Page 66 of Heart’s Rescue

Arryn

Teach Me

“And why this particular, uh, cabin?” I ask as Rowan throws his shoulder into the door of one of the more dilapidated-looking ruins we’ve walked past since he declared we had arrived in Fringe.

The door gives way with a squeal that sounds like an animal in pain, and Rowan grins at me.

“Last time I was here,” he said, “the pump still worked. Plus, there should be some beans in the pantry.”

I try to smile like the confident, capable Arryn of the Lands Below, but this whole place makes me feel like my skin is trying to crawl off my body and run away. I swear I saw the void beast following us through the trees, melting like smoke into the shadows. Then we’d come to a handful of broken-down buildings that Rowan had declared the town of Fringe. I don’t know what I’d been expecting - fires, perhaps, and people and a cozy inn serving good food - but a collection of ice-ringed abandoned huts wasn’t it.

Rowan ducks through the door, and I follow. This is a one-room cabin, and honestly, it’s probably generous to even call it a cabin. There’s a stone fireplace, a pump handle on the far wall and, of course, only one bed. Because that’s how these things work. Not that I should be annoyed with Rowan. For all I know, all the ramshackle falling-down cabins in the ramshackle falling-down metropolis of Fringe have only one bed.

Besides, I think as I pull my hood down to cover the heat rising in my cheeks, I’m the one who mounted him last night. Who attacked him like a wild animal.

“So,” Rowan says, and my heart jumps like I’m worried he read my mind. “I’ll go get firewood. You can start some beans.”

I nod like starting beans is something I know how to do. It doesn’t sound too hard. I know what beans are. I’m sure I can figure out how to start them. Rowan hesitates at the door.

“We won’t be here long,” he says, and his voice sounds almost like he’s sad about that. “We’d better ride the hubs into Crystal City tonight. But we can eat first.”

“Okay,” I answer, still acting like I know what he’s talking about.

I realize I’m rubbing at my left arm and let my hand drop to my side.

“Keep the door closed,” he says. “The void beast can’t get in if the door’s shut.”

I swallow. “Are— Are you going to be okay? With the void beast?”

He laughs and then pulls the door shut, closing me in. Great. With a huff, I push back my hood. There’s a lantern hanging from the ceiling; when I push it, the gentle slosh of oil greets me. I light it with a whisper of magic, then find some wood stacked in the corner and light a fire in the hearth. Warmth seeps slowly into the little room. I pull off my mittens, my cloak, and my jacket and then hang them by the door, wondering when exactly I’d started to think of these things as mine.

My stomach lets out a long and incredibly undignified groan. Right. Rowan had said something about beans. I turn to the corner of the hut that was probably the kitchen. There’s a neat little faucet set above a basin on the counter. I pump the faucet, and it responds with an awful shrieking squeal and then a series of throaty sputters. After a few more pumps, water splashes into the basin. I drink, and the water is so cold it feels like ice sliding down my throat.

My stomach recoils then voices another round of protests, and I finally start opening cabinet doors. I find two pots and a pan, a jar of what looks like salt, and finally a burlap sack of something that feels like tiny little rocks. I carry the sack into the light and examine the contents. They look like the smaller, sadder cousins of the beans I knew in the Worlds Above, but I guess that fits. What else would grow down here?

But these beans are as hard as rocks. In fact, they feel almost exactly like rocks. I put one in my mouth and close my teeth around it, pressing experimentally. It tastes a little like dirt and nothing like what I remember. I’ve had beans in dozens of dishes, soups, and stews and mixed in with greens, but they’ve always been plump and soft.

I spit the disappointing little stone into the fire. The stars only know how long this cabin has stood here, in the snow, abandoned. Maybe the beans froze, or maybe they went bad in some other way. Regardless, we’re clearly not going to be eating dinner tonight. With a sigh, I roll the burlap sack closed, put it back in the cabinet, and try to ignore the way my stomach is grumbling about its poor treatment.

There’s a knock on the door. I freeze as panic burns through my body. Rowan said the void beasts couldn’t get in, but the shadow that attacked me under the trees swells in my mind again, rising like smoke.

“It’s me,” Rowan calls through the door. “You’ve got to unlock it, lady.”

My lip curls. Lady. Rowan hasn’t called me that since I fell through the ice. I slide the lock and pull the door open. Rowan is standing on the threshold smiling in a way that looks like it hurts. His arms are piled with wood, and his eyes are bright, too bright, like they’ve just been leaking that blue fire. There’s a massive pile of wood stacked haphazardly behind him, and the shadows pooled beneath that wood are rapidly shrinking back into the snow.

Of course. He used his magic to collect firewood. Damn useful, he’d said about my fire magic. Clearly the same goes for his, although for some reason he seems to want to hide it whenever he can.

I step aside to let Rowan in, then pull the door closed behind him. A gust of cold air makes the fire in the hearth dance. Rowan drops an armful of firewood in a messy heap on the floor and then stares at the fire I’d built as if something is missing.

“Any luck with the beans?” he asks.

“Uh, no,” I reply, shaking my head.

Rowan frowns and rubs his hands together. “What in the voids,” he mutters. “Who else could have cleaned this place out?”

He walks over to the cabinet and yanks the door open. The burlap sack is sitting just where I’d left it. Rowan opens it. Looks at me. And then he laughs. There’s a sharp edge to his laughter that makes me bristle. He pulls out a pot and sets it under the faucet.

“Heh,” Rowan says. “You really are a lady, aren’t you?”