Page bumped her hip against the barricade blocking her way towards the dining hall, swinging it open. Her hands bore the fruit of her labor—a nice holiday meal for a table of four. She strode past her patrons, both new and the usual ones, her polished boots thudding against sturdy wooden boards. Outside the window, snow fell in a lazy drizzle, carpeting the ground with a white haze. Warmth had dropped out from the air, forcing her to work on the fireplace earlier. Lights hung from trees, illuminating the street beyond the tavern.

She reached the designated table and unloaded her tray. Dish after dish went in front of the family, their two children grinning wide and expecting the food. As they should. After all the work she put into them, they deserved to be praised.

"The Enchantress is on the house again!" A drunk man called from the opposite table, lips pulled apart in a half-witted smile. "Give it up for our heavenly goddess, working through the holidays!"

A cheer rose from the entire crowd, driving heat up Page's cheeks. "Please, enjoy yourselves. I'm no cause for celebration," she said, waving a hand in the vague direction of the table to get them to pipe down. "I'll be in the kitchen. Holler if you want something."

She leveled her gaze on the table where the hunters usually flocked. "Make sure they are on the menu," she added. A groan rose from the others, mostly the left side of the tavern before light chuckles joined them. Fighting a smile on her own lips, she strode back to the kitchen, tying her apron tighter.

It has been a year since she lost her job as a cook in the Marren Manor. It was also that long since she found the grimoire that took her life into this dizzying marathon. As soon as she found out they were recipes, she leaped up and tried making one dish. It was a strange stew with orange sauce, but when she shared it with the farmer who delivers eggs to the village, she got a reaction opposed to what she usually got at work.

Soon, neighbors and people she hadn't seen in the village before dropped by whenever she cooked something. They claimed she lured them by the smell wafting from her chimney, but she doubted it. Those people were probably after free food.

A month later, she packed up and purchased a place in the capital. Not even a week later, all her expenses in getting the tavern ready had already returned. A full year later, even the Duke of Marren dropped by, flanked to the nines with armored guards. By popular demand, he was there to give her food a taste. He didn't balk at the notion of eating food from a strange woman from nowhere. When he left, he didn't order Page's arrest either. So, that was enough of a win for her.

Business was booming, and it was all thanks to the grimoire propped open on the eye-level shelves of the kitchen, invisible to everyone save from her. She tried cooking without its recipes, and even she realized how bad she was at the whole thing. Now, she was on the list of prospective cooks to serve the King's castle for the annual, year-end feast. Everyone started calling her "The Enchantress" as an inside joke of how charmed they were into coming here and eating her food. She always tried to downplay it—it was a mouthful and far too flattering—but it stuck.

A yell from the dining hall requesting more pudding jarred her into action. She fetched the next plate in the batch prepared on the table and hurried over. "I'll add it to your tab," she said to one of her regulars. He loved the pudding to a degree he practically worshiped it. "Think you can pay at the end of the week?"

The man nodded, his mouth already bursting with the pudding. "I'll have it ready tomorrow."

Not that Page was counting. She was once in his shoes, scrambling around to get her next meal. When she opened the tavern, she had been exposed to the reality of how many others were like her. The least she could do was to be of some help to them.

"...thing by the forest, it's huge. Almost like a bear, but not quite." A sliver of chatter made it into Page's ears. "I've never seen it, but it's all that's circulating in the hunting guilds. I tell you—the dark forces are converging in the capital. It's only a matter of time before it overtakes us."

"Can't have been that huge," another added. "Otherwise, the marshals would've seen it."

"It's a proper monster, alright," the originator of the tale replied. "Pray you won't see it on your next tracking. The guilds say that once it latches onto its prey, it never lets go. If it gets you, you're dead."

Page rolled her eyes and retreated back to the kitchen. Let them speculate all they wanted. Monsters in forests. She would never encounter that, so what was the use of caring? Besides, she has another batch of the main course to prepare. The dinner crowd would be coming as soon as the meager sunlight outside the window dipped into a darker shade. Not much time to waste.