Archie measured time by how long he knew each meal to make. One meal, two meals, three meals, six. Or was it five? Everything had gotten muddled after he had burned some garlic and Prince Waldorf had thrown him around the room again as punishment. His head hummed and ached and he had trouble keeping things straight. The walls warped and molded around Archie, his body moving in strange ways, the concept of time itself fading from his mind.

  The door swung open. Chrysanth set down a bag of rice and the jar with the last supercharged noodle. He didn’t dare to say anything, but his confident nod told Archie of his success.

  “Wait!” Prince Waldorf shouted before Archie could grab the ingredients. The Glutton pulled Chrysanth out of the room so that he could fit, plunging a hand into the bag of rice. He sifted through it and upon finding nothing, turned his focus to the jar. “So much…essence.”

  He licked his lips and started to work the lid open.

  “I need all of it,” Archie blurted out. If Prince Waldorf ate the noodle, it was all over. “I eat it while I cook. I multiply its essence. That’s how I was able to do it. You’ll get much more essence out of me cooking with it than by eating it.”

  Prince Waldorf laughed at Archie’s desperation. “Very well then. How long will it take?”

  “Um…what time is it?”

  Prince Waldorf stomped forward and slammed a palm into Archie’s side, sending him into the counter. Chrysanth jumped at the sudden violence.

  “What does it matter what time it is?! You cook!”

  Archie coughed up blood. “I need…It takes a long time. I’ll need to sleep.”

  Really, he needed to know when the Glutton would be gone so that he could pace the cooking accordingly.

  “It’s morning,” Chrysanth said from the other room.

  Prince Waldorf wheeled around, a giant club of a fist raised high. Even clad in leather armor, Chrysanth would be unlikely to survive an overhead strike. “Who told you to speak?! Out!”

  Chrysanth bowed—only as low as he could without losing sight of a potential strike—and departed. Prince Waldorf turned back to Archie with a renewed rage.

  “If I catch you sleeping, I’ll replace you with the Harper.”

  “It’ll take me the day. I’ll be done by midnight.”

  Prince Waldorf growled. “Remember what’s at stake.”

  As if Archie could forget. Prince Waldorf slammed the door on his way out.

  Archie eyed the ingredients. This was it. The forbidden meal had gotten him into this mess. Now it could get him out. If he could make it.

  He considered when to start. Sometimes it had taken Nori four or five hours. Sometimes it had taken her days. With only a pound of rice to cook, Archie figured he could do it by nightfall, even though it was his first time. He could go slowly. He didn’t want to finish before Prince Waldorf left for Cafe Julienne, but he had to be done before Prince Waldorf returned. He had to be gone by then. He hoped Chrysanth would come. Archie had to assume he would. It was the only path to survival.

  Archie decided to start cooking while he still had his wits about him. It had been a day—maybe more—since he slept, and he knew the rice would drain him. First, he’d need to roast it.

  He poured the rice into the warm pot, but the grains didn’t sizzle or pop. He heard Nori’s voice.

  It won’t cook until you cook it.

  He took a deep breath and lowered the wooden spatula into the pot. He let it hover just above the rice, afraid to plunge it down that last inch. He thought back to his failures. Pomona’s class with the lemon curds. Cafe Julienne with the torrone. The final exams with the risotto. And that had been regular rice, not the kind that sucks out all of your essence. Each time he failed, it had started with a single errant thought. A thread of insanity pulled from the fabric of his mind, unraveling it. Once it started, the rot was inevitable.

  He took a deep breath, fortifying his resolve as well as his hand, loading it up with a rigid essence that might hold steady against the draining rice.

  And then he lowered his spatula into the rice and stirred.

  A tingling numbness went up his finger. It took over his hand. He lost all feeling below the elbow. He dropped the spatula, having failed to complete even two full revolutions around the pot. He had made more food in the last day than any day before it, leaving his reserves depleted.

  He eyed the supercharged noodle. The essence hummed, vibrating something within Archie. He popped open the lid, the reverberations intensifying. Like a flame near frostbitten fingers, the essence of the noodle inflicted Archie’s hand with a burning rejuvenation.

  Even just holding the square noodle made his hand tingle with energy. A deep, desperate voice within him wanted to eat the entire noodle in one bite. Even though he knew he should take it in parts, as he lifted it to his mouth, he felt his inhibitions slipping away. After all, it was meant to be eaten. Why shouldn’t he eat it all at once?

  He snapped out of it with a shake of the head and set the noodle down on the counter. Not trusting himself to nibble from it, he cut off a thin slice and ate that instead. The moment he chewed, essence filled him to the brim. He didn’t just feel rejuvenated. He felt more powerful than ever. His head buzzed not with dizzying pain but with heightened function. He rode the wave of energy, grabbing the spatula and stirring the rice.

  Archie felt the rice steal his essence, but he had plenty to spare. He tried to slow it down. He remembered his previous experience roasting the rice—at least he had gotten that far. He visualized a hundred dams along his arm, closing them all enough to allow just a sliver of stream through. The rice pulled and pulled, demanding more, but Archie put all of his knowledge and might into resisting.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He chewed and chewed and minutes passed and the rice started to turn translucent. Despite having reserves of essence, the act of draining started to wear him down. His arm ached until he switched the spatula into his other hand. He didn’t have as much essence control through his left arm, but at least he managed to avoid the agonizing sensation for a few minutes—and a few minutes was all it was before that arm started to ache too.

  He swallowed the piece of noodle, prompting a splash of essence that refilled him. He stirred and stirred and stirred and only let himself think about the stirring. But then his essence started to run out. His head started to hurt again. The blisters in his feet screamed at him. The bruise that covered his entire thigh pulsed. The cut in his finger started to leak again.

  And the fear returned.

  What if Chrysanth can’t make it? What if we get caught on our way out? What if Prince Waldorf comes back early? What if he doesn’t forget?

  Archie tried to focus on the task at hand. But there were fears to be had there as well.

  What if I have an episode? I’m scared. That’s bad. That’s bad. It’s gonna happen again. It’s gonna happen.

  He let go of the spatula and stepped away from the stove. He couldn’t risk it. He only had one chance. One screw up and a lot more people would hurt than just him. He needed to take a break. Regain his composure. Then he could continue.

  But what would happen if Prince Waldorf walked in right now?

  He needed to look busy. He pulled the spatula from the pot. A little clump of rice stuck to the spatula, sucking out Archie’s essence through the wood. He rushed to grab a fork and scraped the spatula clean.

  His stomach growled. He hadn’t dared to even perform taste tests while cooking for Prince Waldorf. The Glutton would know. He would think of it as stealing. It didn’t matter if it defied reason. He would know. But now, Archie had to eat. He had never been so hungry in his life. It gnawed away at his insides.

  Archie picked up the chain so that it wouldn’t drag across the floor as he made his way to the pantry. He couldn’t have the noise attracting the Glutton’s attention. Archie grabbed a handful of dried apricots that filled him with bliss as he chewed through them three at a time. A hangover started to rage like a tempest in his head, undoubtedly a side effect of the supercharged noodle. But the food brought Archie back to life.

  He grabbed a piece of bread, not caring about its staleness, and stuffed his face. He opened the refrigerator and found a carrot—oh, how he hated carrots—and chomped into it raw. He picked off grapes one at a time, then a handful at a time, then picked up the whole bunch and chewed through the stems.

  And then he realized.

  This wasn’t natural.

  He dropped the grapes on the ground and staggered back out of the pantry. He sank to the ground. He wasn’t afraid of Prince Waldorf walking in. He was more afraid of himself.

  He needed to rest. It had been so long since he slept…If only he could shut his eyes…for just a moment…

  He jerked and woke up. He didn’t know how long it had been. It could have been seconds. Minutes. Hours. He was still alive, so he hadn’t been caught. But then he realized the true mistake of sleeping.

  He no longer knew how long he had to cook.

  He jumped up, sliced off a piece of noodle, popped it in his mouth, and stirred the rice. In his haste, he was inefficient, twice as much essence draining from him as needed. He tried to focus. To staunch the flow. But he needed to hurry.

  He warmed up the broth and ladled it into the rice along with some wine. The rice pulled, pulled, pulled his life force away. It would take all of him if he let it. It’d suck him up until there was nothing left. Kulkida risotto with bits of Archie Kent.

  His desperation kept him sharp. He sliced off another piece of noodle and chewed on it as he stirred. He swelled with life and death simultaneously, both filled to the brim and battling a deep emptiness. He chewed harder on the noodle, but that only served to sharpen the two extremes.

  He stirred and stirred and stirred. The rice grew thick with essence. Teeming with it. Eventually, it had more essence in it than Archie. He could taste the essence through his spatula. Perhaps he could eat the risotto. He could eat all of it. Then he would have all the essence he could ever need. He scooped some up.

  The spatula made it all the way to his chin before he realized what he was doing. He threw the spatula into the pot and held his head in his hands.

  He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t. He wasn’t even a quarter done. If he could barely resist this, how could he resist the essence when it doubled? When it tripled? How did Nori do it?

  How did Nori do it?

  Her voice rang in his head.

  As long as we have each other, we’ll be okay.

  Maybe that was it. It wasn’t only about the consequence. Nori wasn’t just fighting to stay away from her parents. She was fighting to stay with Archie. It wasn’t the negatives that gave her strength. It was the positives.

  He imagined her next to him, clear as day. Her shiny black hair. Her pouty lips. The little freckles around her nose that you could only see if you really stopped to look for them.

  “You don’t have time to stop,” she said. “Come on, you can do it. You’re okay.”

  He found the part of him that believed her and let it dominate his mind. He was okay. He was okay. He started stirring.

  “There you go.”

  “Remember the motion,” Akando said, appearing next to Archie and mimicking his stirring. “Takuskanskan. The spirit of motion.”

  Archie focused on the movement of the spatula. Once around, twice around, thrice. Archie poured in more broth for the rice to absorb.

  “The recipe says that the level of liquid should not exceed the rice,” Sutton chastised him. When Archie looked up, Barley was there too, smiling and nodding in his comforting silence.

  “You may have me beat in conjuration,” Julienne said. “But you’ll never beat me at cooking. Want me to take over?”

  “No,” Archie said. “I got it.”

  “Yeah you do!” Blanche cheered. “Ugh, I could never do something like this. Hours in the kitchen? No thanks.”

  “Yeah, the orchard is so much better,” Benedict said. “Right, Blanche?”

  Archie lifted the entire noodle to his mouth and took a small, controlled bite.

  “So…are you going to share when you’re done?” Cress asked.

  “As if Prince Piggy would let him,” Oliver laughed. Hyssop and Juniper laughed with him.

  “Look!” Mindy said. “It’s really cooking now. It looks good.”

  “It looks alright,” Yarrow countered.

  “Shove it, Yarrow,” Nori hissed. She smiled at Archie. “It looks great.”

  Archie stirred and stirred and stirred. They watched him for a while, crowding the little kitchen. Then they faded away. The room faded away. His pain faded away. A final pair of voices urged him on.

  “That’s it. Oh, look at my Archie go.”

  “I always knew you had it in you. When you come home, we’ll cook together.”

  And then it was just Archie and the rice and the motion. Whatever loose concept of time that remained in that dungeon of a kitchen disappeared.

  Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir.

  He scooped up a handful of floral dust and sprinkled it into the pot.

  Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir.

  The door opened.

  Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir Stir.

  Someone called his name.

  Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir.

  Footsteps approached.

  Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir. Stir.

  A gloved hand grabbed his shoulder, yanking him back from the pot. The world came back in a flash.

  “Archie!” Chrysanth half-whispered, half-yelled. He jingled the keyring. “Let’s go!”

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