Chương 296: 63. Dinner 1

That night, the dining hall of Thornhold was, for once, lit with a genuine warmth. Not the nauseating extravagance of a banquet, and not the over-polished, performative brightness of the reception hall. This was something real: candlelight, hot soup, roasted meat, bread fresh from the oven, and the particular glow that comes when people who have been running all day are finally allowed to sit down and eat a proper meal.

I stood by the long table and watched Charlotte and Lorelei instinctively drift toward the wall, while Fina had been seated at the side of the table nearest the door, hands folded quietly in her lap, sitting so rigidly upright she looked like she was bracing for a tribunal rather than dinner. Wonderful. Apparently those bastards had managed this fortress so thoroughly into the ground that even sitting down to eat had developed class trauma. I pulled out a chair, sat first, and tapped the tabletop.

"Everyone, sit." Charlotte visibly froze.

"Young master, that wouldn't be proper—""Proper?" I looked at her.

"I spent today sending House Rosa's biggest experts on propriety straight into a cell. Bringing that word up with me tonight feels like tempting fate." Jessi was the first to break, laughing outright as she dropped into a chair with the natural ease of someone who'd always owned the table.

"Fair point," she said.

"I love this energy—the old rulebook is dead, so now I say what goes." Ignicia was already seated at my right, having offered zero commentary the entire time. She simply dragged the nearest platter of roasted meat toward herself as a matter of course. Her whole demeanor made it abundantly clear that, in her worldview, all of the world's ethics fell into exactly two categories: things that could be eaten, and things standing in the way of her eating.

Charlotte and Lorelei, evidently, belonged to a third category—people I was physically compelling to sit down. So I added: "This is my arrangement. Tonight, everyone eats together." Charlotte looked at me, then at Fina, and her eyes went red before she could stop them.... Right. We'd reached the point where a dinner invitation was enough to make someone cry. What kind of life had this household been living?

"Sit," I repeated, softening my voice.

"Starting tonight, anyone capable of sitting and eating properly no longer does it standing up." At that, Fina looked up at me. Her gaze was light. But it brightened. Charlotte finally murmured her assent and sat beside Lorelei, who chose a seat slightly further back, clearly still trying to maintain that half-attendant distance she'd been trained into. I pushed the empty bowl in front of her forward half a foot.

"Any further back and you'll be eating in the hallway," I told her.

"I didn't drag you here to stand and serve while smelling everyone else's dinner." Her fingers paused. When she looked up, something flickered across her face—somewhere between resignation and amusement.

"... All right." Her voice wasn't loud. But it was obedient. Dangerously obedient. I redirected my full attention to the soup, resolving to focus on food rather than risk looking, within the first five minutes of dinner, like a man whose brain had stopped functioning. The spread wasn't lavish.

Given Thornhold's current disaster, producing a decent dinner at all was probably the kitchen's last stand on behalf of human civilization: a platter of roasted and braised meat, two large bowls of thick soup, freshly sliced rye bread, a few pickled dishes, and a plate of root vegetables clearly excavated from somewhere unexpected. For me, right now, it was more than enough. Compared to the mountain of falsified ledgers in the reception hall, at least everything here was real. The meat was real. The soup was real.

The hunger was real. Unlike certain people, whose entire way of living had been fabricated from top to bottom. At first, the mood at the table was undeniably stiff. Charlotte sat ramrod straight, as if one wrong movement might scare the meal away. Fina sipped her soup in tiny increments, as though verifying this wasn't a dream. Lorelei, without being asked, broke Fina's bread into smaller pieces and shifted her spoon into easy reach—movements so practiced it was obvious she'd been doing this for years.

Watching it, something tightened in my chest. It was too practiced. Not the look of someone occasionally helping out—the look of two people who had long since learned to piece their days together where no one else cared to look. Jessi, naturally, had no such affliction. She contributed nothing to the stiffness and everything to demolishing it.

"This meat's not bad," she said, tearing into a chicken leg with the honest respect of a professional evaluating ingredients.

"Overcooked by half a beat, but passable. Streets ahead of the kind of kitchen that chars a steak into boot leather and still expects you to thank the lord's boundless generosity." Charlotte blinked, answering almost on reflex: "T-that's Old Morsen from the back kitchens. He used to handle all the roasting here, but since the war started and meat got scarce, the big ovens barely get used." Jessi perked right up.

"Oh? Not bad. I always figured that in times like these, the first people to die are the best cooks—everyone fights to the death over the last leg quarter." Fina nearly choked on her soup, coughing twice into her bowl. Lorelei slid a cup of water toward her on pure instinct, while Charlotte thumped her back and shot Jessi a look.

"Don't talk about dying at the dinner table."

"You see," I said, lifting my soup bowl at a leisurely pace, "that is what real inner-household authority looks like. Try lecturing Jessi like that in the reception hall, and she'd already have a fork planted in your plate as a warning." Jessi shot me a sideways glance, still chewing.

"Cut it out. That's called having principles."

"That's called food aggression."

"Food aggression is a subset of principles." Reliable as ever. But precisely because she refused to cooperate with any oppressive mood, the air at the table finally, slowly, began to breathe. Halfway through the meal, Fina spoke up on her own.

"Charlotte's soup... is even better than it used to be." Charlotte's hand trembled, clearly not expecting Fina to say something like that here. Her whole expression softened.

"You were too frail before—there was so much I couldn't put in. Now that you're closer to the kitchen, I'll have something more nourishing made later."

"Don't overdo the nourishing," I cut in.

"Just get some color back in her cheeks. No need to push it until she's eyeing meat like Jessi does." Jessi set her bone down on the plate's edge with a crack.

"Hey. Young master. That's slander."

"No, that's a culinary observation report." Lorelei ducked her head and laughed, softly. Very softly. But I saw it.... Not good. Her laughing was far more dangerous than her quiet watching. The latter was merely familiar. The former dragged up a memory of the old wooden step behind the kitchen door, years ago, where someone had once pressed stolen bread into my hands wearing that exact same smile.

I buried my face in my soup and pretended the thyme-to-broth ratio was the most urgent matter at hand, rather than why my memory chose to perform so precisely at the worst possible moments. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. As the meal went on, the household's daily grievances began surfacing naturally—mostly from Charlotte, with Lorelei filling gaps. The kitchen staff had been cut nearly in half over six months.

Winter preserves meant for the inner residence had been redirected to the main keep. Two of Fina's medicines had nearly run dry, forcing Lorelei out at night to beg a substitute from the old apothecary. Even hot water hadn't been guaranteed, once firewood was prioritized for the outer line. None of it sounded catastrophic on its own. Which was exactly what made it so repellent. What truly destroys a place is rarely a single collapse from the sky.

It's a long accumulation of this can be cut first, that can wait, this person won't complain, that one's still breathing—until an entire household rots out beneath its own excuses. I set my spoon down and tapped the table.

"Starting tomorrow, firewood, water, medicine, and kitchen supplies for the inner residence go back to full allocation. Run it under my name. None of it passes through the old main-keep process again." Charlotte startled.

"Young master, won't that—""It will," I said calmly.

"It will let certain people who already deserve a very ugly death understand exactly how much they cut that they had no right to cut. So—yes. Do it." She opened her mouth, closed it, and finally murmured her assent. Fina watched me, the careful brightness in her eyes settling into something steadier—as if she was beginning to believe this dinner wasn't just tonight's exception. It was a beginning.

Once the mood had finally shifted from everyone terrified of saying the wrong thing toward something resembling an actual meal, I set down my utensils and looked around the table. Time. Some things only get heavier the longer you let them sit.

"There's something I need to say." The table fell silent instantly. Only Ignicia showed no reaction, methodically working through her plate, as if I could announce plans to tear the ceiling off tomorrow and her sole concern would still be whether the last rib needed sauce. I looked at Fina.

"From now on, the head of House Rosa will be you." Clatter. The bone in Jessi's hand nearly dropped into her soup. Charlotte froze completely. Lorelei went rigid for a full second, amber eyes flying wide. Even Fina looked as though the sentence had struck her physically—two full beats of blankness before she scrambled to face me.

"B-brother?!" Only Ignicia kept cutting her meat. Methodically. As though everything at the table besides protein was optional background noise. Jessi recovered first, sweeping the last of her meat off her plate while glaring at me.

"Hold on, young master—having an episode again? Didn't you tell the King you wanted the house split? Now you're pinning this rotten fruit on your little sister's head?"

"Circumstances change." I slowly unbuckled the bracer on my left wrist. Every gaze at the table followed the motion. Beneath the leather, along the back of my hand and wrist, skin that had merely been unusually tough now bore several distinct scale-ridges tracing the tendons. Pale in color, but unmistakable at a glance—not an ordinary scar, and not a simple mutation either. Fina gasped.

"Brother?!" Charlotte's face drained white. Lorelei leaned forward instinctively, as if wanting a closer look—or fighting the urge to reach out and check whether it hurt. I re-fastened the bracer.

"I'm not entirely sure. Give it a while longer, and I might just turn into a dragon." Dead silence. Then Ignicia finally looked up. She glanced at me, then let out a snort with zero respect for the moment's gravity.

"Nonsense." Me: "..." She set her knife down, her tone dripping with the merciless, fire-dragon brand of pragmatism.

"You, a dragon? With your temperament? Don't make me laugh."

"Managing to scrape by as Dragon Emperor by association would already be generous." The rest of the table: "... Dragon Emperor?!" Even Jessi forgot to chew, chicken leg suspended midair, her expression as magnificent as someone who'd just been told the wine cellar next door was free, starting immediately. Ignicia looked between them and me, thoroughly baffled.

"What's everyone's problem? Cedric, you didn't tell them?" I was silent for half a second, marveling anew at this woman's gift for kicking any carefully maintained seriousness straight out the nearest window at the worst possible moment.

"And how, exactly, was I supposed to bring that up—""'Good evening, everyone. Incidentally, I may eventually have some claim to the dragon throne?'" Jessi supplied, deadpan.

"Yeah. Rough opener. Especially over soup." Ignicia cut another slice of meat, entirely unbothered.

"Probably won't happen for a long time, anyway."

"Might not happen in this lifetime at all." I let out a long breath.

"For the best. I never wanted to be any kind of king or emperor. What I've already got on my plate is enough to make me want to keel over on the spot." Jessi's chicken leg shot skyward.

"Long live His Majesty!" Her other fist came up in salute, crisp and utterly shameless—as if the woman questioning my sanity ten seconds ago had never existed. I stared at her, expressionless.

"Congratulations. You're officially my Minister of Flattery, First Class."

"By imperial grace." She took another bite without missing a beat.

"Allow this minister to test the food for poison first, ensuring the safety of the state banquet." That was when the table genuinely laughed. Charlotte's laugh was restrained, still threaded with disbelief. Fina was caught between shock and giggling, her face too busy to keep up. Even Lorelei ducked her head, shoulders trembling with the effort of holding it in. And I understood, with total clarity: any hope of a normal dinner was long dead.

What we were actually eating was: Inner Residence Special—Dragon Emperor Candidate, Botched Succession Transfer, and the Kitchen's Remaining Inventory. Even I had to admire fate's flair for staging. Once the laughter settled, I pulled the topic back, looking at Fina, who still hadn't fully surfaced from shock.

"I'm not dumping a wreck on you."

"I'm putting the name back where it belongs." She looked at me, still a little lost. I slowed my voice.

"I won't be staying long. Between the Kingdom, the Eastern Wall, dragon business, and whatever my own body is turning into, there's no shortage of disasters ahead. If House Rosa is going to survive, it can't stay in the hands of people who stuff family members into towers and treat men on the wall as expendable." I paused.

"You hold the title for now. I'll handle the practical side. Charlotte and Lorelei are here. Once you've found your footing, you take it over properly."

"I'm not asking you to carry this."

"I'm putting back into your hands what should have always been yours." Fina stared. Several breaths passed before she whispered: "But... someone like me—can I really?"

"Someone like you, what?" I asked. She looked down, instinctively, at her legs. The motion was small. But the fire in my chest climbed again. Before I could speak, Lorelei did.

"Yes, you can." Her voice wasn't loud. But it was steady. We all turned to her. Meeting Fina's gaze directly, she said, one word at a time:"Because the people who truly couldn't run this house have all been locked up today." The table held its breath a second. Then Jessi slapped the table and howled.

"Perfectly said! I'm declaring that the second-best line of the night. First place stays with 'Long live His Majesty'—can't help it, that one's got too much historical weight."

"Eat," I said.

"As you command, Majesty."

"Keep it up and I'll demote the Minister of Flattery to pot-scrubbing duty."

"My deepest apologies. Might I petition instead for the post of Imperial Tasting Officer?" Give this woman one breath of open air and she inflates immediately. But thanks to her refusal to let anything stay heavy, the mood at the table finally, genuinely turned warm—not a warmth without shadows, since everyone knew exactly what had happened today and what waited tomorrow, but the kind where people were willing, for the moment, to finish their soup, tear their bread, and listen to one another.

Put plainly: dinner finally tasted like being alive. Just then, quick footsteps sounded outside the hall. Not a servant's tread—a soldier's. The next instant, Lei Lian appeared in the doorway like a gust of cold wind, still in patrol gear, the chill of the night clinging to her shoulder guards and cloak. She looked exactly like someone who would, if I told her to sit and have soup, diagnose me as clinically insane on sight.

"My lord." She crossed to the table and handed me a freshly sealed letter.

"Today's observation report." I broke the seal and scanned it quickly. The contents were concise: the Yanxia Empire's forward line had pulled back sharply today. Advance camps recalled. Dragon Cursemaster activity down. Siege equipment reorganization delayed. Ignicia's descent from the sky hadn't only carved through their siege line—it had burned a very respectable hole through their nerve. I tapped the letter against my knuckle.

"Good. Looks like Ignicia scared them into a full retreat." Jessi gestured toward Ignicia with her chicken leg.

"Told you. Having her at this table is basically large-scale diplomacy in the flesh." Ignicia didn't look up, simply claiming the last piece of meat with total entitlement. Her whole attitude had elevated I merely happened to terrify tens of thousands of people, no need to make a fuss into an art form. I tapped the table again.

"Looks like we've bought a few days to handle household matters." At the phrase household matters, expressions around the table tightened, understandably—given that our current household matters included settling old blood debts, restructuring the inner residence, auditing falsified ledgers, taking over Thornhold, and deciding who died first. Very domestic. I turned to Lei Lian.

"Keep watching your end. Any change, report immediately—to me or to Ignicia."

"Yes, my lord." She turned to leave, but her gaze swept the table first, lingering—briefly—on Fina, Charlotte, and Lorelei. That pause wasn't confusion. She understood exactly what it meant, having these three seated here. This was a line being redrawn: who still counted as family, and who no longer did. Lei Lian asked nothing. She nodded once and left. Once the door closed, the hall held a breath of quiet. I set the letter aside and picked my utensils back up.

"Eat." Jessi recovered fastest.

"As Your Majesty commands."

"Do you actually want pot-scrubbing duty?"

"No. I'm simply overflowing with grassroots loyalty."

"Your loyalty smells like roast chicken."

"Proof of my down-to-earth character." Charlotte finally gave in and laughed. Fina followed, more naturally this time. Lorelei said nothing, but as she refilled Fina's bowl, she glanced at me—briefly. The sharp wariness from earlier had faded. Something steadier had settled in its place. And something else, softer, that I had no intention of examining right now.

I bent over my plate and cut my meat, pretending I hadn't seen a thing—because I knew perfectly well that the truly dangerous thing at this table tonight wasn't the Dragon Emperor talk, the succession, or the relatives waiting in their cells. It was how much this felt like a home. Fina, finally eating on the ground floor. Charlotte, sitting. Lorelei, refilling soup as if she'd always belonged right here.

And me, already wondering, at a time like this: if this table could hold a few more days like this one, what would that look like? A dangerous thought. Because once a person starts wanting, they start wanting to stay. And I don't have that luxury yet. But tonight, at least, I could set the thought aside. Finish the meal. Let this table, for once, just be a table.

Tomorrow's sentences, the day after's trials, the wall beyond that, the dragons, the Kingdom, and whatever my body is slowly becoming—those could wait for morning. If there's one thing I've proven I'm good at, it's finishing dinner while fate hunts me across the room.