HEARTHBOUND: THE LAST WARM MAN

Chapter 5: The Price of Heat

"Get him on the bench! Move!"

Mara was already running. Rowan had never seen anyone cross a room that fast. She dropped to her knees beside Gus, tore open his coveralls, and pressed both hands over the wound. Blood welled up between her fingers, dark and slow.

"Through and through, upper left chest," she said, almost to herself. "Missed the heart. Hit the lung or close to it. Pip, stay with Darren's wife. Rowan!"

"Here."

"I need your fire on this table. Right now."

He didn't ask why. He knelt on the other side of Gus and let the Hearth spill outward, and the room warmed to something close to a spring morning. People gasped. The wounded mechanic's gray skin pinked a shade.

**[EMBER: 74. UPKEEP: 9 PER HOUR.]**

**[WARNING: HEALING SURGE REQUIRES ADDITIONAL EMBER.]**

"Cold kills the wounded faster than the wounds do," Mara said. Her hands never stopped moving. "I've been losing people to that for weeks. You're the first thing in this city that's ever been on my side."

"Don't get sentimental. Fix him."

"I'm trying to." She flashed him a fierce, tired look. "I need a chest drain. Antibiotics. Sterile gauze. Whatever that thing can give me."

Rowan pulled up the Exchange with trembling fingers. Chest Seal Kit, 30 Ember. Broad Spectrum Antibiotic, 40. Sterile Surgical Pack, 45. That was 115, and he had 74.

*Not enough.*

The panel flickered, and a new line appeared, as if the System had heard him think.

**[BOND CONTRIBUTION: MARA OKAFOR. EMBER FLOW: +12 PER HOUR.]**

**[SCARCITY BONUS APPLIES TO MEDICAL ITEMS. COST REDUCED 60%.]**

He read it twice. Then he laughed in disbelief. The worse things got, the cheaper the cure became. It wasn't kindness. It was math. But today the math was on their side.

"Buy it all," Mara said, when he told her. "Rowan. All of it."

The shimmer and the hiss, and a neat pile of supplies on the concrete. Mara went to work like a woman with eight years of practice and no time left. Rowan held the lamp. Tess held Gus's shoulders down when he came to, swearing in a voice that could have stripped paint.

"Hold still, you stubborn old goat," she said.

"Sergeant, I swear to God, if I die you'll owe me four dollars."

"You can't die. You'll owe *me* four dollars. Now breathe."

It took forty minutes. At the end, Mara sat back on her heels, her sleeves red to the elbows, and let out a long, shaking exhale.

"He'll live," she said. "If the infection stays out. If the heat holds."

"It'll hold," Rowan said.

"Say it like you believe it."

"I believe it."

She wiped her forehead with her wrist and looked at him with exhausted warmth. "You look terrible."

"People keep telling me. I thought it was the lighting."

"Sit down before you fall down." She pressed a canteen into his hands, the water warm, a little sweet. She'd added glucose from the kit. Their fingers brushed, and neither pulled away quite as fast as they could have. "You've done enough for tonight. Rest."

"There's still the shooter on the roof."

"Tess went up," Mara said. "Twenty minutes ago."

Rowan blinked. He'd been so focused he hadn't noticed.

As if on cue, a thump sounded from the roof hatch. A ladder creaked. Tess dropped into the depot, dusty, bloody at the knuckles, a dead man's rifle slung over her shoulder.

"Sniper," she said flatly. "One. He was alone. He had a radio, and he was feeding our position back to someone." She dropped the rifle at Rowan's feet. "He's not feeding anyone now."

"Tess." Rowan stood. His legs shook. "You didn't have to..."

"Yes, I did." She stopped in front of him. "You'd have sat in this room and bled for all of us until you were dead. I'm not letting that happen. Not to the one thing in this city worth keeping." Her voice dropped, rough. "So I'm saying it plainly. You keep us warm. I keep you alive. That's the deal."

**[TRUST: CALDER, TESS. 72%.]**

**[BOND THRESHOLD: 60% REACHED.]**

**[BOND AVAILABLE. CONFIRM?]**

Rowan stared at the word *confirm.* It pulsed like a heartbeat.

"Tess," he said slowly. "There's something I should tell you. The System has a way for us to bond. It would mean you'd share my Hearth. The warmth, the strength, whatever it gives. It would also mean it flows both ways. I'd feel some of what you feel."

"Define 'some.'"

"I don't know yet."

She studied him in the lamplight, wary, calculating, and for a moment he thought she'd say no. Then the corner of her mouth lifted.

"You told me the truth when you didn't have to," she said. "That's rare." She held out her hand. "Do it."

He took it. Rough fingers, calloused palm, steady as a post.

**[BOND ESTABLISHED: TESS CALDER.]**

**[HEARTH ZONE EXPANDED: 11 METERS.]**

**[HEARTH TIER 2 UNLOCKED: FLAME MANTLE.]**

Warmth rushed through him again, richer this time, with a spark of something sharper. He felt Tess's pulse in his own wrists. Her focus, her stubborn courage, the long, hard knot of a woman who had survived too much alone. She felt it, too. He saw it land on her face, a flicker of vulnerability, quickly shuttered.

"Huh," she said.

"Yeah."

"That's... weird."

"Yeah."

"I don't hate it."

"Good."

Their hands didn't separate for another few seconds than they needed to. Behind them, Mara cleared her throat very quietly and became suddenly interested in Gus's bandages.

A scratching sound.

Rowan froze. It came from the front doors. Not a knock. A dragging, scraping, desperate sound, like fingernails on steel.

"Someone's out there," Tess said, rifle already up.

"Someone, or something."

Tess shoved the bar aside and cracked the door a few inches.

The cold blasted in. And with it, a body, a young woman, tumbling forward into the lamplight with snow in her hair and blood frozen on her sleeve. She was maybe twenty, with a heart-shaped face and a green scarf wound round her neck. Behind her, in the white dark, Rowan saw eyes.

Pale blue eyes, low to the ground. A dozen of them.

Something howled.

It wasn't a wolf. It wasn't a dog. It was a sound like a freezer door being torn off its hinges, thin and wet and wrong. The shapes behind the girl came closer, gaunt, long-limbed things with rime growing across their ribs and breath that turned to ice before it left their mouths.

"Rimehounds," Gus rasped from the bench. "Oh, hell. Close the door."

Rowan didn't think. He stepped into the doorway and let the Flame Mantle burst out of him.

It felt like putting on a coat made of the sun. Golden light rolled down his arms, wrapped around his shoulders, and surged out across the snow in a wide, brilliant wave. The hounds shrieked. The nearest ones scrambled backward, skidding on suddenly wet ground, their frost steaming off in plumes.

**[FLAME MANTLE ACTIVE. EMBER COST: 30 PER MINUTE.]**

**[HOSTILE CREATURES: 12. THREAT: MODERATE.]**

"Pull her in!" Rowan shouted.

Tess grabbed the girl by the collar and hauled her across the threshold. Mara and Gus slammed the doors. The bar dropped. The howling went on outside for a long, awful minute, then faded as the hounds retreated into the dark.

Rowan sagged against the wall, panting. The Mantle guttered and settled down to a quiet glow.

The girl lay on the concrete, wheezing. Mara knelt beside her and checked her pulse. "Frostbite, exhaustion, no major wounds. She'll live."

"Who is she?" Tess asked.

The girl's eyes fluttered open. They were huge and dark and terrified. They searched the faces above her, one after another, until they found Rowan's.

"You're him," she whispered. "The warm one."

Rowan crouched slowly. "Who are you?"

"Ivy," she said. A tear cut a track through the frost on her cheek. "Ivy Lin." She clutche

d his sleeve with trembling fingers. "He sent me."

The room went dead quiet.

"Voss sent me," Ivy said. "And Rowan... he already knows exactly what you are."