Page 18 of Bitten & Burned
His mouth curved. “Only for you, Rowena.”
From the corner, Fig let out an enthusiastic trill and wound himself between my ankles, tail flicking as if he knew an adventure was coming.
“I think he’s ready,” I said, bending to scratch behind his ears.
Vael offered me a hand up. “Then we’re all ready. The carriage will be here shortly.”
Fig meowed in his carrier beside me on the carriage seat.
Vael looked up from the book he was reading. “Is he alright? Should we take him out?”
“He’s fine, Vael,” I laughed. “If we take him out, he’s going to think he never has to be in the carrier again.”
“Maybe he doesn’t. He could just get in my coat with me.”
“You spoil him.”
“Well, you won’t let me spoil you, so it’s the best I can get.”
I peeked down at Fig curled up in the carrier. His tabby fur caught the stray moonlight and gleamed bright like a streak of bronze. Some commented on it whenever they met him for the first time—how he glowed, but for a phoeline, Fig was actually considered to be rather dull.
They weren’t especially common animals, or people would be more likely to realize how dull Fig’s coat truly was. But, compared to a regular house cat, I suppose he did glow rather brightly.
Fig shifted in his carrier, tail thumping once against the side. I bent to scratch behind his ears through the bars.
Vael glanced up from his book. “Give him here.”
I sighed. “There’s no hope for him, is there? You’re going to spoil him rotten.”
“Undoubtedly.” Vael opened the carrier, and Fig bounded straight into his lap, curling there like he belonged. Vael strokedhim with one long, unhurried hand, and I found myself smiling.
My mother had chosen him because no one else would. The golden phoeline kittens, the fiery orange, even the blue-gray ones—gone in a heartbeat. But the dull little runt with the soot-colored tabby coat? Shivering and wide-eyed? She’d worried no one would want him. So she brought him home.
And twenty years later, he was still with me. Still bright enough for me.
I reached over, my fingers brushing his short fur, catching just a glint of bronze as we passed a streetlamp. Phoelines could live a century or more, burning out and clawing their way back from the ashes nine times over. Fig was only on his second life. Practically a kitten.
I’d lost him once, to old age, a few years back. Even knowing how phoelines burst into flames upon the end of their life, only to regenerate from the ash and soot, it hadn’t been an experience I’d relished.
“Don’t you leave me any time soon, you hear?” I murmured to Fig, scratching his ears while he purred happily on Vael’s lap. He trilled in response, as if he understood me.
My mother had seen his potential when no one else did. Now he was warm and alive?—
—but she wasn’t.
I missed her. Lately, more than ever. Pain had a way of making me wish for her hands, her voice, her ability to make the world feel bearable. Without her, all I had left was my father.
That thought sat heavily.
The Marlowes were old blood—silversmiths since the First Stone War. In that war, stones weren’t just adornments; they were weapons, conduits for aether strong enough to fracture wards. Families like mine still carried the weight of that craft in our bloodlines.
My father, Ambrose Marlowe, was a master silversmith. My mother, Marlena, had been able to coax secrets into gemstones sodeep the stones seemed to hum with them. People still whispered her name when they saw mine.
And then came the inevitable puzzled look.
But you’re not a jewelcrafter? Or a silversmith?
No. I chased stories in ruins instead of cutting stones or twisting silver. And maybe that hurt more people than I liked to admit—my father most of all. After my mother died, we quickly learned we didn’t know how to be a family without her to bridge the space between us.
