Trial by Fire

He headed straight for the kitchen, removing his backpack along the way. He shucked off his jacket, took the supplies he’d been given at the safehouse out of his pack, and placed them on the island in the kitchen before turning to wash his hands in the sink.

“Okay. So no meat for Lily,” he mumbled, organizing the groceries on the counter. Lily sat on one of the stools on the dining room side of the island and watched while Rowan gathered pots and pans on the other. In a few minutes, he was whipping up an entire meal, stealing famished bites off an apple as he worked.

“You can really cook,” she said, marveling at how he wielded his knife as he cut vegetables. “That’s amazing.”

His eyes flashed up at hers while he chopped, the relaxed look of them pinning her to her seat. “I love to cook. And not just in a cauldron.” A pleased smile lingered on his lips as he put the veggies in a sauté pan and turned them with a deft flick of his wrist. His dexterity fascinated Lily, and she caught herself staring at him. “You can bathe if you want while I get this ready,” he said, oblivious to her rapt attention. He lowered the heat under the sauté pan and wiped his hands on a dish towel. “I’ll get you set up.”

Rowan took her to a big bathroom and twisted the taps over a claw-footed tub. He tested the heat with his fingers and sprinkled some salts into the water. The scent that rose up with the steam was distinctly masculine. There was something intensely intimate about the thought of bathing in Rowan’s scent, and Lily felt suddenly embarrassed.

“I can take it from here,” she said, sitting next to him on the side of the tub. She tested the water with her hand and found that Rowan had chosen a perfectly cool temperature for her. Of course, she thought. He knows more about my body than I do. “You have a beautiful home. Thank you for letting me stay here with you.”

His brow furrowed, as if what she’d said troubled him. “You’re thoughtful. Considerate,” he murmured. “You’re still stubborn as hell, but you take other people’s feelings into account. It’s not all your way all the time. You have no idea how much that means to me.” His eyes drifted down, and he lingered for a moment next to her, his fingers still stirring the water. “I’m sorry I was so horrible to you when we first met.” Lily saw a glimmer of magelight under Rowan’s shirt. In her mind, she saw an image of herself, crying and clutching at her twisted ankle in the dark forest. She experienced intense feelings of regret and shame—his regret and shame. “I’m especially sorry for that.”

Lily couldn’t get her voice to function so she just nodded. She knew that he’d opened himself up to her so she wouldn’t just hear the word “sorry,” but could feel how deeply he meant it. It was the most heartfelt apology she’d ever been given, and as soon as Lily grasped how generous it was of him to share such thorny emotions with her, she reached out to him in thanks. But he stood up and moved away before she could take his hand.

“Towel. Robe,” he said, pointing to the items hanging from hooks on the back of the door as he named them, and then he left her alone.

Still shaken by Rowan’s closeness and abrupt departure, Lily peeled off her clothes and lowered herself gingerly into the scented water. As she soaked away her aches and pains, she tried not to think too much about how she’d gotten them. She failed. The gruesome battle with the Woven and the memory of the fear-drenched hike through the forest made her restless even as she tried to relax. But it was the face of that old history teacher as he was being beaten to death that finally drove her from the incongruous comfort of the tub. She knew that experience would be with her for the rest of her life, and she hoped that someday she would be able to make peace with it.