Page 103 of The Witch in the Dead of Night

“Don’t tell me you’re going to cook.”

I shot him a dark look. “It’s not like you’re going to do it.”

The selection was sparse, but I had seen Gran do much more with less. In Wealdstone, cooking required a certain talent for creativity. Mama tended to get too frustrated, sometimes being moved to the point of tears when our stores ran dry. Gran was patient with her, though, showing her how to combine winter crops and salted meats for a simple meal that kept us full.

I ran my fingers through a sack of barley, lifting a grain to my nose. Fortunately, there was no telltale musk of mold in these stores. “Barley, leeks, and cabbage,” I said aloud. “I can make this work.”

Setting a head of cabbage on the counter, I peeled away the rotted outer layers, stacking the discarded leaves into a pile. With a snap of my fingers, steam unfurled from the lip of a pot of water beside me. The prince’s lip curled as he peered over my shoulder. “This is peasant food.”

I scoffed. “We’ve been eating stale bread and cheese on the side of the road for nearly a fortnight, but now you’re getting picky?”

“Only when we weren’t given quarters in someone’s manor. Besides, that cheese came from Ralthan,” he said, referring to a southern city famous for its creamy sheep’s milk cheese. My stomach rumbled at the memory of its taste.

I shook my head, slicing a knife through the cabbage with a crunch. “You’re welcome to cook for yourself if you like. Where I come from, barley stew is considered a luxury. Especially if we couldn’t get meat that month.”

“I thought your father was a huntsman?”

I smirked. “So you do listen to me.”

“You’ve been talking quite a lot lately, so it’s difficult not to,” he shot back.

“Why don’t you go wash up and I’ll call you when the meal is done?” I suggested, my eyes never straying from my work.

“Fine.” He stalked off, leaving me in peace.

No more than an hour later, we sat across from each other at the long table in the mess hall. It seemed silly, two people in a room meant for a hundred. The prince’s hair was damp and combed, his clothes rumpled but clean.

I watched him as he stirred his stew, eyeing it suspiciously. “Were you ever a soldier?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“Certainly not,” he replied.

“Then how do you know your way around the barracks so well?”

He shrugged. “All barracks are designed essentially the same way.”

“So you were a soldier at some point?”

“No.” He wore an expression I couldn’t decipher on his face, staring intensely into his bowl. He sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Have you heard of the Beltzan Uprising?”

My heart thudded in my chest. “Where I come from we don’t call it an uprising,” I said carefully. “We call it—”

“—a massacre,” he finished for me. “I know.”

“The city of Beltzan was northeast of here, situated strategically between Valen and the kingdoms to the northeast,” he said. “It was also home to the kingdom’s largest iron mine.”

“I’ve read that iron ore is priceless in war,” I whispered. “But I’ve never seen what it can do.”

He nodded. “In its purest form, iron shackles can render a witch powerless. It couldn’t kill a vampire, but it makes for a dangerous weapon. Over a hundred years ago, Beltzan’s leaders began to think that they might be better off as a sovereign nation than they were under the crown. They were making so much coin through clandestine trade deals with neighboring kingdoms that they felt they no longer needed the crown’s protection. They could fund their own army. And so the entire city rebelled against their king.”

“The crown had been stripping them of their only resource for centuries to use in their wars,” I pointed out. “Leaving their people to starve.”

“We knew that,” Enhart said, unfazed.

We. I bit the inside of my cheek.

“We’d been at peace for so long that the King was untested when rumors of rebellion finally reached Valnar. He relied on the wisdom of his advisers, including his Master at Arms who offered to quell the uprising. Mordric didn’t give it a second thought, but General Gregorian cut his teeth on violence in the eastern borderlands during my father’s reign. He was restless. Gregorian’s men slaughtered civilians in the streets with abandon. Children and the elderly weren’t spared. His forces became notorious for tearing babes from their mothers’ arms and throwing them from the city walls.”

My eyes widened as I recalled a memory that I had witnessed when I had fallen into his memories back in Valnar—cobbled streets that ran red with blood, the stench of death hanging in the air. “You were there, weren’t you?”