Chapter 177: Spilling the Tea

At the royal breakfast table, laid out beneath tall windows with morning light pooling gold across silver platters and steaming pastries, Vuvi snorts the instant she steps into the room. Pip immediately finds the marble floor endlessly fascinating, gaze dropping and staying there.

The table itself bucks under the weight of it all. Towers of fruit, warm bread still steaming from the oven, spiced sausages, and a dozen unfamiliar dwarven dishes nobody’s quite brave enough to ask about yet.

Everyone else is already seated, tucking in, sunlight glinting off polished silverware.

Everyone except Veena, who sits rigid at the table wearing a considerably smaller, far more dignified gas mask than her usual rig, arms crossed tight, looking like someone personally stole her plate right out from under her.

Vuvi chuckles softly, sliding into her own seat. "You’re going overboard. You don’t have to wear it all the time."

Veena unclips the mask with a hiss of escaping steam and scowls hard at her. "I thought that too. Last night." Her face flushes deep red, gaze sliding away entirely. "That menace of a construct... I don’t appreciate having my sleep disturbed."

Vuvi laughs, reaching over to slap Pip’s shoulder. "Sounds like you two weren’t exactly relaxing in that bath for hours."

She glances around the table, scanning faces. "Where’s Sera, anyway?"

A round of shrugs answers her. Nobody’s seen her yet.

Vuvi turns to Pip, one eyebrow raised skeptically. "You’re sure she’s still alive? Genuinely alive, not just, you know, technically."

Pip’s shoulders sag visibly, and he gives her a distinctly unimpressed, deadpan boop.

"I’m sure she’ll turn up," Vuvi says, already reaching for a second pastry. "She wouldn’t miss a good breakfast spread for anything in this world."

The table settles into easy conversation, Vexena’s generals trading stories with the team, Vuvi gushing at length about the sheer scale of the forges beneath the city to anyone who’ll listen, hands sketching the shape of the great furnace in the air between bites. "You have not lived," she tells a politely nodding Bilorial, "until you’ve felt heat like that roll off a wall of molten ore."

"I believe you," Bilorial says, buttering a roll with the calm of a man who has learned exactly how much enthusiasm this conversation requires and is delivering precisely that amount.

The doors bang open. Sera strides through, grinning ear to ear, an obvious spring in her step. She makes it halfway to the table before spotting Veena, and her chest heaves as a full belly-laugh starts building, right up until Veena fixes her with a glare cold enough to freeze a bonfire. Sera swallows the laugh whole, clears her throat, and offers the table a perfectly pleasant good morning instead.

She drops into the seat beside Vuvi and immediately starts piling her plate high.

"You’re looking suspiciously fantastic," Vuvi says. "I expected at least a limp."

Sera smirks, a smear of pastry cream already sliding down her chin. "The Dwarven healers in this palace are fantastic. And very discreet." She pauses, considering. "And surprisingly strong hands, for people that short."

Lula groans from across the table, rubbing at her own lower back. "I wish I’d known that. Penelo’s healing isn’t cutting it anymore."

Penelo gasps, scandalized. "If that’s how it is, no more thigh rubs, either."

"No! Wait! Please," Lula begs immediately. "Not the thigh rubs. I genuinely cannot function without those."

Penelo crosses her arms, considering, tapping one finger against her chin with exaggerated deliberation. "I’ll think about it. Maybe. Depends how nicely you ask next time."

"I will ask so nicely," Lula says, entirely serious. "I will write you a poem."

Raikya snorts a laugh from her own seat. "I can’t wait to get back to the Pleasure Palace, honestly. Working there might be the craziest, most satisfying thing I’ve ever done in my life." She glances around the table, a little softer now, ears drooping slightly. "Thank you all again, for dragging me along on this. It’s been an honor being part of the family."

"You say that," Sera says around a full mouthful of sausage, "like we ever gave you a real choice. Frostlick made that decision for you weeks ago."

Raikya scowls, though there’s no real heat in it. "Frostlick has excellent judgment. Better than mine, apparently."

"Better than most of ours," Zora agrees, floating in from somewhere near the ceiling to snag a grape off a passing tray. "I, for one, was recruited via interpretive dance and a strongly worded ultimatum."

"That’s not what happened," Vuvi says.

"It’s exactly what happened. I simply remember it more dramatically than you do."

At the head of the table, Kathoril watches the whole exchange with a hand pressed to her own heart, visibly moved. "It truly lifts my spirit," she says, "watching all of you work so hard to heal this world. The Great Mother has blessed you all, without question."

Maribelle sighs, proud. "I was genuinely worried about this one for a while." She nods toward Vuvi. "Spent every waking hour down in that basement building pleasure devices and gods know what else. The sounds coming out of there." She shudders theatrically, setting down her fork like the memory alone has ruined her appetite. "There was clanking. And the moaning. At three in the morning. For weeks."

"Machinery makes noise, Mother," Vuvi mutters into her cup. "That’s simply how engineering works."

"Nothing that clanks like that is purely engineering, dear."

"That was legitimate scientific research!" Vuvi snaps, flushing hard.

"A vibrating stool with six tentacles," Maribelle says flatly, "is not research."

The whole table dissolves into snickering. Vuvi, boiling with embarrassment, shoves a sticky bun into her own mouth just to smother the scream building behind her teeth.

Vexena sighs, watching it all with something like approval. "At least her girl shows some initiative." She glances toward Veena. "Mine seemed perfectly content to let life pass her by, until she met Vuvela and her construct." She bows her head toward Vuvi with a warm, appreciative smile. "Thank you for giving my daughter a purpose."

Veena groans, sinking lower in her chair, guzzling her juice like it might save her.

"I only hope," Vexena adds, entirely too casual, "that Vuvela can help Veena get properly seen to, as well. Twenty years old, and she’s never once been touched. It’s a tragedy."

Veena spits her juice clean across the table, catching Raenly square in the face. He blinks once, coughs, and says mildly, "I generally prefer mine from a glass, thank you."

The whole table erupts into laughter as Veena buries her face in both hands, apologizing over and over into her own palms, ears burning bright red beneath her horns while Raenly, calmly wipes his face with a napkin and reaches for more sausage like nothing at all has happened.