Evelyn returned from her meeting with Leo, her mind reeling. She placed the basket of divine-looking produce on her marble kitchen island and immediately called her grandfather's estate.
"Antoine," she said to the stern-faced, world-renowned French chef who had exclusively cooked for her grandfather for fifteen years. "I have a special project for you this evening. I'm bringing the ingredients myself. Postpone tonight's menu. And I want you to prepare them in the simplest way possible. I want to taste the ingredients, not the recipe."
Chef Antoine, a culinary tyrant who had once made a dignitary cry over a poorly-worded compliment, was about to protest this breach of his kitchen's sovereignty, but the command in Evelyn's voice was absolute. "Oui, Mademoiselle Hayes."
That evening, in the sprawling, immaculate kitchen of the Hayes estate, Chef Antoine looked upon the ingredients with a mixture of professional curiosity and deep skepticism. The vegetables and berries Evelyn had brought were... perfect. Impossibly perfect. They had a vibrancy that made the produce from his exclusive organic suppliers look pale and weary.
"Just a simple soup from the carrots and tomatoes," Evelyn instructed. "And a light salad with the lettuce. Nothing complex. Steam, perhaps. A touch of sea salt. Nothing else. Let them speak for themselves."
Antoine bristled at the simplicity but complied. He began by washing and chopping the carrots. The moment his knife sliced through the first root, the air filled with an aroma so pure and intensely carrot that he paused, his eyes widening. He had been cooking for forty years and had never smelled anything like it.
He placed the chopped vegetables into a pot with pure, triple-filtered water (he hadn't been provided with Clarity water, a fact he would later mourn). As it began to simmer, the kitchen, a place usually defined by the controlled scents of butter, herbs, and stocks, was completely taken over by the heavenly fragrance. It was wholesome, rich, and so tantalizing it was maddening.
And then the ordeal began.
Chef Antoine, a man of iron discipline, found his professionalism failing him. A deep, primal craving took root in his stomach. His mouth began to water uncontrollably. His hands, usually rock-steady, trembled slightly as he stirred the pot. His body, weary from decades of long hours standing in hot kitchens, was screaming at him, begging him for just one taste of whatever magical elixir was simmering before him. It was a physical battle against his own instincts. He felt like a starving man forced to bake a loaf of bread he was forbidden to eat.
Even the maid, a stoic woman named Maria who was setting the table in the adjacent formal dining room, found herself stopping in her tracks. She sniffed the air, her expression one of utter longing.
By the time the meal was ready, Antoine felt he had run a marathon. He plated the food with immense care—a simple, rustic soup and a gleaming salad. As Maria carried the tray out, both chef and maid followed the scent with a desperate, unspoken hunger.
Evelyn and her grandfather, Arthur Hayes, sat at the dining table. Arthur, a formidable man even in his late eighties, looked at the simple meal with interest. Since starting on the Clarity water, a light had returned to his eyes.
"It smells divine, my dear," he commented as Maria served them.
They took their first spoonfuls of soup in silence.
It was glorious. Arthur Hayes, a man who had dined in the finest restaurants on every continent, closed his eyes. The flavor was secondary to the feeling—a wave of warmth, strength, and vitality spreading through his chest, soothing old aches and clearing the fog from his mind. He felt his body repairing itself, cell by cell.
Evelyn felt it too, a sense of profound well-being that was even stronger than with the raw vegetables. Cooking had, as Leo suspected, unlocked something deeper.
In the kitchen, Chef Antoine was leaning against a counter, sweating, fighting the urge to go lick the pot clean. Maria stood frozen by the service door, looking faint.
Arthur Hayes noticed their strange behavior on the security monitor he kept discreetly by his chair. He saw the undisguised longing on their faces. He was a ruthless businessman, but a benevolent master.
"Maria," he called out, his voice strong. "Please ask Chef Antoine to join you. There is more than enough for us all. You will dine with us tonight."
Shocked, but overjoyed, they accepted. Antoine and Maria sat at the grand table, a breach of protocol unheard of in that house, and ate. They ate in rapturous silence, their bodies sighing with a relief so deep it was almost spiritual.
For dessert, Evelyn presented the three Fey-Kissed Berries. She gave one to her grandfather, and, seeing the look of utter reverence on the chef's face, she offered one to him, taking the last one for herself.
Antoine placed the single, perfect strawberry in his mouth.
A supernova of joy, of wild sweetness, of pure, unadulterated life, exploded on his tongue. Tears sprang to his eyes. In that moment, he knew his forty years of culinary training, his Michelin stars, his worldwide fame—it all meant nothing. He had never tasted real food until this day.
He looked at Evelyn, his professional composure completely shattered.
"Mademoiselle Hayes," he said, his voice trembling with emotion. "I must know the man who grows these. I will not cook with anything else for the rest of my life. This... this is not food. This is prayer."