasn’t blaming you? You couldn’t have known there would be such an extreme reaction… I thought your readings can’t normally change fixed fates?”

  “By itself, normally it can’t.”

  “So, someone else could have caused it to change.” Cy frowned while Max’s mind already pointed to a culprit. Max thought to himself for a couple of seconds. Why would Aldwin want to tamper with Adelaide’s fate? “She’s a before person, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think she was Lady Roky in her last life.” Max looked at Cy to see his mind was connecting a different set of dots. “There’s something about the air around her that has a unique quality. Or maybe I was just sensitive to it after all the trouble she caused Ellie in our last life… Bessie asked me to be civil with her, and I really did try, but I kept getting irked by their similarities.”

  Cy didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “That was in the past. It’s not fair to treat her differently for something she couldn’t possibly remember.”

  “I know.”

  Cy let out a sigh before giving Max a big wallop in the back causing him to lose his breath. “Right, all healed up. Let’s grab something to eat before they join us. Where’s the food?” Max pointed to some cupboard lining the wall. “In a few minutes, you’re going to get a second chance for a first impression. Try to focus on the now.” Cy began rummaging around and laying piles of fresh bread and dried fruit on the table. Why couldn’t have Kurt done this to begin with? While Max was plating himself, Cy shoved a handful of beans into his coat’s pocket.

  “What about Aldwin?”

  “I didn’t like him.” There was no hesitation in Cy’s words this time. “I didn’t like his personality, and there was something fucking weird about his fate.”

  “You never mentioned anything about his fate. What about it was weird?” Max perked back up, as he began picking away at a slice of bread.

  “Originally, I thought he had a fixed fate, but then it kept changing so much that I thought I was misreading it,” Cy admitted while scowling. “It radically changed so much, even for a flexible fate.”

  “When you two first met, by Bessie’s wagon, it was fixed?”

  “Yes, at least, I thought so.”

  “Then it was unstable afterwards?”

  “Extremely so. One minute, his fate showed him being a humble villager his whole life. The next showed greatness, then it would go back, then it would change to being a chicken farmer, then change again. There was nothing too eye catching aside from the speed in which it was changing… Do you think it was Aldwin could have caused her fate to change instead of me?”

  Max thought carefully about what Cy said. “Possibly. I don’t think the ‘Aldwin’ we knew was the real one.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Cy agreed. “Runes can change a fixed fate. Whatever he’s doing makes his fate completely unstable. It wouldn’t be a stretch that he could alter others.”

  “Max? Cy?”

  Max broke eye contact with Cy to see someone who looked like Adelaide standing by the door next to Kurt. It had only been a couple of months since they last saw each other, but time had not been too kind to her since then. There was little doubt that compared to before, she had been suffering like a stray dog around these parts. Having endured day after day of hardship, her skin showed damage from being exposed to the elements. Unlike what is suggested by her small smile, Max and Cy had little doubt she had gone through a lot since they last saw each other. They had drawn the same conclusion based on the humble, simple clothes she had been provided with, and her gestures and voice appearing more hesitant and timid than before. The forgotten only child from a small village.

  “Hello, Ada.”