Chapter 3 Elowen
ELOWEN
The knocking begins before dawn. It is not the polite tapping of someone seeking salve or tincture. It is sharp and hurried, striking my door in uneven bursts that rattle the latch.
I have not slept.
Each time I closed my eyes, I saw white-gold flame swallowing flesh.
I felt heat beneath my ribs, echoing some distant, powerful rhythm that did not belong to me.
By the time the knocking starts, I am already sitting upright in the chair beside the hearth, fully dressed, as though I have been waiting for consequence.
I open the door to find two men from the tannery standing stiffly on my threshold. Their faces are pale in the gray light of early morning.
“They found Garruk burned,” one of them says without greeting.
The words lodges in my throat. They lead me back toward the narrow alley between the storage houses. A small crowd has gathered, murmuring in low, uneasy tones. I can feel the shift as I approach, conversations thinning, eyes turning.
The place where Garruk cornered me is blackened.
The stone is scorched in a wide, unnatural pattern, as though lightning struck and lingered. At the center lies a collapsed heap of brittle, dark fragments. Not a body. Remains. Someone retches nearby.
“It’s witchwork,” a woman whispers.
“No ordinary fire burns like that.”
I clasp my hands together to stop their trembling. The memory threatens to rise, vivid and terrible, his mouth mid-word, the eruption of light, the towering figure stepping through flame. I say nothing.
What could I possibly say?
By midmorning, Briarthorn has decided on its story. Garruk was seen heading toward the alley after dusk. I was seen closing my apothecary shortly after. No one else was nearby. The fire left no ordinary trace. The word spreads quickly, mutating with each repetition.
All I hear all day around people is that there is a witch. That he was cursed. That this is infernal. I retreat to my cottage, but the air feels different now, heavier. As I reach for the latch, something catches my eye.
A faint marking in the wood. First I think I imagine it.
It is subtle, almost imperceptible, a distortion in the grain, curling lines woven into the surface as though the door itself had grown differently overnight.
I run my fingers over it. The wood is smooth, unbroken.
I did not carve this. I am still not sure if it's there or not; it's not like it's carved by a knife, but like the wood molded to this overnight.
A chill moves through me, colder than the morning air. He was here. The certainty does not frighten me as much as it should.
A second knock comes before noon. This one is formal. A boy from the council stands rigid on my step, clutching a folded parchment as though it might bite him. “Matron Yselle requests your presence at once.”
All I do is nod, before I follow him.
The council hall smells of old timber and damp wool. Villagers crowd the perimeter, faces tight with curiosity and something sharper beneath it. Garruk’s mother stands near the front, eyes red and swollen, her grief twisted into accusation.
Matron Yselle sits at the long table, spine straight, silver-streaked hair pulled tight. Her gaze settles on me with clinical assessment.
“Elowen Virel,” she begins, her voice carrying easily through the hall. “You were among the last to see Garruk Voss alive.”
“Yes,” I answer quietly.
“And what passed between you?”
Every eye in the room fixes on me.
I swallow. “He walked me partway home.”
A murmur ripples outward.
“He had no burns when last seen,” Ravik Keld interjects from the side, his broad arms folded over his chest. “Yet he was found reduced to ash. Care to explain that?”
Explain? I don’t even know what happened. I feel the edges of last night pressing inward, the memory threatening to spill free if I loosen my hold on it.
“I cannot,” I say.
The words hang there, thin and inadequate.
Garruk’s mother rises abruptly. “She’s always been strange,” she says, voice trembling. “Talking to herself over herbs and bones. My sister swore she saw smoke coming from her chimney at odd hours.”
“That is how one boils tinctures,” I reply before I can stop myself.
Laughter breaks from somewhere in the back, sharp and unkind.
“You think this is amusing?” another voice calls. “Men do not burn to nothing without cause.”
The room feels smaller. I sense it before I understand it, a tightening beneath my sternum, a pulse that does not match my own. Heat flickers low in my veins, subtle but insistent.
Matron Yselle’s gaze sharpens. “Have you engaged in any practices beyond herbcraft, Elowen?”
The accusation lands plainly now. Witch. My pulse spikes. I am aware of it with terrible clarity, the acceleration, the rush of blood in my ears, the suffocating awareness of being surrounded. Of being judged. Of standing utterly alone.
The bond responds. It is not visible, not yet. But it flares like breath against dry tinder, reacting to the sharp rise of helplessness I struggle to contain.
I try to relax myself the way I always have. Slow breath in. Slower breath out. Peace is safer. But this is not a wandering hand in a crowded market. This is a room full of eyes and suspicion thick enough to choke on.
“She brought this upon him,” someone mutters.
“She cursed him.”
My stomach drops. I don’t know what to do.
Across the village, something ignites. The sound reaches us seconds later, shouts from outside, startled and sharp. The doors of the hall swing open as smoke begins to rise in a thick column beyond the rooftops.
“Fire!” someone cries.
We spill into the street in chaotic motion. Ravik’s hay shed at the edge of the square is engulfed, flames climbing high and hungry, devouring dry thatch with unnatural speed. The blaze is not white-gold like the alley. But it is fierce. Too fierce.
And as I stand there, heart pounding, I feel the echo of it inside me.
The villagers turn slowly. Toward me. I do not need anyone to speak the accusation aloud.
The lifeline thrums once beneath my ribs, low and powerful, as if answering a question I did not dare ask. This is not over…
The fire does not behave like ordinary flame.
It does not simply climb. It surges. The hay within the shed collapses inward with a roar as sparks spiral upward in a violent column, twisting in a pattern that feels horribly familiar.
The heat pushes outward in a wave that forces several villagers back.
Ravik shouts something I cannot hear over the ringing in my ears.
I taste ash.
Someone grabs a bucket. Another forms a line toward the well. Water arcs uselessly against the blaze, hissing into steam before it ever reaches the heart of it.
The flames pulse. My breath stutters. I feel each flare as if it were happening beneath my skin. The bond tightens abruptly, and for a fraction of a second the world tilts. The roar of the fire dulls, replaced by that second heartbeat I felt in the alley. Vast and watching.
“No,” I whisper under my breath, though I am not certain who I am speaking to. Him. Myself. Whatever answered me last night.
The fire spikes higher. A section of the shed roof caves inward with a shower of sparks, and the crowd stumbles back in collective alarm.
“She’s doing it again,” someone breathes.
I shake my head instinctively. “I’m not,” I try to say, but my voice barely carries beyond my own lips.
Ravik wheels toward me, face red not only from heat but fury. “What did you bring here?” he demands.
I take a step back and the lifeline reacts to that, too. Heat floods my veins so suddenly that my vision blurs at the edges. My pulse races, and with it the flames answer, leaping sideways to catch on a nearby fence post that had not yet been touched.
The crowd gasps. It is not subtle anymore. I feel it. The connection between my rising dread and the violence across the square is no longer coincidence. It is immediate and merciless.
Stop.
I drag in a breath, forcing it deep into my lungs the way I do when a patient is bleeding and my hands must not shake. The fire hesitates, just slightly.
Hope flickers, before someone shouts, “She’s calling it!”
That word breaks whatever fragile control I have grasped. As though I am commanding this. As though I wanted this.
The shame and fear twist together, sharp as barbed wire, and the bond answers in kind. The flames surge outward again, racing up the remaining beams with predatory hunger. The heat becomes unbearable.
Villagers scatter, dragging Ravik back as a wall collapses inward with a thunderous crash. Sparks rain down across the square. Smoke rolls thick and choking.
Through the haze, I see something else. A distortion. The smoke shifts unnaturally. For the briefest moment, the chaos parts enough for me to see the outline of towering shoulders, the curve of sweeping horns etched against the glow.
The sight of him does not terrify me the way it should. Instead, beneath the smoke and shouting, I feel the pull of him inside my chest, vast and unyielding, as though the fire is not the only thing that answered me.