Page 2 of Bitten & Burned

It hit so suddenly, I didn’t make a sound at first, just swallowed air that didn’t know where to go. Then it ripped out of me anyway, high and raw. It was a sound I’d never made in my life.

Heat spread deep, like someone dragging a hot dagger in a deliberate curve against my skin. It bit muscle, curled into bone, burrowed. My knees went loose. I caught myself on a garden bed and dragged my skirt up one-handed, because I needed to see it. I needed evidence.

There. Right where the pain seemed to originate, a mark bloomed where only skin had been a breath ago: black and maroon, ugly and precise, veins spidering outward like an ink spill. It shimmered faintly, lit from within, the edges humming beneath my fingertips.

Inera! Goddess, save me…

“What?” I repeated. It wasn’t confusion—it was a realization. It looked exactly as if someone had branded me with an iron. From the inside out.

Another wave hit, sharper. Breath stuttered. The courtyard shivered around me, moonlight going thin and bright and farther away.

“Rowena.”

The sound of Vael speaking my name instantly calmed me.

I didn’t even have to look to know he’d said it; Vael’s calmed me in a way I didn’t know possible.

I focused on him, and found his eyes: warm honey-gold, sharp even in shadow.

The sight of them settled something deep in my chest. If those eyes were here, I could endure anything.

“Vael,” I said, or thought I did, and then he was there, all the distance between us gone.

He caught me under the arms, moving carefully like someone used to handling wards and wounded things. The kind of care that could only come from a life around old magic. “Easy,” he breathed, even as his voice flattened into something deadly. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I managed. “I was walking—” A breath broke. “And now it’s—”

His gaze cut down as I fisted my skirt higher. The mark threw a sick little gleam in the lantern light.

Vael went very still. Not the kind of still that meant no reaction, but the kind that meant he was thinking a thousand things at once—and choosing which wouldn’t make this worse.

He was calm like the Emerald Sea before a tempest, tides pulling back from the shore before the water let loose all its power on those unlucky enough to be in its path.

He didn’t touch the mark. He touched the edge of my knee instead, a grounding point, and leaned in until his forehead almost brushed mine so I could see the iron in his eyes.

“Where did you go tonight?”

Gods, where hadn’t I gone? The market, the docks for Fig’s fish—the halibut that made him the happiest kitten in Verdune—then Bram’s greenhouse, gods, where else?

“To the market, then the docks for fish—Fig’s fish—uh, the rare bookseller, Bram’s greenhouse, gods, I even stopped for an inkwell—new quills—and then… here to see Dr. Drummond?”

“Mmm.” He hummed, narrowing his focus, honing in on a cause. “It’s not a hex, it’s too permanent. Perhaps a curse? Whatever it is, it seems to be magic in nature…”

“I gathered,” I hissed, baring my teeth. The corner of his mouth twitched like he wanted to smile at me, like he always did when I still had bite. It died fast.

Another wave of pain tore through me, and a sound I didn’t recognize clawed out of my throat.

He shifted, taking more of my weight, lowering me onto the low stone rim of the flower bed.

Gravel bit into my calves. His hands stayed steady: one braced at my shoulders, the other anchoring my thigh just above the bloom of pain.

“I’m here,” he murmured, voice pitched low and calm in that way that could coax state secrets out of anyone. Right now, it just made me want to cry. “Look at me.”

I did. His once gentle, worried eyes were now sharp even in shadow, pupils blown wide, jaw tight. He looked like a man cataloging every variable, every exit, every enemy. He looked like a man who would burn whoever was responsible for hurting me.

“You have to calm down, Rowena,” he murmured. “Calm down and remember… did anyone seem odd this evening?”

“Odd?” I asked, shaking my head. “Not odd, no. Annoyed that I was making them stay open late? Yes, but not enough to want to curse me.”

“Alright, alright… good. That’s good.” It wasn’t, and we both knew it. But Vael would never panic outwardly.

He shrugged out of his coat and slid it beneath me, a barrier between my skin and the stone. With one hand, he loosened his cravat; with the other, he cupped my jaw, thumb stroking as his forehead pressed to mine.

“I can’t use my magic,” I murmured. Saying it aloud made it true—the river inside me hit a sudden dam, current slamming into stone; not misfiring, but cut off, as if someone had dammed the deluge. My lady Inera granted me these powers, and something was keeping me from her.

“What?” Vael asked, more worry clouding his features. He muttered under his breath, low enough that he clearly didn’t mean for me to hear, “By Camarae’s shadow…”

“I can’t…” I held my hand out over my satchel, and it wiggled, but otherwise did nothing. Even the tiniest domestic charms—one of the simplest threads of Verdunian spellcraft—ignored me, as if whatever this was had pulled a veil between me and my goddess.

“Breathe with me,” he said, and I did. Because when he used that voice, my body obeyed like it had been doing so its whole life without telling me.

In. Out. In, on the count of four. Out, on the count of six.

The world narrowed to the lantern glow on his cheekbone and the steady cadence of his breath.

The pain didn’t lessen, but it found edges.

“Good girl,” he murmured. Not a command, but comfort. I see you. You’re here. Stay with me. Rage flashed behind his eyes. “Whatever this is, we will unmake it.”

“It feels like it doesn’t want to be unmade,” I said. “It feels like it wants me.”

His mouth softened, just for me. “Then it can want all it likes. I want you more.”

It should have made me laugh. It almost did. The next pulse of agony stole the sound.

He glanced at my fallen satchel, then at the dark, then at the west arch where the night watched us with polite interest. He was already building a list in his head—who to wake, what to fetch, who to hurt first if hurting turned out to help.

But he didn’t move until his eyes found mine again, until he knew I was still with him.

“Rowena,” he said, low and deliberate. His voice folded around me like a ward, small and ferocious. In Verdune, we had prayers for light and for shadow, but none sounded as urgent as the promise in his voice: “Tell me how to help you.”