My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!-Chapter 259: The Price of Joy

Aldric’s hand caught her wrist mid-swing. The impact jarred through her arm, disrupting the Blade’s grip. It clattered to the counter, scarlet light still pulsing from its edge like a heartbeat.

The joy vanished.

Marron fell to her knees. Her hand was shaking—no, her whole body was shaking. The kitchen floor was cold against her palms. When had she started breathing so hard?

She’d been about to kill Lucy.

Her companion. Her friend. The slime who’d stayed with her through everything, who’d glowed comfort in dark moments, who’d helped wash dishes and clean pots and never asked for anything more than a clean jar and occasional scraps of food.

And she’d been smiling.

"Get it away from me," Marron whispered. The words came out broken, each one a struggle. "Get it away, get it away, GET IT AWAY—"

Aldric was already moving. He wrapped the Blade in a kitchen cloth, then another, layers of fabric to contain the glow. Marcus rushed in from the hallway, his cane clattering against the stone floor.

"What happened—"

"Locked drawer," Aldric said tersely. "Now."

But even wrapped in cloth, even being carried away across the kitchen, Marron could still feel it. The joy. The pull. The Blade’s desperate longing for its sibling.

And beneath that, like a drumbeat getting louder with every pulse:

Coming closer. Coming closer. Coming closer.

The certainty of it was terrifying. Not miles away. Not days away. Close. Very close. And getting closer every moment.

Lucy’s jar had shattered on the floor. The blue slime was pressed against the wall, as far from Marron as she could get. Her glow was dim—almost gray—with terror. She’d seen Marron’s eyes. She’d seen what was behind them.

That smile.

Marron reached out, her hand trembling. "Lucy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I wasn’t—"

Lucy contracted away from her hand. Tendrils pulling in tight, making herself as small as possible. The rejection was absolute.

The betrayal in that gesture was worse than any punishment the Council could devise.

Marcus had opened a drawer near the pantry—reinforced oak with an iron lock. Aldric placed the wrapped Blade inside and turned the key. The scarlet glow still seeped through the wood, faint but visible.

"What was that?" Marcus’s voice was shaking. "What just happened?"

"The Slicer." Marron’s voice sounded hollow in her own ears. "It’s not sealed anymore. Someone has it. Someone’s carrying it. And it’s—" She pressed her hands to her face. "It’s coming here."

Aldric knelt beside her, careful not to touch. "How close?"

"I don’t know. Hours? Days? But close. The Blade can feel it. And when it does..." She looked at the locked drawer, at the scarlet light pulsing through the wood like a wound. "I couldn’t stop myself, Aldric. I was in my own head, watching my body move, and I couldn’t stop it."

She turned to look at Lucy, still pressed against the wall. Still afraid.

"I almost killed her. And I was happy about it."

The kitchen fell silent except for the soft hum of the Fermentation Crock, which had continued its work throughout the crisis, oblivious to the horror it had helped catalyze.

Six tools. Six siblings recognizing each other across the room.

And somewhere to the east, a seventh sibling answering their call.

Marcus sank into a chair, his face pale. "We need to tell Edmund. Immediately. If the Perfection Slicer is active, if someone’s carrying it—"

"He’ll confiscate all the tools." Marron’s voice was flat. "He’ll lock them away. And he’ll—" She swallowed hard. "He’ll lock me away too. Or worse."

"Marron—"

"He documented seventeen cases of corruption, Marcus. Seventeen wielders who couldn’t resist their tools. And I just—" Her voice broke. "I just proved I’m the eighteenth."

Aldric stood, his expression grim. "We report this. We follow protocol. Edmund needs to know there’s an active Slicer wielder heading toward Lumeria."

"And what happens to Marron?" Marcus asked quietly.

Aldric didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. They all knew what Edmund would do if he learned that Marron had lost control, that the Blade had overridden her will, that she’d been seconds away from killing her companion.

The same thing he’d wanted to do from the beginning: remove the threat.

Marron looked at the locked drawer. At Lucy’s dim, terrified glow. At her own hands, which had been so eager to cut.

"I need to find them," she said. "Whoever has the Slicer. I need to stop them before they get any closer."

"You can’t," Aldric said. "Marron, you just lost control. If you go near that thing—"

"Then I lose control again. I know." She forced herself to stand, her legs unsteady. "But if I stay here, if I wait for them to come to me, it’ll happen anyway. At least if I’m moving, if I’m trying to stop them, there’s a chance I can—"

Can what? Control herself? The Blade hadn’t given her a choice. When the joy flooded through, when the connection to its sibling blazed bright enough, her own will meant nothing.

"There has to be a way," she whispered. "There has to be something I can do. Something that doesn’t end with Edmund locking away the tools and me in a cell somewhere."

Or dead. He could just as easily order her killed. It would be safer. Cleaner.

She thought of Theo, Aldric’s friend. The patissier who’d broken from seeking perfection. Who sat now in a rest home, unable to function, destroyed by his own obsessive pursuit.

At least Theo had broken himself. Marron was being broken by something outside her control.

No. Not outside her control. She’d chosen this. She’d chosen to keep the Blade. She’d chosen to work with the Crock. She’d chosen to gather the tools together despite knowing the risks.

This was her responsibility.

The Blade pulsed once more in its locked drawer. Scarlet light flared bright enough to paint shadows on the opposite wall.

And in Marron’s chest, something answered. Not joy this time. Something colder. Something that felt like recognition.

The Slicer knew she was here.

And it was coming.