Bound in Flame

The midwife’s hands were slick with blood.

Not her own. The blood smeared across Rowan Wilde’s hands wasn’t new to her—it came with the work. She moved with quiet confidence, pressing her palms against the belly of the laboring woman as another contraction rippled through the cramped cottage. A low groan escaped the mother’s throat.

Rowan didn’t flinch. At seventeen, she had the kind of steadiness people twice her age struggled to fake. It came from growing up in a place where pain was common and noise got you nowhere. The fire in the hearth had dwindled, casting long shadows across the packed earth floor, and the morning light slipping through the window was pale and weak.

Steam curled up from the birthing stool. The air smelled of sweat, herbs, and iron.

“You’re doing well, Marga,” Rowan murmured, wiping sweat from the woman’s brow with a cloth soaked in chamomile water. Her voice was low and even, like her mother taught her. Never let the mother hear fear. “Just a little more. The head’s almost through.”

Marga’s knuckles were white, clenched around the arms of the stool. She sobbed once, then bore down. The scent of iron thickened the air.

Rowan’s vision blurred for a moment—not from emotion, not really. It was something else. The light shifted, bent oddly. For a breath, it was like the edges of the room didn’t line up. The shadows on the walls pulsed. She blinked hard. Everything snapped back into place.

She didn’t mention it. She never did.

The baby came in a rush, slippery and pale, wailing within seconds. A boy.

Rowan caught him with practiced hands, checked his color, and wrapped him in soft linen. The boy kept crying, fists balled tight against his chest.

Marga collapsed back, sobbing in relief, already reaching for the child.

“Healthy lungs,” Rowan said with a tired smile, the sound ringing in her ears. “You did it.”

She let the mother hold her son as she cleaned up the mess, fingers moving on instinct. She barely noticed the sting where something had scratched her forearm. She wrapped it quickly.

It wasn’t until she stood up to stoke the fire that she realized it was nearly out.

Odd. She could have sworn it had been strong just minutes ago. She bent to add more kindling, but when her fingers brushed the embers, they sparked too quickly—too hot, too fast. A thin curl of flame flared up the side of the hearthstone and disappeared. The wood caught immediately.

Rowan stared at her hand.

It wasn’t burned. Not even warm.

She rubbed her palm against her apron and said nothing.

Outside, Hearthglen lay quiet under a dull winter sky. The snow hadn’t started, but the weight of it hung in the clouds. Rowan stepped out into the cold and pulled her cloak tighter, the morning air biting at her cheeks. The scent of woodsmoke drifted from a few nearby chimneys.

A few children played near the well, shouting and running in circles. One of them—Rena, a girl of six or seven—stopped when she saw Rowan. Her eyes widened.

“You’re glowing,” Rena whispered.

Rowan blinked. “What?”

Rena stared at Rowan, face pinched in confusion. “Nothing.”

Before Rowan could speak again, the girl darted away.

She stood there a moment longer, then touched her own face. Cold. Normal.

By the time she reached the apothecary, her boots were soaked from the frost. Elira Alden—her mother in all the ways that mattered—was hunched over a mortar and pestle, grinding dried valerian root with a scowl.

“Another birth?” Elira asked without looking up.

“Boy. Fast labor.” Rowan shrugged off her cloak. “Marga bled a little more than I liked, but she’s strong.”

Elira glanced over. “You look pale.”

Rowan shrugged again. “Didn’t sleep well.”

That, at least, was true. Her dreams had been strange for weeks now. Shadowed forests. Running. The smell of ash in the wind.

Elira pursed her lips but said nothing. She handed Rowan a tin of salve. “Take this to Maera. Her knees are bothering her again.”

Rowan took it gladly. Anything to be outside for a while.

The village had begun to stir more fully as Rowan passed through it again. A pair of young men carried chopped wood toward the inn, and a washerwoman hung stiff linens from a crooked line.

Calla was waiting near the edge of the village, perched on a low stone wall that bordered Maera’s yard. Her boots tapped against the frost-laced moss, and her curls spilled from beneath a woolen cap that never quite did its job.

Rowan approached with the tin of salve still warm from the apothecary’s hearth.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Calla said, hopping down.

Rowan shook her head. “Just tired.”

Calla fell into step beside her. “Or maybe something else. I dreamed about you again last night.”

Rowan sighed. “Let me guess. Fire and wolves?”

Calla gave her a sidelong glance. “No wolves this time. Just you. You were standing in a circle of flames, and your eyes were—different.”

Rowan raised an eyebrow. “Different how?”

“Like the fire was inside them.”

Rowan rolled her eyes. “You need to stop eating that moldy cheese before bed.”

Calla laughed, but the sound rang thin.

They walked the rest of the short distance in silence, their boots crunching softly on the frost-hardened path.

When they reached Maera’s door, Rowan knocked once and let herself in.

The old woman was wrapped in three shawls and hunched by the hearth. She looked up with red-rimmed eyes.

“Your knees again?” Rowan asked gently, crossing the room.

Maera gave a grunt that might have been agreement.

Rowan knelt beside her, uncapping the tin. The smell of comfrey and pine sap filled the small room. She worked the salve into Maera’s swollen joints, her fingers deft and sure despite the cold.

“You’ve got a good touch,” Maera muttered, settling back into her chair.

Rowan smiled faintly and stood. “Try to stay warm. Elira says to keep wrapped, even inside.”

Maera waved her off. “Tell Elira she can wrap herself in brambles. And take that chatterbox outside with you.”

Calla was still waiting on the stoop, cheeks flushed from the cold. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and squinted up at the low clouds as Rowan joined her.

“You always know just what to say to her,” Calla said.

“She likes people who don’t talk too much.”

“You’re lucky, then.”

They walked back toward the square, the silence between them growing heavier with each step. Rowan kept her eyes on the path, feeling a strange pressure building at the base of her skull.

“It felt real,” Calla said finally. “Like a memory that hasn’t happened yet.”

Rowan didn’t answer. Her head ached faintly. Somewhere in the woods beyond the village, something howled.

Neither of them mentioned it.

That evening, Rowan helped Elira prepare tinctures by candlelight. The apothecary windows fogged with steam and smoke, filled with the mingled scent of rosemary and beeswax. Her hands moved through familiar motions, measuring, straining, pouring. But her thoughts kept drifting—back to the strange flare of the hearthfire, to Rena’s odd comment, to Calla’s dream.

She didn’t believe in magic. Didn’t believe in omens or curses or fated anything.

But something had shifted. And she could feel it.

Even if she didn’t understand it yet.