Page 55 of Demon Food

“I said I can’t finish,” I repeated, louder. “I can’t finish it all.”

He chuckled. “I don’t think the intention was for you to finish it all.”

“Then why bring me so much?”

For a moment, he looked genuinely perplexed by that question. “I don’t know. Just in case, I suppose.”

Just in case. They brought me a meal for three adult men just in case.

“What becomes of it if I can’t finish?” I asked, eating a berry. And another.

“How the hell would I know, darling? They probably feed it to the pigs.”

“Pigs,” I breathed, shaking my head. My stomach was already hurting. I’d already over-indulged, but I ate another berry. “It’s for people. It’s people food.”

They’d sent Lennox to his death for stealing a cup of rice, and here they gave all this food to pigs.

“Snow Fox?” Alek asked, his smile faltering. “Are you unwell?”

I swallowed the pool of water collecting in my mouth to blink up at him.

A divot between his eyebrows creased. “What is wrong? You look, um. Pale.”

Death. For rice.

Our whole existence, down to the minute, had to be carefully constructed because if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat, and even if you did work, you still didn’t always eat, and that was because there was never enough.

I wouldn’t let it go to waste. I couldn’t. It wasn’t fair.

I began shoveling the food into my mouth with a fork, but the fork wasn’t fast enough, so I dropped it with a clank to use my hands. I dug my fingers into the quiche, scooping it by the fistful. Followed by more cheese. Followed by a rusk.

I was chewing as fast as I could, but it was difficult to swallow, and it hurt my throat and chest. I couldn’t tell what it was I was choking on, but I was coughing, then swallowing, then shoveling more food into my mouth with trembling fingers, shiny with grease.

“Shit. Hey,” Alek said, hopping from the window nook, but I didn’t stop eating. “Feloré. Perhaps you should slow down⁠—”

I bared my teeth when he touched my shoulder, like a desperate animal who hadn’t had a scrap all winter. Whatever was written on my face was enough for him to concede, his gaze searching mine in silence. Then he wordlessly nodded, and in that moment, we understood each other.

He knew what it was to starve.

I’d not made it halfway through the quiche when my stomach began to really revolt, like it might rip in half. I shoved more of the eggy crust into my mouth, my fingers as soiled as they were shaky.

Then I gagged, stilling, hovering a hand over my mouth.

I gagged again. And again.

My stomach muscles clenched, tightening in panic like they were trying to stop what was coming. There was no fucking stopping it.

My gagging buckled me over in my seat.

I shoved the chair back with a loud screech, launching myself toward the washroom, stumbling into a run. Alek must’ve projected the door open because it flung wide all on its own. I made it to the toilet just in time.

No. No.

It was so much food. Days’ worth of food was wasted, taunting me from where it floated atop the surface of the toilet water. I wanted to scream at myself. At Alek. At the king. At the world at large, but all I could do was continue to throw up until I’d lost every bit of what I’d just eaten.

It was finally over. I tried to spit the taste of vomit from my mouth, but it wasn’t going to happen. So, I sagged against the nearby wall with my knees bent, stomach aching from the upheaval, and head filling with pain.

The only thing that could make it worse was the Prince of Novithia having witnessed it all.