Morran

The old head cook of the Veykar before the girl rose to take his place — a stooped, sour man who sneered without smiling and turned out flawless food that tasted of nothing. Morran resented The Girl With the Scar from the moment her bread came out better than his. He resented her quietly, then loudly, then dangerously. He was called to the Veykar's tent on a winter night and never came back; his severed hand was nailed to the Hall's wall the next morning as a quiet message about replacement. Morran is the small, ugly hinge the Veykar saga turns on — the cook whose envy created the vacancy his successor stepped into, and whose death taught her exactly what kind of king she now served.