Under the Table

Lucius POV

This was bad.

Not just bad. Catastrophically bad.

The steak was. Something.

I had spent years in difficult situations. Battle. Venom. Sleepwalking toward certain death. My mother's company.

None of it had prepared me for this steak.

The outside was the color of coal. The inside was the color of concern.

The cornbread had the structural integrity of wet sand. It dissolved on contact with