"Enter," Raven said coldly.
The office door swung slowly open. The deputy commander steeled himself and drew his shoulders back, determined to hold a dignified posture in front of the monster his prince had just described. Beside him, Crown Prince Raven flashed a small, meaningful smile.
"Allow me," he said, "to introduce this person to you personally."
In the deputy commander's mind, at that moment, Lady Chasey loomed as the most terrifying creature in existence.
What came through the door was a strikingly beautiful young lady in a military uniform, graceful as a drawn line, who bowed her head and greeted the crown prince gently.
Raven's eyes went wide. He did not speak. He appeared, for the first time in the deputy commander's brief acquaintance with him, entirely unable to.
The deputy commander's own face went blank. He stood there in an awkward daze, because the person in front of him bore no resemblance whatsoever to the thing he had been bracing for.
Chasey smiled at them both, radiant and perfectly polite. "I've come to escort you to dinner," she announced.
Neither man could produce a sentence. They only gasped, prince and deputy alike, staring at her as though she had announced the collapse of the sky.
"Dinner is already prepared," she reminded them, keeping her gracious manner. "It's waiting."
In truth, the Distan army had a serious problem, and it was this: they had no professional cook. Not one. Every soldier in the ranks had been trained intensively in combat and in nothing else, which made cooking an absolute nightmare for all of them.
Their kitchen scenes looked no different from a battlefield. One man, attempting to cut with a knife, had chopped clean through the cutting board. Another, trying to crack an egg into a bowl, had instead cracked it on a comrade's head, which produced results both hilarious and disastrous. They had even managed to turn an ordinary gas stove into something resembling a flamethrower and scorch everything within sight.
The result of all their efforts was always the same. Plates of charred, rock-hard food that no living creature could eat.
Which was why the maid stood open-mouthed in the doorway, watching Lady Chasey demonstrate flawless knife work and a cook's confident technique.
Chasey herself was doing arithmetic while she worked. This lot were quite particular about their food, she had noticed. Blowing up another stove and running away would only put her in greater danger than she was already in.
She lifted a spoonful of the soup she had made and tasted it carefully, her expression tight with nervous anticipation.
Then she smiled, because it was wonderful.
Cooking, she realised, was both her favourite hobby and her greatest talent, and here it might be the thing that kept her alive. So she poured her whole heart into it, hoping to turn around everyone's poor impression of her, and hoping too that the crown prince might come to see her a little more favourably.
Crown Prince Raven received her good intentions by drawing a knife and slicing the plate of food to pieces in front of her.
He knocked the whole of it to the floor with the back of his hand. "The same petty tricks as always," he sneered. "Not a sign of improvement in you."
Chasey stared at the ruin on the flagstones.
"Still as foolish as ever," Raven went on, consumed with fury, his voice rising. "Daring to bring me this cheap food again."
She could not understand it. She stood bewildered in the middle of the dining room, turning his accusation over and finding no handle on it anywhere. Cheap food. Tricks. What tricks?
"What are you plotting behind my back this time?" the prince demanded coldly.
The dining room had grown unbearably tense. The prince glared at the overturned plate as though it were a weapon someone had smuggled in. Chasey lowered her head. Her legs were trembling under the weight of the pressure coming off him, but she forced herself to stay calm.
Then she crouched, picked up a piece of the food, and ate it.
The prince went utterly still. Beside him the deputy commander froze as well, both of them staring at her as she chewed and swallowed with perfect composure.
She straightened her clothes neatly and prepared to explain herself.
"I don't know what misunderstanding has happened here," she said. "I truly don't. But this is an entirely ordinary dish, made from the freshest ingredients. Nothing more."
The prince said nothing.
"If Your Highness has firmly decided not to eat, I won't force you," she went on, plainly. "But please don't throw away someone else's hard work so carelessly."
Raven sprang to his feet.
"You are plotting something," he insisted, his voice loud in the stone room. "You are always plotting something." He looked down at her with contempt. "Do whatever you please. You will never fool me again."
Then he turned and stormed out. The door slammed shut behind him with a cruel finality, and Chasey was left standing alone in the wreckage of dinner, her face showing exactly the sorrow and disappointment she felt.
The deputy commander lingered a moment, watching her, and a heavy, unsettling silence settled over the room.
Chasey lowered her head and let her thoughts tangle. Why had it gone so badly? What had she missed?
Then she looked up and was somewhat surprised to find the deputy commander sitting at the table beside her, happily eating away.
On the ride home she sat quietly by the window, gazing out at nothing, weighed down by heavy thoughts.
"My lady," Emily said gently, "we've arrived. We're back at the mansion."
Chasey came out of her drifting and let herself be handed down from the carriage. She stepped into her room, and stopped.
Something was not quite right.
She could not help the small gasp that escaped her at the sheer magnificence of the place — the height of the ceiling, the sweep of the drapes, the extravagance of every surface, and all of it hers. She had been living in it for days now without ever really looking.
This mansion truly lives up to its reputation, she thought. Worthy of the most powerful family in the empire.
The opulence left her a little dazed. Emily, cheerful, announced that she was off to prepare a bath, and went out. Chasey sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by everything around her, struggling to adjust to any of it.
Then she noticed something unusual.
She frowned, curious, and bent down to look under the bed, trying to make out the strange object that had caught her eye. It was a box, small and old, pushed back against the wall where nobody would find it by accident.
A secret jewellery box, perhaps, she thought, dragging it out. She reached out carefully and lifted the lid of the old wooden box to see what lay inside.
Her eyes went wide.
At that exact moment Emily came back through the door to announce that the bath was ready, saw what her mistress was holding, and let out a surprised gasp.
She had found the secret item.
"My lady?" Emily asked, worried by the strange expression on her face. "Is something wrong?"