POV: Mara
The storm takes the power in one swallow.
Not a flicker, not a warning—just a single, sharp exhale from the sky, and every lamp in Hearthworks drops into darkness. The kitchen exhales with it. For one second the whole world feels like it’s remembering how to breathe.
Candles bloom along the counters like tiny brave things. Someone strikes flint three times before it catches, then touches the flame to the next wick and the next until the whole room glows honey-warm and trembling. Shadows leap over shelves and hooks. The copper pots shine like half-moons.
The air smells like wax, wet wool, and onion—comfort smells, the kind that say you’re safe even if the world isn’t.
“Everyone okay?” Silvie calls, her voice firm enough to anchor the floor.
“Yes,” we answer—Hearthworks always answers like we train it to: one voice, one room, one ribcage.
I grab a tray of cups still warm from hot water, turn toward the stair—my brain three steps ahead, thinking of the dorms, the hall, the tiny bunks—and I run straight into a body. Hard. Solid. Familiar in a way the dark makes worse.
The kind of collision that tells you who it is before the candles bother revealing him.
“Sorry,” I gasp, breath catching.
“Careful,” Cael says.
His hands land on my arms—warm, steady, confident in a way that makes my bones want to lean forward. The tray wobbles. I steady it. He steadies me.
We freeze.
The stair is narrow. Too narrow. The wall presses cold against my spine. His chest is inches from mine. I can smell his cloak—rain, steel, something like citrus peel if you stand close enough. I can see the scar under his jaw, a thin pale line that looks like someone once tried to erase him.
I can see the lightning in his eyes—the kind that only shows when fear and relief sit side by side.
“Checking on you,” he says. His voice is lower in the dark, softer without meaning to be soft.
“We have candles,” I whisper. I don’t move. Neither does he.
A drop of water falls from his hair to my cheek. A cold trail. My breath stumbles.
Aster flares inside me, hot and bright. Yes, she says, greedy.
I want to hit her. I want to thank her. I want the moment to stop and stretch and break.
My hand lifts without asking. Memory more than thought. My fingers drift toward the seam of his shirt before my rational brain slams back into place. I curl my fingers into my own palm so hard my nails bite skin.
He swallows. The sound is small but enormous between us. I feel it like a hand around my ribs.
“We should—” he begins.
“—Move,” I finish.
Neither of us moves.
The storm outside growls. The stairwell air tightens. His thumb twitches on my sleeve, barely a gesture, barely anything—and yet it feels like a confession. Like he’s fighting himself and losing a little.
He takes a step back.
A real step. Space reappears between us like an injury reopening.
It costs him. I see the cost—jaw tight, shoulders drawn.
I match him because not matching him feels too dangerous. I step past, close enough that cloth brushes cloth. The contact is so slight and so stupidly electric it almost kills me.
“Thank you for checking,” I whisper, not turning around. “We’re okay.”
“Good,” he says. The word is tight enough to snap. “Sleep, if you can.”
I don’t say I can’t.
He doesn’t say he can’t either.
We leave opposite ways—him up the stairs, me down the hall—both a little wrecked, both pretending to be fine, both knowing we’re lying.
Hearthworks rustles around me. Pots settle. A few workers murmur about the outage. Candles spit wax. The storm slams a shutter outside like a warning hand.
Pia scurries to my side with a towel over her head like it’s armor. “The power stone cracked again,” she says. “I told Silvie to beg the artificers to stop patching it with hope and twine.”
“It’ll come back,” I say, though I don’t believe it. Not tonight. Not with this wind.
Lysanth storms are different from Moonfell storms. Moonfell rain cuts; Lysanth rain crushes. It falls in sheets so heavy you can’t see the far lantern posts. The river rises fast, roaring against tide-walls. Lightning hits the outer metalwork like it’s counting.
The old stories say Lysanth sits between two tempers: the sea’s and the moon’s. When both argue, the city suffers.
Down the hall a bell taps twice—slow, spaced, gentle—test pattern. Every kitchen worker glances up. We ignore it because we are trained to. Pia shrugs it off. Silvie doesn’t. Her eyes sharpen.
Hearthworks tradition: bells lie unless they panic.
A minute later, the bell code hits again.
Hard.
Fast.
Different spacing.
The kind that means: not practice.
The kitchen stiffens as one organism.
Pia’s head snaps up. “Real?” she asks, her voice feather-thin.
“Real,” Silvie says, already at the door, already tying her apron tighter like it’s armor.
My heart sprints. My skin prickles. The storm outside booms, and the candles flicker so hard their flames bend sideways like they’re bowing to something none of us can see.
I grab the whistle at my throat.