Trial by Fire

The castle received them as though the company had been gone not ten days but ten years: too much had changed while they'd been on the road, too much of what they'd heard along the way needed checking, and instead they were met right at the gates by a ceremonial formation of guards, as though their return weren't a relief but an event someone had planned well in advance.

"I don't like this," Roan said quietly, helping Ash dismount, and by how his hand lingered on her shoulder a moment longer than necessary, it was clear he liked what was happening far less than his words let on.

He proved right sooner than either of them had time to catch their breath from the road. Within the hour, the two of them — together, which was unusual in itself — were summoned to the great hall, where, it turned out, the council had already assembled in full, including lords Ash had before only glimpsed in passing.

"Your return comes at a most fitting time," said Lord Vern, standing closer to the throne than she had ever seen him, with the same even, almost friendly tone as at their first meeting — and listening to him now, knowing what she knew about the note burned at their campfire, Ash held herself back with effort from letting her disgust show openly. "The court has lived too long on rumor of what happened at the mountain. It's time to put those rumors to rest, once and for all."

She glanced at the king, searching his face for some sign that what was happening had his consent rather than being arranged against his will — but Osmund looked no less wary than she felt herself, which troubled her more than any open hostility would have.

"What are you proposing, my lord?" the king asked, and by how carefully he chose his tone, Ash understood: he had already lost some part of this argument before her return.

"A simple confirmation, Your Majesty," Vern answered. "Let the girl light the hearth here and now, before the whole court, without prior preparation, without a chosen hour, without the sheltered setting in which she's demonstrated her gift before. If the bond is genuine, she has nothing to fear from suddenness. If it isn't…"

He left the sentence unfinished, but no one needed him to — the whole hall understood well enough where the unspoken part led.

Ash felt something inside her turn cold — not from fear of the trial itself, but from how easily Vern had managed to turn a simple demonstration into a trap with no safe way out: refusal would look like an admission of fraud, and acceptance — she felt this in the very tension of the hall's air — was exactly what he'd wanted from the start.

"She's tired from the road," Gareth cut in, standing a little to one side. "Ten days' travel hardly makes for…"

"For a test the body has no part in, only the blood?" Vern interrupted with feigned surprise. "Forgive me, Steward, but if the bond truly lies in blood, weariness should hardly matter."

Ash understood the logical trap in his words as clearly as she understood that arguing it openly before the whole council would only make it look as though she herself doubted her own bond to the flame. But there was something else in Vern's certainty, something she couldn't quite place — too much calm for a man whose plan could just as easily end in public proof of her right as in proof of her weakness.

"Very well," she said aloud before she could think better of it, repeating the same word she'd spoken before this same hall many days before.

They led her to the hearth — the one she now remembered not only from the cold ash of the first night but from the faint, living warmth that had answered her touch each time with growing confidence. She knelt, and with the motion now grown familiar, lowered her hand to the ash — and only then, touching it, understood what had been wrong from the very start.

The ash beneath her palm was not as she remembered it. It felt different — drier, deader, as if someone had mixed something into it that robbed the ash of its ability to answer, and Ash, understanding too late what that difference meant, still reached inward for the same feeling that had always answered her without fail.

The answer came — but wrong. Not the warm, steady wave she'd begun to grow used to, but a jagged, stuttering flare, as though something in the bond itself kept stumbling, finding no footing at any step. The flame that leapt up in the hearth wasn't a timid little glow but a sudden, too-bright burst, striking her outstretched hand with a sharp, burning pain a fraction of a second before she managed to pull it back.

The last thing she heard before darkness closed around her was Roan's shout, tearing across the space between himself and the hearth faster than anyone else in the hall could react, and his arms catching her before she hit the floor.