"...Well, yes, obviously, she's a guest - I meant, allergies or preferences and suchlike."

"Sith don't get allergies, as a rule, but she doesn't like spicy food and does like things that combine sweet and savory flavors."

"Should be fine, spicy isn't much a thing here - yet another reason to not go to the Phoenix Kingdom, though, they love their unbearably spicy foods.  And they're full of Light-wielding zealots, which is rather a bigger issue.  ...Can't necessarily promise anything on behalf of the kitchens as far as actively getting something that works well with those two flavor profiles; I don't know all they stock or who knows what recipes - I've passed it on, though."

"...If you would follow me, then?"  She stands, and intends to walk them to the kitchens should they follow her.

They follow, with DZ staying a step behind Deskyl.

She very carefully doesn't think about the implications of DZ following Deskyl.  Any meddling would not be appreciated, and she'd just as likely miss.

"The kitchens are just this way."

It's a short walk.

"And you have the option of eating in the staff's cafeteria, or in the receiving room.  The receiving room gets less traffic.  ...I mean you could take the food back out, but it'd be...  I don't think it would be wise?"

I'm working on autonomy with her, Deskyl sends as they walk. She's young by any metric, we can't judge too harshly. And she drops the connection with just as little fanfare as she established it. (She's still so frayed. She doesn't seem to be getting worse, at least, though it's also fairly obvious that she's pushing herself right now in a way that isn't actually sustainable.)

   "Unwise how, ma'am?" DZ translates.

...Clearly she wasn't not thinking about that well enough; Aunt Ophelia would be disappointed in her performance.  She's not going to have much luck freehand Void-casting - which has advantages in speed or finesse sometimes, for all its inherent risks - if she can't not think about things better than that.  ...On the other hand, the Force is bullshit.  She'll have to ask, she supposes, if the Force actually detected not thinking about pink elephants somehow - or if that it came to her conscious awareness that she wasn't thinking about it, meant it was already too late.  Much, much later, when it's at all possible that the Sith might not take immediate and lethal offense to inquiry about her capabilities.

"...Now that I'm actually thinking about it for more than five seconds, I'm not even sure I'm right.  My brain spat out 'but it'll get cold, and walking back and forth on the same snow a lot produces slip hazards which I don't necessarily understand you to be equipped for'.  Both of which aren't difficult to moot."

    Ah. "I'll ask your kitchen staff what they have for travel containers before I plan to bring master Deskyl anything that needs to be delivered hot, yes ma'am. And I'm not designed for extended operation in temperatures much colder than this but I'm fine in icy conditions."

"Yeah.  Okay.  For this one, though, I don't know if they would have thought of travel-prepping it since the order came from my account."

    "That's fine, ma'am, master Deskyl was planning on eating in your compound this time anyway. She says she'd prefer the receiving room."

"Great.  Good.  Okay.  We can do that, then."

The room she leads them to is much fancier than the stone halls - lit by glowing crystals, not torches - that they pass through in getting to, and receiving their meals from, the kitchen.  It seems like it's meant for banquets, more than anything, but it presently hosts a scattering of round tables, and a few staff members that Alicia waves to.

"...Where would you like to sit?"

Deskyl leads the group to a table that's far enough from the other people in the room to avoid inviting interaction while not being tucked antisocially into a corner, and seats herself oriented sideways to the door, so that it's not to her back but the table isn't between herself and it, either. DZ takes the seat next to Deskyl on the far side of her from the door.

...Huh.  She wasn't expecting that.  (She recovers admirably from her momentary turn towards the corner, where she usually sits, and settles herself with her back to the wall at Deskyl's chosen table.)

"Let's see what they have for us today, then...  Ah, and I can go sit somewhere else if you'd like.  Though I'd recommend keeping me around to ward off Great-Aunt Ophelia.  She's a bit too nosy sometimes."

    "She assumes she'll have to meet her eventually but she'd rather not do it today, yes ma'am."

Deskyl takes the lid off her own tray, too; what does the kitchen have for her?

The kitchen seems to have taken the cue of Alicia having a guest (however that happened) as their cue to do fancy things for the young princess, who usually gets her food from the staff meals.  (From the leftovers, often enough, which is commonly held to be a bit too much humility.)  Which is to say that for this meal, they have brought out the fancy pasta - and not just because that's what they were already making; most of the staff seem to have sandwiches.

The vegetables seem varied, and more importantly, fresh, and the dishes are not overspiced.

Isn't pasta a high-effort food at this tech level? The presentation certainly suggests so. And it's tasty; the sauce is clearly fresh made and she's pretty sure they've added a subtle spice to the pasta dough itself to complement the rest of the dish.

    "She says it's very good," DZ relays, as Deskyl works on clearing her plate.

"It is; I really don't know what I've done that the kitchens seem so invested in making food at me all the time."  She just...

"...Okay, I mean I guess, well, first I'm myself and as much as I want to I really can't discount that, and secondly I've made them a couple things, but - They weren't hard to do, I don't think?  It was just - I think it was a matter of not having anyone available with the right skills?  And what's the point of magic, if not to make people's lives easier.

"...I mean, beyond self-defense, I guess.  That's important.  But what you do after you've secured your security."

Deskyl signs, shrugs, and signs some more.

   "She says people do all kinds of things with power. And that people like helping people who have helped them."

"...That does make sense."

She doesn't say 'I don't really feel like I should be this special' but the absence of her saying that still hangs heavily, somehow.

Deskyl can see the insecurity, but doesn't have much idea of what to do with it.

    "What do you do around here, ma'am, just magic?" she settles on.

She waves a hand in a so-so sort of motion.  "I'm learning some from Great-Aunt Ophelia and that's why I'm up here to begin with, so...  Pretty much, but...simultaneously also no.

"I'm," and here she takes on an obviously dry tone, "Destined For Greatness, or something, despite just wanting to sequester myself in a lab rather than deal with...  Adventuring... - and that's just asking for someone to shove me into a leadership position that - well, I don't want one, but I couldn't possibly betray the trust thusly offered to me.  Plus who knows what the other guy would do, y'know?  So there's lessons in dealing with that on my schedule."

    "There'll be a lot to learn, she says, yes ma'am. Sith get that too - or, well-educated ones do, she says; everyone thinks it's as easy as threatening people until you get what you want but it's not that simple at all."

"Mm.  Machiavelli was writing a satire, when he said it was better for a ruler to be feared than loved."

"...That said, I am most definitely not part of that everybody, and I'd wager most of Villarosa knows better.  Our monarchy is at least elective.  My condolences," that you had to work around so many utter dipshits, she barely keeps herself from saying aloud, "that your...erstwhile coworkers...were so consistently that bad at understanding that being part of something bigger than oneself requires being...  ...even minimally prosocial."

Even if you're going to turn that around and be evil to everyone else afterwards because your Something Bigger is an empire made of suffering, you have to be a better option to whoever your people are.  Or they'll - well.  Promote themselves over your corpse, often enough, if we're talking about Sith politics.

"...I find myself surprisingly driven to inquire as to the state of current events, galactically speaking, but I don't imagine that's a subject I have any right to."

Deskyl makes a variety of faces from incredulous to distant as DZ translates, and takes a moment to think before replying.

    "She says she doubts you'll make anything worse in a way she cares about, ma'am, even if you can project force there. The Empire and the Republic are at war, and as of a year ago when she last saw an update the Empire was winning; the Emperor is rumored to be immortal, with all that that implies, and he and the Dark Council are running the Empire as you'd expect from Sith."