Unknownfate
patreon
Chapter 170
🕑 Added 2025-06-26 13:39:42 +0000 UTCThere was a quiet kind of panic unfolding in the Hôtel de Lys’ kitchen.
It began with the first room service order—polite, concise, and utterly incomprehensible in scale. The sous-chef read it twice before assuming it was a prank. Three full roast chickens, four steak frites, six buttered croissants, two dozen eggs, a pot of coffee large enough to drown in, and something called black pudding, which the night shift had to Google.
The second order followed five minutes later. Larger. Hungrier.
By the third, the head chef was involved, snapping orders and cursing beneath his breath about “those damn oil-princes from the east” and how he’d warned management that the clientele was getting weird.
Upstairs, Arthuria’s suite remained quiet—but only just. Mordred was sprawled across the velvet couch, surrounded by trays of food like a queen of chaos, happily tearing into a pile of crepes while Lancelot sat upright at the small table, eating with the disciplined air of a soldier.
I sat by the window, sipping tea as I waited on yet another order of food. Because yes, Mordred wasn’t even close to done. She kept on ordering, and now that she had pretty much tried the entire menu, she was ready to just order junk food, even if their burgers were quite a bit better than those from a normal burger joint.
Something that probably caused problems from the kitchen, given that Mordred ordered them by the dozen.
So, each time there was a polite knock on the door, Lancelot had to sigh and hand out another stack of cash to tip the poor people who were forced to work very hard this late.
The fourth delivery was assigned to Élise, one of the newer staff.
Barely twenty, working part-time while studying international relations, she hadn’t expected to be carrying two dozen burgers—two dozen—on a silver cart to a suite that had already received enough food for a wedding banquet. The kitchen had double-checked the order. Then triple-checked. The only thing more surreal than the quantity was the room it kept going to.
Suite 1012.
Élise knocked hesitantly, already bracing herself. The door opened, revealing the man she’d come to recognize as the “serious one.” Tall, handsomely grim, sharply dressed even in the early hours.
Élise pushed the cart inside carefully, trying not to stare, failing miserably.
The younger girl—Mordred, she’d overheard the name from the last delivery—was licking syrup off her thumb while scrolling through the room service menu on the tablet like she was still planning another round. Plates were stacked in towers around her, and she didn’t look the least bit winded. Or full. Or even mildly inconvenienced by the human limits of digestion.
Is she hollow? Élise wondered, then immediately felt rude for thinking it.
The older woman—regal, Élise thought instinctively—barely glanced over. She radiated that calm, unbothered power of someone used to ruling rooms and being obeyed without question. Her golden hair shimmered faintly in the lamplight, her pale hands cradling a porcelain teacup like it was a scepter.
Then the girl spoke. “Oh good, more burgers! Did you remember the fries this time?”
“Yes, mademoiselle,” Élise answered automatically, still unsure what reality she had stepped into.
“Great! Just put ‘em down wherever,” Mordred said, waving at the last unoccupied corner of the coffee table.
Lancelot stepped forward again, handing her another envelope. Cash. More than last time. Far more than her shift pay.
“Thank you for your trouble,” he said, voice low and formal.
Élise managed a nod. “Of course, monsieur.”
She backed toward the door like someone leaving a sacred site, trying not to bow or curtsy. Once safely in the hallway, she stood there for a full ten seconds before whispering to herself:
“Okay… I think I just served food to royalty.”
Then she turned and nearly collided with her coworker outside the elevator, who asked, “Was it really that much?”
Élise just held up three fingers, then slowly fanned them out into a wide circle. “Burgers.” she said flatly. “So many burgers.”
-----
Mordred was thankfully too busy and not good enough with French to realize what mademoiselle meant. Which was a blessing, because the staff had enough to deal with as it was.
Still, I had to admit that even if we were ordering food into the early hours of the morning, and the kitchen was supposed to have closed many hours ago, the food was still excellent. Well worth the price we had to pay.
Though a normal person could never have afforded something like this, we pretty much have to bribe the kitchen staff with a full month's worth of wages just to stay the night. And they weren’t cheap.
“Father! Catch!” Mordred shouted and threw a burger wrapped in a napkin my way.
“Mordred! Don’t throw your food.” I said, snatching it out of the air.
“I’m sharing, not throwing!”
Lancelot gave a quiet sigh, returning to his cup of black coffee. He hadn’t touched more than a plate or two all night, and even now, he looked less like a man enjoying a meal and more like a knight enduring a siege.
“You’re going to get sick,” he murmured toward Mordred without looking up.
“Shut up, no one asked you!” Mordred snapped and then ignored him.
I shook my head but couldn’t quite suppress the smile. She was an utter disaster. A loud, feral, stubborn disaster—but she was so much her.
Mordred barely let me finish the one burger, before another sailed through the air. “Really?”
“Hey, I know you like them.”
I sighed. “Just make sure to order in good time, because you know it takes time by now.”
“Yeah, yeah, think I’m gonna get a few more pizzas, before starting on the desserts.” She just said, and finished another burger in record speed.
Eventually, sometime past three in the morning, the feast slowed. Not stopped—Mordred had three slices of pizza stuffed into a napkin for later—but even she was yawning between bites.
“Okay,” I said, setting aside my tea. “That’s enough gluttony for one evening.”
“No such thing,” she mumbled through a mouthful of tiramisu. “This place makes good cake.”
Lancelot stood and began quietly collecting plates, stacking them with military precision despite the mountain of crumbs and sauce-stained napkins. “I’ll call down and let them know we’re finished… for now.”
“Let them rest,” I said gently. “We’ve already paid them more than enough. They earned their sleep.”
Mordred gave an exaggerated groan and flopped back against the couch cushions. “Ugh. I’m gonna die. Death by chocolate. Tell the bards.”
I rose and offered her a hand. “Come. Bed.”
She blinked at me. “Wait… are you serious?”
“You want to sleep on the couch?”
“No, but—” She rubbed her neck and glanced toward the hallway. “It’s weird, Father.”
“Why? Back then, we slept in the same tents all the time, and that was before either of us knew of the connection between us.” I said, remembering back to those days.
Back then, when on campaign we didn’t have much luxury, and often we didn’t have many tents to share, and while I often had my own, I didn't always.
I didn’t like to be above my knights, so I often shared a tent with everyone, and well, it did have its challenges. After all, back then, I hid the fact I was a woman, and Mordred, too, never got out of his armor back then.
That couldn’t have been comfortable.
“I know… but still, it's strange.” Mordred muttered.
“Nonsense, if you can jump into the bath with me, you can share your bed with me, and I won’t hear another word.” I didn’t let her argue.
Mordred huffed like a scolded child, grabbing her napkin-wrapped pizza stash and dragging her boots toward the hallway.
“Fine. But I get the side by the wall.”
“The only side by the wall, is the headend…”
“Exactly.”
“Mordred, be serious.”
“Hey! That’s where the pillows are!” She replied with a smirk.
“So, you just want all the pillows?”
“Yep!”
I chuckled softly and followed. Lancelot, to his credit, didn’t say a word. He just bowed his head slightly and entered his own room, wise enough to know better than to speak up now.
The bedroom was dimly lit, serene, as though it had been waiting for us to stop pretending to be gods and monsters and finally acknowledge we were just tired people.
Mordred flopped face-first onto the bed, starfish-like, pizza bundle tucked under one arm like a teddy bear.
“I swear, if you try to steal my pizza in your sleep, I will bite you.”
“I’m not sure that would stop me,” I replied dryly, pulling back the covers on my side.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “You know, this is kinda weird… but also kinda not. You’re… warmer now. Less like the perfect king on a horse and more like…” She paused, “Something.”
“Something? That’s the best you have?”
“Yeah.”
“I suppose that’s fair.”
We settled in, both lying still for a while, the silence comfortably thick. The city hummed outside the window, but it was a distant thing—muted, almost reverent.
“Hey, Father?” she asked after a beat.
“Yes?”
“If I kick you in my sleep, it’s not personal.”
“Of course. And if I accidentally smother you with a pillow, it’s entirely personal.”
She snorted. “Rude.”
“Goodnight, Mordred.”
“…Night. And… thanks. For all this.”
I turned toward her, though she was already turned away.
“You’re welcome.”
A few minutes passed. Just as I began to drift, her voice murmured again—quieter, this time, barely audible:
“…Blanket thief.”
I smiled into the dark.
“Brat.”
And the night finally settled.
(End of chapter)
