“What?”

Archie’s heart and stomach met somewhere in the middle. The twig walls of the nest became dizzying, seeming to swirl behind Sutton.

“I…you really didn’t know?”

“No. He—no. My dad would—I would know.” Archie’s eyes fluttered a thousand times per minute. His hands drifted through the air as if they could find something that would make it all make sense.

Then they froze. They found something. Everything became very clear to Archie.

“You’re wrong,” he said.

“Archie…”

“No—no. You—you—you have him confused. For someone else. He—he—people hated him. He salted the fields and ruined Sain and people hated him. So they made it up. That he was a Glutton. No—no. He—he wasn’t a Glutton. It’s just a rumor. Gossip.”

“Archie…he was—”

“No. He couldn’t have been. The—he went to the Academy.” Archie’s hand chopped through the air with each sentence. “He was a student of the Academy of Ambrosia. You can’t be a student if you don’t manifest. Gluttons never manifest. Therefore, he couldn’t have been a Glutton.”

“He never manifested…”

“No—what? No. The Academy would have never taken him.”

“Unless…” Sutton shrank away from Archie. “...he was part of one of the most powerful families in Ambrosia.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the nest.

“What do you mean?” Archie’s tone shifted from defensive to aggressive. “That they took him as a student just because of his last name?”

“I mean that…people with his last name made it happen.”

Archie froze. Silent.

“It’s…it’s all well-chronicled,” Sutton muttered. He couldn’t look Archie in the eye.

Archie tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“A History of Influential Families of The Platter. By Sarandon. It’s on the first floor in the dynastic history section.”

Archie stomped out of the nest. He stomped down the stairs, stomped into the foyer, stomped down the stairs, stomped into one of the side halls. Sutton was wrong. There was no book, and if there was, Sutton misread it. A Glutton? His grandfather? No. No.

His finger shook as it brushed the rough, scratchy spines of several books—Royal Lineage of Allards and Flambé Puttick - A Childhood Spent as a Political Prisoner and History of White Jackets by Family.

And there it was.

A History of Influential Families of The Platter.

The pages nearly fell from the spine at his touch, the glue crackling with each turn of the page. Archie’s chest rose and fell violently with heaving, panicked breaths.

The table of contents pointed him to a 22-page section on “the Kent family.” Notable family members were broken out in their own sections, each with a truncated family tree to place them in the lineage.

Archie flipped past the first few generations. Ten generations from the bottom of the family tree, he found the first mention of Sain.

…in protest of King Gerber’s extreme restaurant taxes in Ambrosia City, Fennel Kent moved the entire Kent family, numbering twenty one, to Sain, a fledgling village that had grown due to serving as a crossroads between increasingly cooperative trade partners in Kuutsu Nuna and Khala. He founded Petrichor, the first Chef-led restaurant in Sain…

Archie flipped through a few pages.

…Sain flourished, the undeniable centerpiece being Petrichor…

A few more. The family tree started to thin.

Cardoon Kent, along with his sons, Artichoke Kent and Chicory Kent…slain by Tosami Harper in the Battle of the Three Dunes during the War of Palm Coast, known colloquially at the time as “the War of Urokan Aggression.” Parsley Kent stepped in as matriarch of the family…

Then the family tree collapsed into a single line, leaving only Archie’s great-grandfather and grandfather.

…all perished in Uroko during the Unification War with the exceptions of Artichoke Kent III, who avoided conscription due to his restaurant license, and his son, Artichoke Kent IV, who had been fifteen at the end of the final draft…

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…accepted into The Academy of Ambrosia despite contradictory eye-witness statements of his alleged manifestation during The Festival of Ambrosia…

…later revealed to have been falsifications by Artichoke Kent III, who had used his status as a White Jacket Chef to unduly influence Academy administrators…

…and accounts from Head Chefs at the time described him as “unbearable,” “problematic,” and “more interested in eating than cooking.” While he had not shown any signs of Gluttony prior to entering the Academy, by the time he graduated, his body and temperament had undergone significant changes…

…after the death of his father, Artichoke Kent IV graduated and took over ownership of Petrichor despite having shown no magical inclinations. He partnered with a former classmate, Rowan Knapp, who was placed in charge of Petrichor’s kitchen…

Archie’s finger poked the name, making sure it was real.

Rowan?

…loved by food critics and booked weeks in advance. Despite this, Petrichor faced financial ruin, reportedly due to its owner’s insatiable appetite…

…salted fields in Sain and its outskirts. While he never explained the reason for his crime, it was widely speculated that it was due to jealousy of his partner, Rowan Knapp…

…died of starvation one year into his imprisonment. At the time of this publication, six months after Artichoke Kent IV’s death, his son and last living Kent, Artichoke Kent V, age 20, has left the Academy to run Petrichor despite not advancing beyond the rank of Orange Jacket Chef.

The Kent section ended. Archie shut the book, afraid that he might vomit on its pages. Even as a kid, he had always been aware that his grandfather had been a hated man. But a Glutton?

Archie thought of all the Gluttons he had encountered. The way they took. The way they plagued. He tried to imagine the grandfather that he had never seen, putting his father’s face on Prince Waldorf’s body.

The thought made him look at his own hands in disgust.

He was a Glutton. What if it’s in me? What if I’m becoming a Glutton? And my dad never told me? Wait. Rowan. Rowan was his partner? My dad had to have known—has to know.

“Archie?” Sutton’s voice cut through the cloud of a million questions.

Archie couldn’t look at him. He spoke to the ground. “He didn’t just ruin Petrichor and bring down a whole town with him…he was a Glutton, Sutton. My own grandfather…”

“I’m sorry, Archie. I thought…” Sutton’s voice trailed off.

“Is it hereditary?”

The question froze the air around them. Sutton slid his toe left and right across the ground, looking down, left and right, turning away.

“Is it hereditary?” Archie repeated.

“There’s never been a case of a manifested Chef becoming a Glutton…”

Archie sighed with relief. He was fine. He was a Chef. He would always be a Chef.

“...at least, I haven’t found one.”

The sense of relief left Archie, leaving a vacuous nervousness. “Have you been looking?”

Sutton’s eyes flicked up at Archie and then back at the ground. “Yes. With what happened to you in Pomona’s class…with the—the, uh…It made me curious.”

“And…what happened to me? What was that?”

Sutton rubbed his forehead and twisted around. He did anything to avoid looking at Archie.

“Well, there isn’t enough qualifying information now to make a true classification, but…I was thinking it’s…well, the name I’ve been considering is…a Gluttonous episode.”

Archie stopped breathing. “Episode?”

Finally, Sutton looked up at Archie, speaking in a frenzy, desperate to provide some comfort. “But it just happened one time! It could have just been a freak accident!”

Archie felt dizzy. An intense pressure filled his head, expanding like a balloon and leaving no room to think. “But it…it happened again. Yesterday.”

“Oh.”

“I need to—” Archie looked around. In this little dusty corner of the library away from the marble foyer or the space of the main section or the serenity provided by the trees, Archie was trapped. The columns of the bookcases were the bars of his prison, the low ceiling squeezing him flat. “I need to go.”

Whatever Sutton said next, Archie didn’t hear. If Stop Him tried to stop him, he didn’t notice. If anyone called out to him as he marched through the great hall or the lower lounge, he didn’t respond. He arrived at his room with a singular purpose, whipping open his dresser drawer and snatching the stack of letters.

He skimmed through the beginnings and ends of the letters, tossing them onto the ground once he was done with them.

There was the one he had received last week, his father’s telltale chicken scratch handwriting giving away its author.

We found a new supplier, a Kuutsan that runs a farm and pasture near the border. As expected from a Kuutsan, the meat is top-notch, but I have concerns about the produce…

The letter swerved back and forth through the air as Archie moved on to the next letter.

I don’t think you’re wasting your time on blueberries. Never underestimate the simple ingredients that bring people joy. It’s like your water (which is still flowing, by the way). It’s simple, but it still brings crowds even after all of these months. Your mother and I can barely keep up. We sell out every day. We’ll need to find a new supplier. And let us know if you want us to come up to the city for Winter’s Blossom or if you’ll be coming back home. We could certainly use the help…

Archie tossed it. The next one was written with curling, elegant loops.

We heard about your leg. Are you…

He tossed it. Then the next one. Then the next one. Finally, he found it. Sandwiched between his father’s updates about Petrichor and his mother’s constant worrying and missing of her son, he found it.

Don’t go so long without writing us! Headmaster Aubergine told us all about your apprenticeship.

…all about your apprenticeship…

Archie’s father knew. He knew.

He knew Archie was sponsored by Rowan Knapp.

He knew Rowan Knapp.

He knew that Archie’s grandfather had been a Glutton.

He knew. And he said nothing.

The letter seemed soaked in betrayal.

Archie threw the letter to the ground and stomped on it. He scooped the papers up just to tear them in half and throw them down again.

“Archie?” Nori asked from the doorway. “You stormed through the lounge. I was calling for you.”

She took a step into the room, looking at the scattered fragments of paper. “What happened?”

Archie’s blood boiled. He clenched his fists. Grinded his teeth. His father wasn’t around to answer for his lies. But someone else was. “We’re going to The Gift.”

“Right now?”

“I’ll fill you in on the way.”

Archie stomped on his parents’ letters on his way out the door.