The Alpha‘s Personal Chef

Chapter 12: The Missing Page

Ella woke on the fifth day before the full moon and went to the garden. The moonbloom bulb sat beneath the soil, waiting. She did not know if it would bloom. She did not know if she wanted it to be that way.

Emil appeared at the garden's edge. His bruise was fading. He no longer waited for permission to step onto the soil. He picked up the trowel and knelt beside her.

"What was it like," Ella asked. "Where Kael kept you."

Emil's hands stopped moving. He was silent for a long time.

"Not a cell," he said finally. "A room. With a window. They gave me food. Books. Kael came three times."

Ella waited.

"The first time, he asked about my mother's garden what she planted. What bloomed when? I told him I did not remember. He said gardens remember everything."

Emil pulled a weed and set it aside.

"The second time, he asked what my father did in Vex Manor. I said he was a chef. Kael said his father had known a chef once. She would not cook what he wanted. She ran."

Ella's hands stilled. Her grandmother.

"The third time, he told me I would go home soon. And he said to tell my father something." Emil looked at her. "He said the Moonbound heart is not the only way. The real recipe is with Ironclaw. Your grandmother's parchment is only a piece."

Ella set down her trowel. A piece. Her grandmother had hidden the recipes. But had she hidden all of them? Or had someone taken something first? She left Emil in the garden and went to her room. She opened her grandmother's parchment. She had read the first recipe a dozen times. The second time. The third she had only read the title and the first line. Now she turned to the very end.

The last page was gone. Not missing. Torn. The edge was old, yellowed, frayed by time. Her grandmother had torn it out herself. Or someone had torn it from her hands.

She thought of Kael's father hunting her grandmother for years. Had he caught her once? Taken something before she escaped? She could not know. But the page was gone, and Kael spoke of fragments.

She closed the parchment and went to find Dorian.

He was in his study. She told him what Emil had said. She told him about the torn page. He listened without speaking.

"The recipes are not whole," she said. "Your father wanted what Kael's father wanted. My grandmother refused them both. But one of them may have taken a piece anyway."

Dorian's jaw tightened. "My father never spoke of a missing page. He told me many things before he died. Not this."

"Then Kael's father took it. And Kael has it now."

Ella was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "There is something else. My grandmother left a note in the margin of the first recipe. It says no recipe requires the cook to stand alone."

Dorian looked at her. "What does that mean?"

"I think it means the costs can be shared. The second recipe took my memory. I lost the first time I saw you. But if two people drink the broth, the cost might be split. Half for me. Half for you."

Dorian did not hesitate. "Tell me what to do."

They went to the kitchen. Ella prepared the second recipe again. Thyme. Dew. Three drops of his blood. This time, she made two bowls. She drank from one. He drank from the other.

The warmth spread through her chest. Then she smelled it. Thyme and bay leaf. The exact scent from Hal's kitchen that night. And with it, the memory returned. Not all at once. In pieces. The kitchen door is swinging open. His face. His voice. "Say please." She had said it. He had said it first.

She opened her eyes. Dorian was watching her. His expression was different. Something was missing behind his eyes.

"What did you lose," she asked.

He was silent. Then he said, "I forgot what Kael was wearing the night he cursed me. I remember the knife. I remember his face. I remember what he said. But his clothes. I cannot see them anymore."

"That does not matter."

"I know. That is why I let it go."

Ella looked at him. "I remembered something. When you walked into the kitchen at Hal's, your hand was bleeding. The knuckles. You had hit someone."

Dorian was quiet. Then he said, "I hit Rowan. He tried to stop me. He said they had not cleared the kitchen. There could be weapons. I told him I did not care. I had smelled something through the door. Something I had not smelled in eighteen months. Hope."

Ella did not look away.

"Rowan forgave you," she said.

"He understood. He always does."

They stood in the kitchen. The empty bowls sat between them. The torn page waited in her room. Somewhere in Ironclaw territory, Kael held the rest of her grandmother's knowledge. And in five days, he would come to take what she had.

But for now, the kitchen was warm. The garden was growing. And she was not standing alone.

Outside the window, the moon was a sliver less than it had been last night. Five days. Four nights. Then Kael would come.