"Out of my way."
"No."
"The reduction will break if nobody monitors the..."
I pick her up.
Not romantically. Not gently. I hook one arm under her knees and the other behind her back and I carry her to the industrial sink at the far wall like she's a sack of the root vegetables she's so damned precious about. She kicks. Her heel catches my hip bone hard enough to leave a bruise.
"Put me down, you absolute..."
I put her down beside the sink, grab the faucet handle, and crank it to cold. The water sputters, then runs clear. I guide her hand under the stream.
She hisses. A sharp, involuntary intake of breath through clenched teeth. Her whole body goes rigid, then slowly, slowly, the tension drains out of her shoulders as the cold water does its work.
"Hold it there. Ten minutes."
"The reduction."
"I'll observe the reduction."
"You'll burn it."
"I will not burn it."
"You'll add more broth."
"I won't touch the broth."
"You'll crank the heat because you have the patience of a toddler and the impulse control of a..."
"Solene."
She stops.
"Let me take care of the food. You take care of your hand. The hand you just destroyed. For my foot."
Water streams over her blistered palm. Pink rivulets spiral down the drain. She gazes at them with that intense, analytical focus she gives everything. Cataloguing the damage. Assessing recovery time. Calculating how many days until she can hold a knife again.
The answer settles between us like a stone dropping into still water.
Weeks.
Her dominant hand. Her knife hand. Her plating hand. The hand that holds tweezers with surgical precision, that juliennes a carrot into threads so fine they dissolve on the tongue, that pipes buttercream roses onto cakes for the cafe's display case every single morning before dawn.
The festival is in twelve days.
"Don't," she says, still staring at the water.
"Don't what?"
"Whatever you're about to say. The apology. The guilt. The noble orc-honor speech about debt and repayment. Don't."
"I was going to say you have a stupid grip."
Her head snaps toward me. Green eyes blazing. The corner of her mouth twitches.
"Excuse me?"