Story of Kings

Chapter 2

Kane opened the door to the house he had been calling home the past few months and walked inside. He had lingered in Volissa longer than most cities he went to but its vast, sprawling nature made for a lot of ground to cover. Unfortunately, the mystic in the market was the biggest lead he had gotten the entire time he had been there; Kane had spent so much time scrounging through the various black markets and underground of various cities looking for a possible hint on who might have killed his father, and he had more stumbled upon the mystic, less found.

As he hung up his long coat and took off his black boots, carefully setting them down against the wall by the door, a voice called from another room. "You're back a bit late today," a female voice shouted to him. "Not like you."

"Barely more than a few minutes," Kake said back as his headache spiked again, his own voice still level yet still heard by the other. "Surely I haven't missed dinner."

"Of course, you haven't," the woman said, coming around the corner of a room down the hallway of the entrance. "You're just usually so on the spot, something happen?" The woman stood shorter than Kane, barely coming up to his chest yet she strode up to him as though she were a confident, powerful predator. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, by evidence from the red stains on her black apron and her rolled up sleeves; it was to keep her hair out of the meal she was preparing. Crossing her arms and taking a wide stance as if to bar him from going any further she stared Kane down.

Kane, who wasn't being closed-mouthed or stubborn, furrowed his brow at her. "I've got- something, I guess. Not exactly a lead but I'm fairly certain that it's reliable," he said as he stepped up to her, looking down at her small stature. "You know, Cas, you in all your hundred-pound glory doesn't exactly make for a good roadblock."

Cas' face flushed red. "Like you would dare move me," she said, her eyes as sharp as a blade. "Gods forbid you try to cook for yourself again, when I found out how skilled you were in the kitchen, I was surprised you hadn't died from your stomach running away, much less at how big you were nonetheless." Only in private could Cas be so abrasive, if she was in public, she would be flogged for being so rude, as uninfluential as she was. Or imprisoned for her worship of gods over god-kings. Though he had little room to speak, Kane's own interaction had been dangerous earlier; he might not worship any figure as a god but simply not worshiping a god-king was dangerous.

"You need to work on your phrasing," Kane said to her, noting her rudeness yet ignoring the comment on his cooking. "If you insist on being witty you've got to make it sly." He then tilted his face up, taking in a whiff of the air. "Tomato and basil?"

"Soup, yes, with a grilled cheese sandwich," Cas said, blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face that had come out of her ponytail. "I don't think I'll ever get over the fact that you'll prefer the simplest of foods when you literally live with a gourmet chef." Shrugging more to herself than Kane, Cas turned and strode back off to the Kitchen and beckoned him in. "Come on, food is ready."

Kane gave her a half smile as he followed her into the kitchen. "Nice foods are expensive, butter could almost be mistaken for gold, both in color and in cost."

"Yeah, but I actually make a living, unlike you," she said back over her shoulder. "You have no idea how much the silver spoons will pay for a good chef in times like these, nor how little they keep track of or even care of their supplies. It isn't like they know how much butter goes into making an omelet."

"Butter goes in omelets?" Kane asked, his brow furrowing as he sat down at their small, wooden table that occupied almost half the space that was their small kitchen.

Cas paused for a moment, unable to believe what she had just heard. Eyes fluttering closed she shook her head, "how in the name of Zeaos did you survive?" She whispered to herself, a mixture of disbelief and teasing in her tone. "You know how to break a man's wrist more ways than I'm comfortable with, but you don't know two things about any domestic task."