Elizabeth returned the smile because she must. “Do not let it be said that you neglect your children’s health, Papa.”
Jane laughed softly and crossed to the hearth, where the remnants of last night’s fire still glowed faintly among the coals. “Shall I stir it up a little? It is damp this morning.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to answer—and stopped.
The sensation came without warning. Not pain. Not dizziness. A tightening, low and insistent, as though something deep within her core had drawn a slow breath and found itself cramped by restraint. The room felt suddenly smaller, the air thicker, charged with an expectancy she could not name.
“Jane,” she said, too quickly, “perhaps—”
The poker rattled.
Jane paused, her hand still upon it. “How odd,” she murmured, smiling as she nudged it back into place. “I must be clumsier than I thought.”
Elizabeth rose at once. “Do not—please—do not stir it!”
Her father looked up. “Lizzy?”
The coals brightened. Elizabeth felt it then, unmistakable and horrifying: a pull, not toward the fire, butfrom it, as though the newly stoked heat had noticed her and leaned closer in answer. The warmth brushed her skin. Too warm. Too eager.
Jane had knelt and was reaching for a bellows when the flame leapt.
It did not flare wildly. It surged, clean and sudden, a tongue of fire snapping outward from the grate. Jane cried out as it caught her shawl, the wool blackening in an instant. Elizabeth was across the room before she knew she had moved, clutching at Jane’s arm, beating at the flame with her bare hands.
“Jane—Jane, let go—!”
Her father was shouting, the chair scraping violently as he lunged for the cold pot of tea beside Elizabeth’s chair. Jane stumbled back, her face pale with shock, her breath coming in short, broken gasps. The flame died as quickly as it had risen, leaving only the acrid smell of scorched cloth and the sound of Jane’s breathing.
“Are you hurt?” Elizabeth demanded, her voice breaking as she seized Jane’s wrist and turned it this way and that. The skin beneath the ruined sleeve had reddened fiercely, an angry mark already swelling across her forearm.
“It is nothing,” Jane said, though tears stood in her eyes now. “Only a fright. Elizabeth, please—”
But Elizabethhad stepped back.
The room was wrong. She could feel it with a clarity that robbed her of breath. The hearth crackled softly, settling, innocent once more. The poker trembled against the stones, just once, then stilled.
Her father set the pot down with shaking hands. “Twice...” he murmured. “How?”
Elizabeth’s gaze had fixed on Jane’s arm. On the burn. On the undeniable truth of it.
“Idid that,” she whispered.
Jane frowned. “Lizzy, no—”
“I did.” The words tasted like ash. “I felt it. Before it happened. I knew.”
Her father stared at her now, truly stared, as though some long-dismissed notion had at last demanded attention. “Elizabeth…”
“I cannot stay,” she said, the sentence tearing free of her before she could temper it. “Papa, you must take me away. At once!”
“Lizzy, you have only just arrived,” Jane said, reaching for her with her uninjured hand.
Elizabeth flinched back as though struck. “Do not touch me!”
Jane froze, wounded more by that than by the burn.
Elizabeth pressed her palms to her skirts, suddenly aware of the heat still prickling along her skin, of the way the fire had answered her without command or consent. Jane had been injured… she had not. Her heart was racing now, not with weakness, but with terror so sharp it made her light-headed.
“I cannot be here,” she said again, more urgently. “I cannot beanywherelike this! You see what happens. No, perhaps I do not faint. I do not grow ill. I make things—” She swallowed hard. “I make things worse!”
