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The wooden door creaked as he attempted to shove it open.
Nothing. Barred shut.
Rowan cursed, then stepped back and ran into it at full force. The splintering wood yielded to his strength with a deafening crunch.
He looped his forearm around his head and covered his mouth as he entered another sweltering ring of hell. He coughed into the mail armor, tracking after the panicked screams, blood and sweat running under his helm and visor.
“Help! Help us, please!” A part of the roof had fallen in. Straw and timber blazed in the middle of the house. The fire caused the air to blur and wave. Through the flames, Rowan saw two figures crouched against the farthest wall.
The structure creaked and moaned. He had only seconds until the whole thing would collapse. Rowan inhaled a sharp breath, then shot through the wall of flames. The heat was unbearable. Surely, the fire would cook him alive in his armor.
A half-conscious woman sat on the floor. Beside her, a small girl lay still with her head resting in her lap. The woman muttered incoherent prayers and pleas. There was no time to think. Rowan grabbed the child from the floor and cradled her against his chest.
Rowan lifted his visor and yelled over the roar of the flames. “Up, now! Or we all shall die!” He helped the sobbing woman from the ground. She rocked on her heels, ash covering her fair face. “We must get out!”
“God, no, please!”
“It’s the only way out,” he yelled again over the creaking house and roaring flames. It was about to implode. They had mere seconds to escape. “I shall go first. Follow right behind me.”
“No, I can’t! I can’t!”
“You must! If you stay here, you’ll leave your daughter alone in this world. You saw what happened tonight. Is that what you want? Now, are you ready?”
She nodded.
Rowan held the little girl close and plunged through the flames. Just as he and the woman burst out the door and fell onto the ground, the home collapsed.
The woman crawled across the dirt, her legs dragging behind her, her entire body wracked with sobs. Blood seeped from her forehead and trickled down the center of her face.
Rowan carefully laid the child down, panting hard, his heartbeat drumming in his ears. “Come on! Come on! Live. Live, damn you, live!”
An eternity seemed to pass before the small girl coughed, and her eyes blinked open. Rowan lay flat on the ground and stared at the ink-black sky, finally able to breathe.
* * *
Blanchette stared at the ledgers until the words blurred together. It was no good. She couldn’t focus. Could barely breathe. She gave a nervous sigh, her insides a tangled mess, then re-read the sentence.
Then again.
It appeared their harvest would last through winter should there not be any unseen crisis.
Like another attack, she absently thought with a rush of sadness and anger. Rowan had left during the night, Smoke, Edrick, and a column of men in his wake.
She closed her eyes and remembered how he’d looked in the firelight and how his arms had felt wrapped around her body. How he’d smelled when she held him close.
Blanchette threw down her quill, unable to focus. She turned her gaze to her window, where a golden sun entered the sky. It was daybreak. Vibrant shades of red and orange streaked the horizon. She thought of Rowan, possibly injured or lying dead and forgotten among the burned ruins of a port town.
“You must relax, dear.” She gave a yelp at the sound of Governess Agnes’s voice. She was sitting by her hearth, knitting some tunic, her sharp features made sharper by the tension in her face. Blanchette had forgotten she was in the room.
“Mercy, you nearly stopped my heart.”
“You are so tense, Blanchette. Please try to relax.”
Blanchette turned to her and sighed. “I… I just fear for the villagers.”
And Rowan, most of all.
Come back to me, she prayed.
