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Father’s face twists. “So, you’ve become one of Myrzeth’s pupils too.”

I don’t like where he has me, with my back to a wall. I like the tone of his words even less.

With an approximation of calm, I shoulder past him, sit on the edge of a footstool, and make a show of rewrapping the cords around my leather boots. His breath creeps down my neck, but I resist the urge to shrug away from him.

“No,” I answer, taking my time fiddling with my footwear. “I don’t care for him.”

He snorts and moves off. I pinch my eyes closed for a beat and steady myself.

“I spent an entire day and night chasing down a sola with a bunch of idiots who wouldn’t know how to take out a baby rabbit.” A curse slips between his lips. He peels the bearskin vest off his tunic and throws it on the couch. “We thought we caught a glimpse of it multiple times, but every time we got close, it vanished.”

That explains his sour mood and unkempt appearance.

My mother flinches when he flops onto the couch. I watch her closely, waiting for the glazed look to return, for her to become an empty shell. Instead, her hands curl around the mug, and she raises it to her lips. Her eyelids close as she breathes in the aroma and warmth. She seems to be doing better than she has in a while.

“And when we got back to Utsanek empty handed, that meddler had the gall to confront me in front of my own men.” The fingers of his left hand drum the couch armrest with ferocity.

I peel my eyes from the anomaly of my mother and focus on my father’s words. “What?”

His face distorts even more than before, like something putrid hovers right under his nostrils.

“Myrzeth.” He curses again, causing Mother to turn her face quickly to the fire. “That idiotic reptile. He invoked the rite of Privotus Vimorteth against me.”

I mentally flip through all the Atsunic lessons I endured over the years, trying to place the phrase. I wait for him to explain. Instead, he bends forward and snatches a new sola bone from the table.

More and more bone fragments have been making their way into our house, now that they have been distributed around Utsanek. Perks of being the Foremost family.

He stares at it in his palm for a while, though I don’t see how he can stand it. The shard is blinding, more than bright enough to illuminate this entire room. With calm purpose, he wraps both hands around it and snaps it in half with a forceful jerk.

“He would steal the rule of the Vale right out from under my nose.”

And then it makes sense. Myrzeth has challenged my father to the ritualistic competition for Foremost.

Inactivity rarely suits my father, but it’s even more egregious to him when he feels his control slipping. After holding the whole room hostage in his brooding silence, he stands and moves to leave. I don’t think about trying to prevent him, even though I haven’t been able to question him about Amyrah’s father yet—the thing I came home to do. But it’s best to get out of his way when he is like this.

The front door slams behind him, and there is air in the atmosphere again.? I approach my mother and lay a hand on her shoulder. She surprises me by resting hers on top of it. No words pass between us, and she doesn’t look up. But we communicate, nonetheless.

A clatter from the back of the house draws my attention.

I stop short in the doorway to the kitchen, trying to understand what I see.

Korvin and Shemai bend over a large pot, jostling each other as they drop in diced onions and carrots.

“What are you doing?”

Korvin raises his eyes from his task, and his cheeks blush a shade of pink. “I-I thought Mother might like some—some soup,” he says, jolting when Shemai tosses two whole carrots in with a splash.

“Shem,” he scolds. My youngest brother giggles like a lunatic and grabs a long spoon to retrieve them from the pot. Korvin wipes his brow with the back of a hand and looks back at me.

“Do you want help?” I browse the ingredients lined up carefully on the table. The onions, carrots, and garlic are from our root cellar, but the boys have also managed to procure a bundle of delicate herbs and a whole plucked chicken, cleaned and ready for cooking.

I pinch a tiny leaf between my fingers and raise my hand to breathe in the fragrance. My eyebrows raise when the spiced scent matches perfectly with the meal they have planned. “This looks amazing. You did this all on your own?”

Shemai hops off his stool and pulls a stained paper from under a pile of carrot peelings. “We found this old recipe in one of Mother’s cupboards. Korvin spent all morning gathering the stuff.”

I take the recipe from his hand, and he scampers back to Korvin’s side.Grandmada’s Everything’s Alright Soupis penned in fading letters across the top of the page. Memories of the caring and zany matriarch flip through my mind. A wistful smile creeps across my lips, and the warm kitchen air swells around me like an embrace.

My focus flicks toward my brothers. Korvin hands Shemai a mortar and pestle, and the latter gets to work grinding dried peppercorns into a gritty powder.