When I opened them, a woman in a chef’s hat and coat stood in front of me with a scowl, a wooden spoon propped on her wide hip. “Can I help you?”
“Umm, yeah.” My stomach growled, and I gave her my best puppy dog smile. Which, in retrospect, might not have actually worked since I’m a feline. “I haven’t eaten all day and I’m looking for some food. Do you have anything to spare?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. “You’re that hybrid, aren’t you? The one Lord Iannis has under observation?”
I grimaced inwardly, both at her use of the word hybrid and the fact that she’d called the Chief Mage Lord. By Magorah, did that man really need a reason for his head to get more inflated? But then again, it was a proper title for him.
“Yes, that’s me,” I said brightly. If I was going to own it, I might as well wear it proudly.
“Fine. Wait here.”
I frowned as the woman disappeared into the pantry, eyeing the freshly baked bread and roasted chicken sitting on the countertop not ten feet from my elbow. Why was she going to the pantry when there was perfectly good food here?
The answer became obvious when she bustled back out into the kitchen again, a hunk of brown bread in one hand and a wedge of cheese in the other. “Here,” she said, thrusting them both at me as if she couldn’t wait to be rid of them.
“Thanks,” I muttered, testing the bread with a squeeze of my fingers. It was rock hard, and the cheese was liberally speckled with mold. “Didn’t realize I had the words ‘garbage can’ tattooed on my forehead.”
The woman completely ignored me, and I sighed, slinking out of the kitchen with my proverbial tail tucked between my legs. It seemed as though the kitchen staff and servants had all been given the ‘hate on sight’ order when told about my presence, and I wondered whether the Chief Mage himself was to blame for that, or one of his lackeys. Magorah knew I’d pissed off practically everyone in the audience chamber, so it could have been any one of them.
I really have to work on my diplomacy skills.
I sat on the floor in the hall with my back against the wall and nibbled on my five-star fare, my ears alert as I listened to the kitchen staff gossip, hoping to catch any clues about the shifter murders. But all they talked about were their families and friends, tomorrow’s menu – which nearly made me cry because it sounded delicious and would probably be off limits to me – and which of the servants were boinking each other. The latter could have been interesting if I were able to use it as blackmail, but I seriously doubted the Chief Mage could be bothered with that kind of thing.
He’s bothering with you, isn’t he? My heart stuttered a little as I remembered the way he’d looked at me, as if he could actually see beyond my tough shell and into the real me. Sure, the idea scared the shit out of me, but the idea of someone actually knowing my secrets and accepting me instead of writing me off as a failure or a problem was highly appealing.
Then I looked down at what was left of my rock-bread and snorted. The Chief Mage didn’t give a flying fuck about me beyond the puzzle that I presented to him. Clearly my pre-heat hormones were starting to filter in and were addling my brain. I still had several months before I actually went into heat, but my body usually ramped itself up for the occasion, building up so that by the time it came I would be a horny, ravenous monster.
It was one of the only things I hated about being a shifter. The fact that it only happened twice a year was no consolation.
I went back into the kitchen and nagged the cook for some more bread and cheese, and then took my crappy meal back upstairs so I could roam the halls. Eventually I found a deserted storage area full of broken furniture and tools. It didn’t take me long to clear a space. I sat down on the floor and closed my eyes, pulling in slow, deep breaths through my nostrils and exhaling them gently through my mouth. It took longer than usual, but the meditative exercise had the desired effect – my heart rate slowed, my nerves stopped zinging, and the thoughts clamoring in my head gradually faded away, leaving me with a sense of peace.
It was time to train.
I put myself through a set of simple hand-to-hand forms, starting with the basic ones and moving on to lengthier, more complex movements. Doing the forms was as instinctive as breathing – I’d been practicing Kan-Zao, an ancient martial art developed in Garai, ever since Roanas had taken me in. He’d learned the art himself from a Garaian adept while living abroad, and had been a master in his own right.