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I made it downstairs in record time, checked my appearance to make certain I wasn’t indecent, then opened the door.
Sure enough, Premila stood on the doorstep, desperately trying to quiet her wailing son. Her face was red and splotchy and streaked with tears. As soon as our eyes met, she burst into sobbing.
I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I reached around her waist and pulled her into the cottage, then closed the door behind us. I almost never locked the door, but I did then. I didn’t know if Bee was nearby or if he’d come after her.
“Avenel,” I called upstairs, immediately changing my mind about keeping him out of whatever trouble there might be. “Come downstairs and make tea.”
“You don’t…you don’t have to,” Premila gasped and panted, barely getting the words out.
Avenel was already on his way down the stairs. His eyes went wide at the sight of Premila shaking and clutching her baby close as I walked her to the sofa and sat with her there. I nodded to him as he crossed through the room and into the kitchen. Avenel could see at once that the situation was dire, and an endearing look of determination came over him before he disappeared around the corner. My love might have been submissive, but he wasn’t weak.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
To her credit, Premila didn’t pretend like nothing was wrong. She didn’t answer with words, but she didn’t need to. She pulled her infant son away from her body and turned him toward me. That was all the answer I needed.
The side of Yasha’s face was red and blistering. One of his eyes had swollen shut.
“We fought,” Premila said in a trembling voice. “We’ve…we’ve been fighting a lot. I…I was on the floor so I couldn’t protect him. Barthold threw a boiling pot of water on him. I couldn’t…I couldn’t….”
Rage like nothing I’d ever known filled me. I moved close so that I could throw my arms around Pre, holding her and Yasha as tightly as I could without hurting her or the baby. There could only be one reason why she’d been on the floor, unable to protect her son, and I didn’t want to hurt her any more than she might already be hurt.
“You did the right thing,” I said, my voice shaking and cracking as my fury tipped over into tears. “You’re safe here. I said I would protect you, and I will. You can stay with me as long as you’d like. You and Yasha can stay with me and Avenel forever.”
I hadn’t planned to say that, but I stood by my words once they were out. I was supposed to marry Premila before my life had changed. I still didn’t know what had happened to her family, but instinct told me she had no one other than Barthold now. She couldn’t go back to him, and she couldn’t raise her son, and the other baby she might be carrying, alone.
Pre was too traumatized to have truly heard my offer, though. Yasha was still wailing, and now I understood why. She pulled him close again and tried to comfort him, but she was so distressed herself. It broke my heart to watch them.
“I don’t know how to treat burns,” I said, “but putting something cold on them is good, right?”
Pre nodded, but I still wasn’t certain she’d heard me.
I wished Conrad were there. Conrad would have known how to treat burns, maybe even burns on babies.
“Stay here,” I told Pre as I stood. “We’ll have something to treat him with.”
I strode to the doorway leading to the kitchen and stood where I could see both Pre on the sofa and Avenel busying himself preparing tea.
“I need something to treat burns,” I told him. “Yasha’s face was burned with boiling water.”
Avenel nearly dropped the box of tea he’d just taken from the shelf. “But he’s just a baby,” he said.
I nodded gravely. “Bee hurt him. We need to help him.”
Avenel’s expression registered even more horror. He jerked awkwardly into motion, putting the box of tea on the counter, then moving to the cupboard at the very end of the kitchen.
It occurred to me fleetingly that the kitchen was Avenel’s domain. He knew it inside and out, and he quickly pulled a small jar of something from the cupboard, then grabbed a rag from the edge of the sink. He held out the jar to me with one hand and worked the pump with his other.
“That’s burn cream,” he told me as water started to flow in the sink. I stepped forward to fetch it. “I’ll bring a cold rag as well.”
I nodded and took the jar. Really, I wanted to kiss him and hold him close for a moment, but Pre needed me more.
I returned to the sofa, where Pre was rocking with Yasha in her arms. I had the eerie feeling the rocking was out of desperation, not to calm the baby.
“Give him to me,” I said softly as I sat. I held out the jar. “Avenel says this is burn cream. I can hold the baby while you put it on.”
Pre nodded shakily and fumbled the baby into my arms. She was far more upset than perhaps she knew. Whatever burst of energy had helped her to reach my and Avenel’s cottage, it was fading into exhausted terror now.
“Can you tell me more about what happened?” I asked over Yasha’s painful cries as she applied the cream to his face with shaking hands.
