“It’s guilt you’re feeling, Rowan.” Rowan glanced at Claire, who’d rocked her chair all the way back into one of the nearby bookshelves and was staring at the ceiling. Rowan straightened from his makeshift workbench in the library. He’d come here immediately after Kess’s departure, hoping to take his mind off the situation.

  It hadn’t worked.

  “Guilt,” he repeated. “Why would I feel guilty?”

  Claire rolled her eyes and sighed. “Rowan, do I really have to explain this to you?” She rocked her chair forward to let the front legs touch the ground, and leaned forward, holding his eyes. “That girl hasn’t touched her powers in years before…what, last night? She’s marching into Dawnring to save her friend, who somehow got involved with a Council member of all people, Rowan.”

  “It sounds even more foolish when you say it aloud.”

  “I’m not arguing if it’s foolish or not—I’m arguing that your conscience is bothering you. Do you mean to tell me you’re going to sit here tinkering with this nonsense while she goes out there alone?”

  “That’s exactly what I intend to do.” Rowan turned back to his board, and to filling his lights with a puff of gas. Calm, steady work that—

  “So you’re going to let her die, then?”

  Rowan froze. His concentration evaporated along with the gas that puffed out the side. He felt Claire’s gaze on his back and turned again, setting down his tools to lean against the table. There, in her eyes, Rowan saw something he hadn’t seen there in years—fury.

  “Rowan, without help, she’s windblown.”

  Something in Rowan snapped. “Claire, you hate her. She’s been here all of a month and you’ve complained about her every day.”

  “Because she’s a terrible patient,” Claire replied. “I swear that leg is infected, Rowan—healer’s intuition. But getting near her to deal with it is like trying to capture a Lightstorm in a bottle.”

  Rowan raised his eyebrows. “Have you ever tried?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped. “Rowan, if you spent half as much time thinking about people instead of your projects and hypothetical questions, you’d have gotten a lot further in life.”

  “If you’re so certain about the trajectory of my life, then what would you have me do?” Rowan asked, his voice rising.

  “Go after her.”

  “With what?” he demanded. “What do you want me to do about it, Claire? Fight the Council myself? I’m not Fulminant, as the world is so clearly keen to remind me. What good does a sword do against one of you?”

  Claire held his eyes flatly as he stood there, heart pounding, his face flushed. She raised her eyebrows at him, like she was waiting for something.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “What?” he finally asked.

  Claire stood and drew near, opening her hand to let a delicate trail of green-tinged Fulminancy creep towards him. It was different than Kess’s; gentle, inquisitive, and precise, it crossed the distance not in an explosive crack, but in a series of little snaps. It touched his arm, where a long gash from the second incident in his workshop was still fresh.

  Claire twisted her lips, hand still open.

  “Four inch laceration,” she said quietly. “Twelve millimeters deep at the worst, though the edges are less than two. Clean and precise—made by either glass or a sword. Multiple layers of the dermis line up nicely despite the depth, though at the worst area you’re probably having trouble getting it to seal completely.”

  She closed her eyes as she spoke, obviously needing only the Fulminancy to convey the information. She was right about the cut needing stitches or a heal—but Rowan had been too embarrassed about the second incident to go to Claire about it. Only Kess knew what had happened.

  Claire opened her eyes, peering at him as her Fulminancy prowled around his arm. “What was it, Rowan? Another accident? How many of those do you intend to have before you—“

  “Enough.” Rowan caught her arm, and her Fulminancy snuffed out entirely. Claire didn’t flinch, her hazel eyes solemn as she stared at him.

  “You haven’t forgotten then,” she whispered. “You have your own way of fighting.”

  Rowan let go of her arm. “No one knows about it. I can’t let anyone know about it.”

  “So you are a coward then,” Claire murmured, a cruel lilt to her voice. “I had wondered. Maybe I do complain about Kess, but you do the same. Chief among your complaints, interestingly, is that she’s unable or unwilling to use what she’s been given, and yet you—“

  “Have a very sensitive problem that could be the end of me Uphill if anyone finds out about it,” Rowan snapped. “Why do you think my father was so quick to be rid of me? As hard as it is to deal with the Uphill now, how hard do you think it’ll be when everyone knows that I have something wrong with me that snuffs out Fulminancy erratically in the area? They just think I’m cursed. Clouds, half the time it doesn’t work. I—“

  “So you’d rather let an innocent woman die than risk your own neck?” Claire asked. “Sounds familiar. Maybe if you’d just stayed home years ago, we wouldn’t have had to bury our friend.”

  Rowan froze, mouth half open, and looked at Claire again. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She turned away, and when she turned back, they were nearly gone. The fury and hurt in her gaze remained, however.

  “That’s not what happened, Claire. Emella—“

  “Stuck her own neck out for us both, Rowan,” Claire hissed. Her voice was broken and quiet. “I didn’t forget. I never will. She went down in that mine with you and your cloudspawned experiments because I was too foolish to just let you die down there. Without her, we’d both be dead.”

  “And what do you think might happen to me tonight if I go after her?” Rowan asked suddenly. “It’s the same scenario.”

  “Perhaps,” Claire said quietly, all the fight gone from her voice. She met his eyes again, her own overly bright. “But Rowan, even if I’d known how that night was going to turn out, I still would have gone after you. Emella would have too. No one deserves to die without a fighting chance, Rowan—especially when they’re just trying to help someone.”

  Claire held his eyes for a few moments longer, as if trying to assess something in Rowan that he couldn’t see himself. When her gaze grew too heavy to bear, he turned away, eying his experiments—anything to avoid thinking about that night in the mountain. After several long seconds, Claire stalked from the room, but paused at the exit.

  “Kess was never the coward, Rowan,” she said. “You are.”

  The door slammed shut behind her, leaving Rowan alone again.

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