It took Arlette all of two minutes to notice something was wrong at the manor. Her attention appeared in the form of a haggard Eamon, who tromped down the main staircase, looking a little too cheerful for his disheveled appearance. He grinned at Rowan.

  “The woman of the house sends me away for a day,” Eamon said, chuckling, “and when I come back you’ve managed to finally rid us of that rotting workshop and acquire a new project.”

  Eamon’s dark skin and piercing amber eyes were an oddity in Hillcrest, as there wasn’t exactly diversity to be found in an isolated mountain kingdom far from other civilizations. Rowan had run into a few people from Tamresh— or equally distant Alirase— perhaps a handful of times in his life. When Rowan had asked, it was clear that even Eamon himself wasn’t sure where his lineage was from; he’d grown up beneath the mountain, tending to farms before his family had sent him to seek a fortune in Hillcrest.

  Rowan didn’t have the heart to tell his family that they’d sent him the wrong direction.

  “Well, now that the wall’s nearly gone, you can finally expand the kitchen like you’ve always dreamed,“ Rowan said. He glanced down at the pale woman in his arms, the fire of her earlier outburst now a memory. He joined Eamon at the staircase, trying to figure out when he’d get a chance alone with his notebooks again. Odd young women showing up at the manor certainly wasn’t helping his concentration. “And she’s not a project. She showed up at the door demanding me of all people, then collapsed.”

  “Well anyone would with the mess she’s making,” Eamon said with a glance at Rowan’s shirt. Rowan didn’t need to look down to know that he was now covered in the woman’s blood. “What did she do, try to leave the city?”

  Rowan snorted as he climbed. “Eamon, you used to live outside of Hillcrest— there’s nothing out there but farms.”

  “Of course, lad,” Eamon agreed. “Farms, on the mountain itself. Go a bit further, though, and you might find yourself regretting your trip. The schlanxes don’t mind a trip or two into the mountains for a snack or two. I hear we’re nicely chilled.”

  “Schlanxes?” Rowan asked. “They never come up to the mountains— they’re strictly desert creatures. They’re just a myth.”

  “Does a myth leave scars, lad?” Eamon asked, voice grave. Rowan looked up at his dark face as they turned into the hallway, but there was a spark of humor in his eyes. “Myth or not,” he continued, “what you’ve got in your arms is a bigger problem for us all right now.”

  “Why?” Rowan asked, surprised. “We’ll just get Claire to look at her and send her on her way— once she explains why she’s here at all.”

  “Because if I’m not mistaken, those marks on her are from Fulminancy.”

  Rowan paused, then regarded the girl again. There were charred markings around her shirt where she was still copiously bleeding, but they could have been from anything. Eamon turned the woman’s cheek gently towards him, and he swore as he noticed the nearly faded jagged lines on her pale cheek. It had been hard to notice beneath another fresh cut running across her face.

  “I knew I should have left her outside,” Rowan muttered, but he continued down the long hallway towards Claire’s infirmary anyway.

  “Fortunately, lad, you’re the only one of us who wouldn’t do that.” He glanced over at the girl again. “She’s in bad shape. Even if she’d managed to stumble off our property, someone else would have gotten to her— and maybe someone she didn’t want to see. Was best you brought her in.”

  “That much remains to be seen,” Rowan said, turning down a side hall and into the infirmary. “She nearly attacked me, and I was the person she came to see, no less.” Eamon chuckled quietly and helped Rowan set down the woman on a bed, his motions gentle in spite of his size.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I can think of a few other people around here with that temper, lad.”

  “Yes, and we don’t need more of them.”

  “Keeps you on your toes,” he said, winking. He clapped Rowan on the back. “I’ll let our favorite mistress know that her cash cow has come to pay her a visit.”

  Rowan blinked. “Cash cow?”

  “Of course,” Eamon said, headed for the doorway. “You wouldn’t recognize her, I suppose, being from Uphill and all— that’s Kess. The very same Bloodcrawler our lady downstairs has taken such an interest in.” He scratched at his dark stubble, eyes to the ceiling. “Can’t blame Arlette for it, honestly. She’d been a good bet for years. Talented, smart, able to stay anonymous enough to make a few of us very wealthy, while the rest miss out on all the fun.” He looked down at Kess, a bit of regret in his face. “Ah well, was good while it lasted. In any case, I’ll deal with Arlette. Get yourself fed, lad— you’ve been spending too much time in the library anyway.”

  Rowan nodded absently, his eyes still on the girl as Eamon’s large boots creaked on the wood. Had she bothered fighting back at all? If she’d been Fulminant herself like Claire claimed, wouldn’t she have been able to defend herself?

  Maybe someone snuffed her powers somehow, Rowan thought. It wasn’t a terrible theory. If someone had known what she’d been hiding and wanted her to lose, it was a much safer bet to leave her without powers at all. But that would mean there are more Duds who can do what I can, he realized.

  He was so lost in his own thoughts that he almost missed the exchange down the hall— voices, laughter, and a familiar set of footsteps. Claire entered the room shortly after, her smile fading slightly the moment she saw Rowan, then further as she saw Kess lying on the bed. She gave a curt nod to him, and Rowan hid a sigh as she focused her attention on Kess.

  Claire had softened for a day or so after his workshop had blown, but it was clear now that she was back to her usual brusque self. Claire’s ability to heal a wide variety of ailments hadn’t left her with much of a bedside manner to work with, unfortunately.

  “Rowan,” she said, moving towards the bed. “What did I say?”

  “About what?”

  “About letting people bleed out,” she said, washing her hands in a nearby basin.

  “I didn’t let her bleed out,” he said, crossing his arms.

  “You did,” she said accusingly. “Did you even bother to—“ she swore as she uncovered hastily applied bandages on the girl’s thigh. “Well,” she shrugged. “It’s better than your last job at least.”

  “You’ll be pleased to know that I had nothing to do with that job,” Rowan said, leaning against the wall as Claire worked. “She showed up like that and fainted on me.”

  “And here I doubted your ability with women.”

  “If my only chance with women is by subjecting them to blood loss, then I think I’ll remain a bachelor.”

  Claire cracked a small smile, then unceremoniously ripped at the side of the girl’s shirt, revealing the second shoulder wound. Claire didn’t turn towards him as she worked, and Rowan kept his eyes carefully on the back of her blond curls, tied up and away from her face so she could focus on her work.

  “She’ll live,” she finally said, cleaning away enough blood to make Rowan blanch a bit. He’d never been particularly good with gore. In fact, he itched to be back among his notebooks, cracking the secret to his destroyed workshop, but Claire had made it clear that he had at least some responsibility to remain behind whenever he brought a patient to her. He bore it reluctantly— not for lack of care about the girl or anyone else he’d brought to Claire— so much as his distaste for violence.

  “Neither wound is excessively deep,” Claire continued, “but as per my usual complaint, she should have been brought to me long before she lost this much blood. You’re practically forcing my hand here, Rowan.”

  “Claire, she showed up at the front door. I didn’t force anything.”

  “Well, front door or not, you’ll find there are are limits to what I can do, even with Fulminancy,” she said, pulling out tools to stitch the wounds closed. She met his eyes with her own hazel ones before returning to her work. “I’d rather not have to explain that to you when someone you actually care about is brought here.”

  Rowan avoided Claire’s eyes quickly. There was well-justified bitterness in her voice. He gritted his teeth together, steeling himself. “Claire, we never talked about what happened. I—“

  “I’m not talking about it, Rowan— especially not right now.” Her hands sewed up the wound in Kess’s thigh deftly, though all Rowan could see was blood. “What’s done is done. We move on, and that’s all we can do.“

  Rowan recognized dismissal. With one more nervous glance at the girl, he left Claire to her task— and her memories.

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.