sauce. Sweet…sour…tangy…strange were the words that came to mind.
Not great.
Determined to try again, Alli picked up the new fork which had appeared by her plate and stabbed one of the purple chunks. She nibbled it carefully, not sure what to expect.
The purple chunk had a flavor rather like cooked sweet potato but the chewy texture of tough steak. It was edible, but only just barely. Alli ate it because she was so hungry and then tried one of the pink chunks. This one had the texture of a cooked carrot—which was okay—but the flavor of a half-sour pickle mixed with blackberries, which wasn’t so great.
She ate a few more of the rubbery steak-textured, sweet potato-flavored chunks and then gave up on the stew.
“Please take this away and give me, uh…” She scanned the Dessert listings. Well, the U’ka-tok was definitely out—she had no interest in eating tentacles and antennae, no matter how buttery the pastry they were wrapped in was.
“Give me some of the blib-blabs,” Alli said. They sounded like some kind of fruit, which was nice—she hoped, anyway.
At once the soup bowl and spoon disappeared to be replaced by a magnificent silver ewer filled with a perfectly arranged pyramid of grape-sized fruit. They were round and seemed to glow slightly with a yellow light from within. Their pale, silky golden skins were covered in sparkling crystals of what looked like light purple sugar.
“Okay now—this looks pretty good,” Alli murmured to herself hopefully. Maybe for once she would like what she had ordered.
She picked up one of the glowing fruits and touched her tongue to the pale purple crystals that encrusted its outer skin. The flavor reminded her of candied violets—which happened to be a taste she liked very much.
“Mmm!” Alli murmured to herself. “Finally—something good!”
She popped the whole fruit in her mouth and bit down, expecting the juicy sweet gush of a ripe grape covered in crunchy sugar crystals.
She got the sugar crystals all right, and the juicy gush as well—but it wasn’t sweet.
“Ugh!” Alli moaned as she chewed. “This tastes like…like turkey gravy.” She spit it into a napkin and balled it up. “Who ever heard of grapes that taste like gravy?” she muttered to herself. “Gross.”
Looking at the menu again, she said, “Give me a glass of golden wine.”
It was the plainest name under the Drinks section and she was hoping for something to get the gravy-grape-candied-violets taste out of her mouth.
She was expecting a white wine—maybe a champagne. Instead, the crystal goblet was suddenly filled with a liquid that looked exactly like melted gold. So much so, in fact, that Alli touched her fingers to the side of the crystal carefully to make sure it wasn’t boiling hot.
The liquid gold appeared to be chilled, however, so she lifted the goblet and took a tiny sip.
The golden wine tasted a lot like melted cinnamon sticks, Alli decided, rolling the rather thick liquid around on her tongue. It wasn’t too sweet and it didn’t really taste like wine at all, but the beverage was silky on her tongue and didn’t taste too strange or spicy or weird to enjoy. She drank half the glass and was about to look at the menu again when a deep voice said,
“I trust you’re enjoying yourself, Allisandra.”
Fourteen
Alli gasped and dropped the goblet of golden wine from a suddenly nerveless hand.
Moving too fast for her to see, Kane caught it in midair before it could spill a single drop. He returned it nonchalantly to the table as though his incredibly fast reflexes were of no account. Then he fixed his mirrored gaze on Alli and frowned.
“I hope you’ve had your fill,” he said. “Because it’s time for your first Stinging.”
“My…my first what?” Alli’s heart was pounding. “What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see. Come.” He held out a hand to her.
Though every instinct she had told Alli to run, she found she was taking his offered hand instead and letting the big Kru’ell One lead her from the rooms he had designated as hers.
They walked down the long, dimly lit corridor again until they reached the room she remembered from her dreams—the Hall of Shadows.
Alli looked around fearfully, her heart beating in her throat as he led her to a new piece of equipment. It was a large black metal structure shaped like an X and there were manacles at all four corners. There was also a kind of padded bench below it, which was obviously meant to be knelt on.
“That’s right,” Kane said,