Chapter 5 Chapter 5: The Emperor’s Demand
“This? This is your last hope, Cassian? A frightened, half-dead scrap from the kitchens?”
The voice was a dry, brittle thing, laced with pain and incandescent fury. The Emperor. He lay on a massive bed, a giant of a man wasted away by sickness, but his eyes burned with a feverish, terrifying intelligence. They raked over me, my matted hair, my bruised face, with a disdain that was more cutting than any whip.
Cassian gave me a rough shove forward, and I stumbled into the center of the opulent chamber, my rough tunic and bare feet a sacrilege against the rich carpets and silk tapestries. I felt like a piece of filth that had been tracked into a sacred temple.
“My Lord,” Cassian said, his voice ringing with formal respect. “I have brought the omega.”
“I have, my Lord,” a new voice chimed in, a voice like warm honey and poison.
I turned to see a man lounging in a chair by the fireplace, a goblet of deep red wine in his hand. He was the Emperor’s opposite in every way. Where the Emperor was dark and brooding, this man was fair and beautiful, with silver-blond hair that fell in elegant waves to his shoulders and a lazy, amused smile playing on his lips. He was dressed in fine silks of deep crimson, and he exuded an aura of effortless, dangerous charm. He wasn’t a guard or a physician. He was something else entirely. A predator of a different kind.
“Raze,” the Emperor growled, the name a curse. “What are you doing here? I gave no orders for you to attend me.”
“Enjoying the show,” the man, Raze, replied with a languid shrug. He took a sip of his wine, his eyes, the color of molten gold, fixed on me with an unnerving intensity. “I must admit, Cassian, I’m intrigued. When you sent a message that you’d found a ‘miracle worker,’ I pictured someone with a few more teeth and a bit less… dirt.”
“She healed a dying slave, my Prince,” Cassian said, his voice tight with a tension I now understood. He clearly had no love for this silver-haired man.
“Did she now?” Prince Raze purred, rising from his chair in a single, fluid motion. He moved with a predator’s grace, circling me slowly. I felt like a mouse being inspected by a cat that was toying with its prey. “And how, pray tell, did a pathetic little omega like you accomplish such a feat? Did you pray the sickness away? Or did you just bore her to death with your trembling?”
I flinched but held my ground, my chin lifting in a gesture of defiance that felt alien to this body but was pure me. I would not be cowed. Not again.
The Emperor let out a harsh, barking laugh that ended in a wracking cough that shook his entire frame. “A dying slave? I am the Alpha King! My life is worth a thousand of hers! Her little parlor trick means nothing! It is an insult to even suggest it!”
“It means everything, my Lord,” Cassian insisted, his voice urgent, taking a step forward. “The physicians have failed. The mages have abandoned you. You have nothing left to lose.”
The Emperor’s eyes narrowed, the feverish burn in them intensifying. He stared at me, and for a moment, I felt like he was looking not at the slave girl, but into my very soul. He saw the defiance. He saw the fire. He saw the spark of the magic that Cassian had sensed. He saw a tool.
“Fine,” he snarled, pushing himself up on his elbows, a monumental effort that left him trembling and gasping for air. “You want me to place my hope in this gutter rat? Then she will prove it. Now.”
He pointed a trembling, skeletal finger towards a door on the far side of the room. “There. My personal kitchen. It is stocked with the finest ingredients in the kingdom. Spices worth more than your life, meats from beasts you’ve only dreamed of, fruits from the enchanted southern groves.”
His voice dropped to a low, menacing growl that vibrated through the floorboards, a sound of pure Alpha command that made my very bones ache with the need to submit. “You will go in there. You will cook for me. And you will make me something that makes me feel stronger. Something that makes this curse recede, even for a moment.”
He sank back against the pillows, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The effort had exhausted him. His eyes, however, remained locked on mine, burning with a desperate, dangerous command.
“If you fail,” he whispered, the promise of death in his voice, a soft, chilling sound that was more terrifying than any shout. “If your food is as worthless as you appear to be, I will have Cassian peel the skin from your bones, inch by inch, while I watch. Do you understand me, omega?”
I stood there, trapped between the dying Emperor’s desperate fury, the Commander’s cold expectation, and the Prince’s mocking, golden gaze. My entire second life, my chance at revenge, my very existence, now came down to this.
One dish.
One chance to prove that the magic was real.
One chance to live.
I turned and walked towards the door he had indicated, my legs feeling like lead. I could feel all three of their eyes on my back. I pushed open the door and stepped into a kitchen that was a chef’s dream and a prisoner’s nightmare. gleaming copper pots hung from the ceiling. A central island was laden with ingredients I couldn’t even name: glistening fish with scales like rainbows, a rack of lamb so fresh it still smelled of the mountain meadow, bowls of berries that seemed to glow with an inner light.
This was it. The ultimate test.
My eyes scanned the bounty, my chef’s mind already racing, assessing, combining. But then I saw it. Tucked away in a small, woven basket on the corner of the counter, almost hidden, was a small, unassuming bundle of threads.
They were pale purple, dry and brittle. But I knew them instantly.
Saffron.
The same spice from my signature dish. The spice that had been in the air when I died. The scent of my betrayal.
A shiver went down my spine. Was this a coincidence? Or a test? I didn’t know. But as I reached out and picked up a single, fragile thread, a new vow, sharper and more immediate than the last, formed in my mind.
They want a miracle? I will give them a miracle they will never forget.
