Page 54 of Orc'd & Loaded
"I work with open flame and magical fire spices. I keep everything in my apron."
The echo of her own words lands between us. Her mouth presses into a line that isn't quite a smile. Isn't quite not a smile.
"Sit," I say.
"I don't take orders in a kitchen."
"You're not in your kitchen."
"I'm not in yours, either. This is the town hall."
"Neutral ground, then. Sit."
She sits. On the prep counter, because Solene Rostova doesn't sit in chairs when counters are available. She extends her bandaged hand without being asked this time. The gauze comes away in slow, careful loops. Each layer peels back to reveal the blisters beneath, swollen and glistening under the amber residue of the elvish tincture.
I crack the beeswax seal on the clay pot. The salve inside is thick, pale green, the consistency of cold butter. The smell rises immediately. Alpine meadow after rain. Clean mineral stone. Something deeper underneath, almost animal, warm and alive. My grandmother used to say the salve remembered the fire that created it and chose to forgive.
I scoop a small amount onto my finger.
"This will feel cold first. Then warm. Then nothing."
"Nothing?"
"It numbs the nerve endings while it repairs the tissue beneath. Full effect takes about three hours. By morning the blisters will have flattened."
"By morning."
"The skin will still be tender for days. But the structural damage..."
"Boris."
"What."
"Just do it."
I rub the salve on her palm.
She flinches. A full-body shudder that runs through her shoulders and down her spine. The cold phase. It hits like plunging your hand into snowmelt. I hold her wrist steady and work the salve across the worst of the blisters with the pad of my finger, spreading it in slow circles that follow the topography of damage.
Her fingers twitch against my palm.
I move to the next blister. Then the next. Each one gets its own careful application, its own small circle of thick green salve pressed into the raw skin with a touch so light I'm barely making contact. The pad of my finger against the heel of her hand. The curve of her thumb. The soft webbing between her index and middle fingers where a smaller burn hides, one I didn't notice before.
"You missed this one," I say.
"I didn't miss it."
"You didn't mention it."
"It's minor."
I salve it anyway. Her fingers curl slightly. Not a flinch this time. Not pain. Something else. The warmth phase. The salve shifts temperature, blood-hot now, sinking into tissue and doing its slow, patient work.
I reach for the fresh gauze. Unroll a length. Start wrapping.
Properly this time. Not the clumsy, uneven mess from before. My grandmother taught me this alongside the salve recipe, sitting on the packed-earth floor of her kitchen in the mountains while she wrapped my burned fingers after every failed attempt at fire-roasting. Overlap by half. Keep tension even. Anchor at the wrist. Cross the thumb for stability. Leave the fingertips free so the hand can breathe.
I wrap.
