“Archie. Archie, you need to calm down. Breathe. Just breathe.”

Archie turned from Nori’s touch. He had balled up in the corner of the railing overlooking the pond. He had barely managed to stop sobbing, but he still shook like a frightened dog.

“I don’t—what’s—I don’t know what’s happening to—to me.”

Nori crouched over him, desperate to help.

“Archie. Archie. Look at me. Look at me.”

Tears blurred Archie’s vision, turning Nori’s face into a mosaic. But he found comfort in her distorted face.

“I need you to think,” she said. “Are you in physical pain?”

“I…I…” Archie looked inward. Everything seemed to hurt, but when he focused, he realized nothing hurt. “No.”

“Okay. Do you feel sick?”

“I…” His stomach turned over, but that was to be expected after sobbing for ten minutes. “I don’t think so.”

“Okay.” Nori nodded. “So you’re okay. You’re okay. Just breathe.”

Archie tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs only filled halfway before spasming, expelling all their air with a vestigial sob. He tried again. Slowly, he regained control of his thoughts.

Then the door slammed open.

“Damn it, Archie!” Julienne yelled. He searched for Archie, finding him curled up on the ground. The scene did nothing to soften Julienne’s anger. “You almost screwed everything up!”

Archie let out a pathetic groan as he struggled to keep his breakdown at bay. He covered his face with his hands.

“Back off,” Nori warned, shuffling around to put her between Archie and Julienne. “Is it over?”

“Yes.” Julienne stepped to the side to continue scowling at Archie. Yarrow and Mindy stepped outside, Yarrow joining Julienne in looking down at Archie while Mindy stayed by the door.

“And? How did it go?”

“It went well.” Julienne clenched his teeth and pointed a finger down at Archie. “But it was almost a disaster because of you! I almost lost my namesake because of you! Everything I’ve worked for!”

“Julienne—” Nori started.

“You’re lucky I pulled this off,” Julienne interrupted. He brought his volume down, but his tone still cut Archie. “But you’re out of here. You’re never stepping foot in my restaurant again.”

“Come on, let’s go,” Yarrow said as he stepped forward and grabbed Archie’s arm.

Nori launched upright, her palms slamming into Yarrow’s chest with a resounding thud!

“Don’t touch him!”

Yarrow slapped Nori’s arm away. Julienne stepped in, pulling his lackey away.

“Yarrow, stop.” Julienne shook his head and looked down at Archie. “Just…get out of here, will you? We have to get cleaning and I can’t have you doing whatever it is you did to the rest of our ingredients.”

“Come on, Archie,” Nori said as she grabbed Archie’s arms and pulled him up. She stood between him and the other boys as she walked. “Happy birthday, asshole,” she said as she brushed past Julienne. “And congratulations. Looks like this’ll be your mausoleum.”

“I’m not mad at you, Nori,” Julienne said. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Don’t care. Come on Archie, let’s get you home.”

Archie sat in a peaceful glade, sun beaming, birds singing, flowers everywhere. Everything was joy and life, but Archie knew it wouldn’t last. The undeniable seed of dread took root in his heart, its branches spreading through his body and sapping him of his warmth.

The foxes and squirrels and deer came and went, and Archie knew they wouldn’t last, either. Their fur fell, their skin hardened into leathery scales, their tongue grew and forked. Licertes encircled the glade, hundreds of eyes waiting and watching. Archie remembered the nightmare. He remembered what would happen next.

But the creatures did not approach.

Instead, the voice returned, deep and calm and powerful.

“Is it a mistake to desire?”

Archie looked for the voice. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. But it didn’t matter. The voice didn’t have a body, so Archie’s body didn’t need to have a voice. He only needed to think to be heard.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Should humanity remove itself from desire?”

“Why would we?”

The licertes’ tongues flickered with dissatisfaction. They would strike soon.

“Is it not desire that causes strife? Is it not desire that makes you desperate? That gives you these tremendous, aching thoughts? Is it not desire that is responsible for these horrible things that happen to you?”

“Desire has given me everything great, as well.”

“Should humanity remove itself from desire?”

“I don’t think we can.”

The licertes settled, relaxing their scaly, sinewy legs.

“Embrace desire, then. Let it dictate your actions. You have a great need within you, but you also have a hesitance to act for it. You let rules and customs guide you. Don’t. If you see a way to get what you want, take it.”

“You sound like a Glutton.”

“Is it wrong to be a Glutton? Is it a sin to love Ambrosia’s gifts so deeply? To cherish them? No one appreciates her gifts more than a Glutton. Gluttons aren’t demons. They’re angels. Ambrosia’s chosen, hand-picked to receive her blessing in great bounties.”

A panic rose within Archie. He tried to stand, but his muscles refused to listen. The licertes sensed his fear, tasting it, cheating forward to get closer to it. The voice grew angry, a rapturous thunder coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“The sin is believing Ambrosia’s gift is yours to manipulate. To further your own interests through perverted uses of her essence. A Glutton does not seek to do anything but enjoy her gifts as they come. Their consumption is pure. Virtuous. Don’t you want to be an angel, Archie? Come, it’s not too late for you.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A tear rolled down Archie’s paralyzed face. The creatures stepped forward, ripping chunks of flesh off of him and taking him piece by piece back into their tunnels.

“Where’s Sutton?”

If anyone knew what was going on with Archie, it’d be Sutton. Archie thought of the way Sutton had skirted his questions on the elevator. He knew something, and it was time for Archie to know it too.

“Probably the library,” Akando said. “He was up late again last night reading. I heard him muttering to himself about some pamphlet that he needed to get.”

“Thanks.”

Archie looked around the lounge one last time to make sure Sutton wasn’t folded up in some chair. In a rare moment, Julienne was relaxing, his limbs draping over the sides of the sofa chair as if his body had melted onto it. His eyes met Archie’s and slowly rolled away, uncaring.

Better than mad.

Yarrow made up for it with a squinty-eyed stare.

Nori, Blanche, Mindy, and Cress sat around a table playing a game, moving uncooked black beans on a piece of cloth adorned with a giant X and artful depictions of birds with vibrant feathers. It seemed as though they had just started, Cress still explaining the rules. Archie considered getting Nori to come with him.

No, better not. He still had a headache from a rough, nightmare-filled night, but otherwise, he felt fine. He didn’t want her fussing over him.

And so Archie left, walking along the walls of the keep to get to the Ambrosial Archive at the northernmost part of the Crown. He was alone with his thoughts. Until he wasn’t.

“Forgot about me, didja?” a gruff, familiar voice asked.

Archie turned to see Stop Him manning the gate into the keep. Archie sighed.

“Used to be you brought me snacks,” Stop Him growled. “For a while, at least. You haven’t been in the keep in a while. Always see you running off.”

Once upon a time, Archie had trembled in fear of Stop Him, always looking up from the ground at that dangerous spear. But now, the spear didn’t seem so threatening. He was just a man. Not even a Chef. And Archie didn’t have time for him.

“Not now,” Archie barked, pointing a finger that froze Stop Him in his tracks.

Archie almost made it out of earshot before Stop Him started mumbling to himself. Archie paid no mind to the guard’s insignificant complaints.

Whereas the Academy was unassuming on the outside and amazing on the inside, the Ambrosial Archive was extravagant all the way through.

A dozen marble pillars and two massive iron doors welcomed Archie. The top of a massive tree poked out of the glass ceiling, shading the entire building. He stepped into the foyer of the library, a beautifully built entrance with wide marble stairs branching and curling from the center of the room to the upper hallways to form a marble balcony with ornate bronze railing that circled around the edge of the foyer.

Between the entrances to other hallways, alcoves hosted beautiful statues of former royalty and of course, featured front and center above the main staircase, Ambrosia herself.

Tucked away on either side of the staircase, heavy oak doors barred entryway to the staff offices. Archie’s footsteps echoed across the tile floor as he walked over to one of the doors.

He stepped into a stuffy reception room. A woman stood on her tiptoes to be seen behind the stacks of books and loose papers on her desk.

“Hello. Can I help you?”

“Uh—yeah,” Archie said. “I’m looking for Sutton. Sutton…” He searched for a last name and found none. “He’s a Chef. He works here.”

“I know him. He doesn’t spend much time back here in the offices. You can probably find him in the nest. Go to the second floor, up the tree.”

The tree? Archie considered asking the woman to guide him, but she looked busy enough with her stacks of papers.

He went back into the foyer and up the stairs, entering the main library and leaving a world of marble for one of nature. The floor went from tile to wood, softening the echoes and lights that bounced off the ground. The smell of dusty old books filled the air. Sunlight poured in from the massive windows.

Two rows of trees, rising fifty feet to tickle the ceiling, formed the structure of the room. Bookshelves seemed to grow out of one tree and into the other. Above, branches stretched from one row of trees to the other and had been flattened to form a network of walkways and ramps, some up to eight feet wide.

Near the top, a set of branches met in the center, creating a large wooden platform that had been decorated with long, curled sticks to resemble a massive spherical bird’s nest.

Archie couldn’t help but grin like a kid as he stepped up onto a sloped branch walkway that had fused to the wooden floor. Everything seemed connected, branches and trunks and floor and bookshelves. There was a sense of harmony—that walking through this hall meant that you were connected, too. He navigated the maze of branches up, up, up the library until he finally arrived at the nest.

The nest was large enough to host two small circular tables, four chairs, and at this moment, Sutton and his pile of books. His face hovered over a hardback tome the size of his torso. He looked up at Archie, pushing up his glasses.

“Hi Archie.”

“This place is incredible,” Archie said as he sat.

“Yes it is. But the real magic is in the books.” Sutton held up a little pamphlet. “The Legend of Khala’s Grove. It’s an old myth about a grove of trees guarded by yetis.”

“Yetis?” Archie asked. “Those are real?”

“Of course,” Sutton said. He looked down at Archie’s leg. “You should know by now that not all ancient creatures are extinct.”

Archie frowned.

“Anyway,” Sutton continued, “supposedly the wood from this grove has more essence in it than anything in the world.”

He grabbed another pamphlet. ”Labruscan Shipbuilders Society Konst Gestelt. I don’t know what Konst Gestelt means, but I know what this pamphlet is about. It was written seven hundred years ago and outlines a new practice of getting all of their wood by duplicating a single stick.”

Sutton waited for a reaction, but got none. He sighed. “They made a fleet from a stick. The same stick. For dozens of ships. As in a stick with an unimaginable quantity of essence.”

Archie didn’t come to learn about trees. But he decided to entertain Sutton. To loosen him up. “So it’s the same wood as the yeti trees?”

“That’s my theory!” Sutton would have slammed the pamphlet down if he didn’t have such reverence for it. “And notice the language—it’s a stick. Not a tree. Someone took a branch from the yetis and brought it to Labrusca.”

“So…” Archie searched for a question to fake his interest. “What are you…going to do…with that information?”

“I plan to interrogate Barley about it,” Sutton said as he pushed up his glasses. “Although it’s doubtful I’ll be able to procure any information from him. Khalyans are a weird people. They have all sorts of rules about what they can talk about and when and to whom.”

Archie snorted. “Like what?”

“Well, he won’t talk to me about Gluttons.”

“What do you think he knows about Gluttons?”

“I don’t know. But he must know something. There aren’t any Gluttons in Khala.”

Archie no longer had to fake his interest. “Wait, what?”

“Well, there are records of Gluttons. But there are also records of people that used to be Gluttons.”

The thought struck Archie like a cold frost. “Like…they were cured?”

Sutton pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. “That’s what I’d like to find out, but Barley won’t say a word about it.”

“Huh.”

“There’s a lot of research to be done about Gluttony, and it’s never been more important than now.”

“Why’s that?”

Sutton motioned around him, dumbfounded by Archie’s question. “We’ve never had a Glutton ruler. Sure, there’s Grand Queen Crosnee, but she’s been invalid since long before she needed to make any decisions. But soon…it could be ten years, it could be twenty, Ambrosia willing, it’ll be thirty, but soon…We’ll have a Glutton ruler.”

The thought of a Grand King Waldorf made Archie shiver.

“Prince Waldorf is…” Sutton looked around the nest as if a Glutton could ever hide from sight. Still, he whispered, “anti-intellectual. Sometimes, his men come around here, trying to take things. Destroy things. Keep them in the dark.”

Sutton leaned in, speaking faster and faster. As much as he spoke with fear, he also spoke with excitement. “Once he takes power, who knows how much information will be left on Gluttony. That’s why we’re in such a critical time. We need to figure out everything we can about Gluttony today. That’s why I’m trying to get Barley to talk. That’s why I’m always asking about your leg. That’s why I’m trying to figure out Khala’s secret. That’s why—”

A buzzing filled Archie’s ear. “What? My leg?”

“Well, yeah.” Sutton pushed up his glasses and motioned at Archie’s leg as if it were a third party to their conversation. “There isn’t much documentation on the symptoms of licertes attacks, but one common trend is essence disruption. I wanted to see if it affected you differently based on hereditary factors.”

The buzzing grew louder. Archie’s stomach squeezed and contracted as if his body had figured out something awful before his brain could.

“Hereditary factors?”

“Yeah. You know…” Sutton looked away and shrugged. “Because of your grandfather.”

Grandfather?

Archie moved in front of Sutton and studied his face, looking for an answer. “What about him?”

Sutton pushed his tongue into the side of his mouth. He twisted to look away.

“I figured you knew…”

Dread gripped Archie. He leaned in. “What about him, Sutton?”

“Well…he was a Glutton.”