Thane takes it.
His back is to the blast when it hits. I feel the heat on my face, sharp and immediate, and then his fire rises to meet it, a wall ofamber and gold that stops the worst of it three feet from where we're standing. The debris scatters around us. A piece of stone the size of my fist lands two inches from my left boot.
Then it's over.
The rookery settles back into warm silence. Dust drifts down from the broken channel. Thane's fire fades, and he straightens, and I realize his hand is still pressed flat against my sternum, holding me back against the ledge.
He drops it.
"That wasn't an accident," I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
"No." His jaw is set. "The drainage channels don't fail. They're reinforced every season. Someone pulled the support ward."
"Eveline's people."
"Or someone who knew you'd be here." He turns and scans the upper tier, looking for anything else that might give. Nothing moves. "The fire in those channels runs hot enough to cause third-degree burns on contact. If you'd been standing where you were when it came down—"
"I'd have been badly hurt." I look at the debris field across the floor. "You didn't think. You just moved."
"Reflex."
"Thane."
"Don't make it something it isn't." But his voice has lost the sharpness it usually carries when he's shutting a conversation down. It sounds tired instead. "It was reflex. That's all."
I don't push it. I look at him, at the line of his shoulders, at the tension he's carrying around the base of his neck.
"Are you hurt?" I ask instead.
"No." A pause. "My back took some of the scatter. It's fine."
"Let me see."
"It's fine, Angelic."
"You shielded me with your body from a fire blast. Let me look at your back."
He goes still for a moment, and then, without saying anything, he reaches up and pulls his jacket off. The shirt underneath has a scorch mark across the left shoulder, and when he turns, I can see the skin beneath is red and tight, not a burn exactly, more like severe heat exposure across a palm-sized area below his shoulder blade.
I don't have ghostcap or tiger's mane. What I have is the small healing salve Sage pressed into my pocket this morning after the corridor incident, practical and quiet as she always is. I pull it out and work the cap off.
"This will help with the heat damage," I say. "Hold still."
He doesn't argue. I press two fingers into the salve and apply it to the reddened skin, and he doesn't make a sound, but I feel the muscle under my hand go rigid when I first touch it and then, slowly, release.
"She was twenty-six," he says.
I keep my hand moving, steady and even.
"My mother. When they executed her. My father waited until the Purge gave him legal cover, and then he had it done while I was at my grandmother's estate. I didn't find out for nine years." He doesn't turn around. His voice stays flat, the same way it was last night in the alcove. "He told me she'd been ill. He had a whole story. I believed it until I was fourteen and found the council record."
"A formal record," I say quietly.
"Dragon law requires one. Proof of purge. There's a whole process." He pauses. "Her name was Serin. She was apparently very calm when they came for her. The council record notes it. 'Subject compliant.' Like that was the significant detail."
I stop moving my hand but I don't lift it from his back. The salve is cool against warm skin.
"She was a null," he continues. "Like you. She didn't amplify magic the way you do, she just didn't have any of her own, which in dragon law makes her a contamination risk. My father's bloodline, his political standing, all of it dependent on magical purity. So." He exhales. "So she had to go."
