“Two loaves, please.”
He studies me for a long moment before reaching for the bread with exaggerated reluctance.
“You planning on paying?” he asks. “Or is witchcraft the new village currency?”
The insult lands harder. For a moment, I imagine snapping back with something sharp enough to make him swallow those words. Instead, I focus on my breathing. Calm. Controlled.
The same rhythm I use when a patient is bleeding and helplessness would only make the wound worse. My pulse slows. The strange warmth beneath my ribs remains quiet.
“No witchcraft today,” I joke evenly, but he didn’t smile at that.
The baker slides the loaves across the counter with unnecessary force.
“That’ll be four copper.”
I set the coins down. He sweeps them into his hand quickly, as though afraid they might ignite if left on the wood too long.
“You should leave Briarthorn,” he says bluntly. “Before someone decides to solve the problem for good.”
The words are harsh enough that a few other customers glance up from their baskets. I meet his gaze calmly.
“Are you threatening me?”
The baker hesitates. He had not expected that response.
“No,” he mutters finally. “Just giving advice.”
“I appreciate it.”
I pick up the bread. Nothing burns. No heat pulses through the bond. No sudden inferno leaps to life behind the bakery counter. Only the quiet murmur of ordinary village life continues around us.
I leave the shop with my heart beating steadily. Outside, I pause in the sunlight and consider what just happened.
The baker was rude. Openly hostile. But I was never afraid of him. Annoyed, yes. Angry, perhaps. But never helpless. And nothing happened. The thought sharpens my curiosity.
For the next hour, I continue my experiment.
I walk past the tannery where two men whisper about me loudly enough to be heard. I meet their eyes without flinching. Nothing.
Later, when a fisherman mutters something about curses under his breath as I pass, I stop and ask him calmly if he has a medical concern I can help with.
He stares at me as though I have grown horns and quickly backs away. Still nothing. No fire. No surge of infernal heat. By the time I return to the apothecary, the conclusion is beginning to form with uncomfortable clarity.
The bond does not react to anger. It does not answer insults. It does not ignite when I am merely irritated. It answers something far more specific. Helpless terror. The realization sends a slow chill down my spine.
The flames in the alley. The fire in the square. The stall that burned yesterday. Every time, my fear had been sharp and immediate, like an animal cornered with nowhere to run. The bond had answered that. Not rage. Protection.
I set the bread down on the small table near the window and press a hand against my chest. The warmth there pulses faintly in response. As though listening.
“You only come when I’m truly afraid,” I murmur quietly.
The words feel absurd when spoken aloud. And yet the truth of them settles into place with the quiet certainty of a diagnosis finally understood.
Which means something else must also be true. If fear can summon the fire… Then control might be able to contain it.
The thought sends a ripple of determination through me.
Across the bond, something shifts faintly, an answering awareness that feels almost like interest. I lift my gaze toward the cottage window, though I cannot say why.
