[color=#b97703]“You can pay me back by eating better when you move into the palace with me,”[/color] Caspian shook his head. He didn’t care about money. He had more of it than he knew what to do with ever since his financial advisor had walked him through his inheritance. Before his father had died, he’d been well off, but now he realized just how much the royal family had been carrying from monarch to monarch. Now, he could have purchased his own personal getaway island with cash along with a private jet to take him to and from. Two weeks’ worth of spoiled food was nothing, so he didn’t want her to worry about it, especially when he knew she had nothing after coming from the districts.

Looking over the dishes on the counters, he managed not to wrinkle his nose at the smell of the oldest plates. The entire suite was a little musty, but standing in the kitchen made the worst of it more prominent. Luckily, Iris seemed to remember which meals she had ordered recently enough to risk eating, and he nodded when she pointed out the pizza and carbonara. [color=#b97703]“Those sound good to me,”[/color] he said, picking up the tray in one hand and bowl in the other to bring back to the couch—away from the kitchen. While he could tolerate the old food smell for a little while, he knew he wouldn’t be able to stomach anything if the odor was messing with his sense of taste.

With a tilt of his head, he gestured for her to come with him and carried their slightly sketchy lunch over to the coffee table. [color=#b97703]“Sit,”[/color] he told her as he set the dishes down. [color=#b97703]“There should be plates and stuff in the cabinets. I’ll go check.”[/color] If Iris had been eating while he’d been gone, she would have burned through the limited supply, but he doubted she had even touched any of it. So, leaving her in the living room for a moment, he strode back into the kitchen and opened up a few cupboards until he found a pair of plates and some utensils to use with the pasta. A few napkins that had come with the other food was enough to get started on lunch, so he stepped back over to join her in front of the TV.

[color=#b97703]“Have you been watching anything good lately?”[/color] he asked, trying to lighten the mood as he filled a plate with a couple slices of pizza and a small helping of the carbonara. They’d talked about the hard things already—although not quite as much as he would have liked—so he wanted to end the visit on a happy note before he had to get back to the palace. [color=#b97703]“Football season is starting up again soon, so I’ve been watching the drafts when I have the chance. There’s also a new spy movie coming out in theaters that Jay told me about. It sounds really good, so we should see it together after you move in.”[/color]