Maren Thale reads every oath before the king eats. Tobias Fenn, the head cook, sets them. Since the Founding Feast they have been a pair, at the range and away from it, and the whole palace knows.
Now the Court of Saffrey must make a truce with the kingdom of Quellan, and the truce is a loaf: one great round of bread, baked and sworn by Saffrey's cook, read by its taster and eaten by both courts at one table. Then the council rules that a taster may not read the dishes of the cook she loves. Quellan will not swear over a loaf read by the cook's lover, the truce dishes go to Quellan's own taster, and one of them, the court says, must step aside.
So Maren and Tobias set out to do one job in two trades, her tongue kept away from his dough and the ruling kept to the letter. Beside them the court's baker works with a Quellan cook who is far too easy to like. But a sack of crown salt that never reached the king's store is still out there, and someone in the delegation does not want this loaf to hold.
Can they stay partners at work and in love when the court says one of them must go?
It is told in two voices, with a steamy romance, the bedroom door mostly closed, and a happy ending.
