Chapter 5
The stew was supposed to be simple. It wasn’t.
Ember stared at the blackened mess clinging to the bottom of the iron pot, acrid smoke curling towards the ceiling beams. She’d followed Rykan’s instructions exactly—water, dried meat, root vegetables from the storage barrel. Bring to a boil, then let it simmer.
She’d let it simmer, all right. Simmered it straight into charcoal.
“I turned away for one minute,” she muttered, grabbing the pot handle without thinking, and pain lanced through her palm. She yanked her hand back with a sharp gasp, the pot clanging against the edge of the fireplace and sending a spray of burned remnants across the hearth.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She turned to find Rykan standing in the doorway, his arms full of firewood, and his golden eyes taking in the disaster she’d created. Snow dusted his dark hair and the shoulders of his heavy coat.
“Cooking,” she said, which was technically true if one were generous with the definition.
“That’s not cooking. That’s making charcoal.”
Heat flooded her cheeks. “I followed your instructions.”
“I told you to watch it.”
“I was watching it. I just…” She looked at the pot, at the smoke, at the burned remnants scattered across the floor. “I was organizing your shelf. The one with the dried herbs. They weren’t in any logical order, and I thought if I just fixed it quickly, I’d be back before—”
“Before you burned our meal?”
Her jaw tightened, her burned hand throbbing in time with her pulse.
She wanted to defend herself, to explain that she’d never cooked anything in her life, that servants had always handled such tasks, and that she hadn’t even been allowed in the kitchen because her father worried she’d hurt herself.
But excuses wouldn’t un-burn the stew.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’ll replace what I ruined.”
“With what?” He crossed to the fireplace and dumped his armload of wood into the storage bin with more force than necessary. “Do you have supplies hidden somewhere? A secret cache of provisions I don’t know about?”
Shame crawled up her throat, hot and bitter. She’d wanted to prove she wasn’t just a burden taking up space in his cabin. Instead, she’d made everything worse.
Story of my life, a vicious little voice whispered. Delicate little Ember can’t do anything for herself.
She pushed the thought away and went to retrieve a cloth to wrap around her burned palm. The injury wasn’t severe—a red mark that would blister but not scar—but it stung fiercely, a constant reminder of her incompetence.
“Let me see.” His voice had lost some of its edge. He’d moved closer without her noticing, and now he stood near enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
“It’s fine.”
“Let me see.”
It wasn’t a request. She sighed and held out her hand. He cradled it gently in his huge palm, then led her to the chair by the fire before retrieving a small clay pot from a shelf.
“Salve,” he said briefly as he opened it and a clean, minty scent filled the air. He knelt in front of her, taking her hand again as he spread a greenish paste onto the burn.
His touch was surprisingly gentle, his massive fingers delicately smoothing the salve over her reddened skin.
Cool relief spread through her palm, easing the throb almost immediately.
She stared at their hands—her small, pale fingers almost disappearing into the weathered strength of his.
The sight did strange things to her heart.
“You’re good at this,” she said softly.
He paused, then continued applying the salve. “My pack’s healer taught me.”
“The pack you left?”
His fingers stiffened against her skin. Just for a fraction of a second, but she felt it. The topic was clearly a wound.
“Yes.”
He finished with her hand but didn’t release it. Instead, he examined her wrist, her forearm, as if checking for other injuries she hadn’t mentioned.
“Thank you,” she said, not wanting to pull away.
He grunted in response, but didn’t immediately let go.
His thumb was stroking the inside of her wrist in a slow, rhythmic motion that made her pulse speed up despite her best efforts to remain calm.
The air between them thickened with something she couldn’t name but could definitely feel—a current that ran from her wrist up her arm and spread through her entire body.
“There’s some dried fruit in the barrel,” he said abruptly, releasing her hand and standing up. The connection broke, leaving her feeling oddly empty. “And I’ll carve some more dried meat. We’ll eat that for now.”
“I can—”
“You’ll sit by the fire and rest,” he cut in, not unkindly but with absolute finality. “Your body needs energy to heal. Wasting it trying to burn down my cabin is counterproductive.”
The corner of her mouth twitched. “It was only the stew.”
“Only the stew,” he repeated, but she heard a trace of something else in his tone. Amusement? “Next you’ll be setting the furs ablaze.”
“I would never risk the furs,” she said indignantly. “They’re the warmest thing in this entire cabin.”
He grunted again, but this time she was almost certain it was a disguised chuckle.
He busied himself with retrieving their makeshift meal, and she watched him move around the small space with a fluid economy of motion that seemed almost predatory.
He wasn’t just big—he was powerful. She’d felt the strength in his arms and shoulders when he’d lifted her so effortlessly.
Everything he did looked easy. Moving through the cabin, tending the fire, preparing food. The simple tasks that required skills she’d never learned.
Because you never needed to learn, that voice whispered again. Because someone was always there to do it for you.
But now she was determined to do it herself.
The next day she slipped into the boots he’d made for her, pulled up the pants he’d cut down for her, and shrugged into one of his heavy fur vests before picking up the bucket by the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To get more snow to melt for the water barrel.”
He gave her a long, skeptical look but eventually pointed her towards the snow bank outside the door.
“Pack it tight,” he said. “The fuller you make it, the less trips you’ll need.”
She nodded like packing snow into a bucket was something she’d done a thousand times. In reality, she’d never touched snow that wasn’t decorating a winter party or being served as shaved ice at a summer gala.
The bucket filled easily enough. The snow was light and fluffy, deceptively simple to gather. She packed it down the way he suggested, adding layer after layer until the bucket was nearly overflowing with white.
Then she tried to lift it.
Her arms trembled. Her shoulders screamed. The bucket rose perhaps six inches before the weight became too much and she set it down with a thump, breathing hard.
Pathetic, she thought. One bucket of snow.
She tried again. She got it almost to her waist before her grip failed and she dropped it entirely. Snow scattered across the ground, half her work undone in an instant. She stared at the mess, chest heaving, as something dangerously close to tears prickled behind her eyes.
Stop it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
She repacked the bucket with snow and tried a different approach.
This time she dragged the bucket with both hands gripping the handle, and her feet sliding on the icy ground as she hauled it towards the door one painful inch at a time.
She was perhaps halfway there when her boot hit a patch of ice and her feet went out from under her.
The impact drove the breath from her lungs. She lay on her back in the snow, staring at the grey sky, the bucket overturned beside her, and wondered if it was possible to die of humiliation.
“Taking a rest?”
She turned her head to find Rykan leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, expression unreadable.
“I fell.”
“I noticed.”
He took a half step towards her, and she waited for him to help her up. But then he settled back against the doorframe.
Fine. She’d do it herself.
Getting upright was its own battle. Her muscles had gone watery, her hands numb from the cold, and her back aching from the fall. But she managed eventually, swaying slightly as she found her feet.
The bucket lay on its side, mocking her. Empty again.
“Inside,” he ordered. “Before you freeze.”
“The bucket—”
“I’ll get it.”
“I can—”
“Inside.”
His tone brooked no argument. She wanted to argue anyway and insist that she could finish what she’d started, but her body was shaking and her teeth were chattering and the warmth bleeding from the open doorway was too tempting to resist.
She stumbled past him into the cabin and collapsed onto the bench by the fire, feeling small and useless and utterly defeated.
“You don’t need to strain yourself, little spark.”
Her father’s voice echoed in her memory, gentle and worried and so familiar it made her chest ache. He’d called her little spark since she was a child. Since she’d been born too small, too fragile, and too likely to flicker out before she’d truly begun to burn.
“Let someone else do that. You’re too delicate.”
She’d heard those words a thousand times. From her father. From her tutors. From the endless parade of servants and guards and well-meaning adults who’d shaped her world. She had been wrapped in cotton wool from the moment of her birth, protected from anything that might tax her weak constitution.
And for years, it had been true. She had been delicate.
She’d been sickly as a child, prone to fevers and fatigue, spending more time in bed than out of it.
The physicians had shaken their heads and murmured about her mother’s difficult pregnancy, about the complications during her birth, and about a constitution that might never strengthen.
But she had grown stronger. Slowly, year by year, the illnesses had faded. By fifteen, she’d been healthy enough to attend her first public function. By eighteen, she hadn’t had a fever in three years.