The heat was not an illusion, and it wasn’t a fever born of infected stitches.
It was an unbending, body reality that radiated from the center of Len’s chest. It pushed outward against the joint padding of his ribs until every breath in felt as though he were drawing breath from the mouth of a brass foundry. The air in his mouth tasted of cold iron, copper filings, and the sharp, ozone tang of an approaching thunderstorm on a high mountain pass.
Len didn’t try to hide it any longer.
With his uninjured right hand, he reached to the bone buttons of his oilskin coat, unfastening them one by one. He opened his canvas vest, then pulled back the raw, unwhitened linen of his undershirt. He exposed his bare chest to the cold, sulfur-tainted draft of the kitchen.
Beside the hearth, Nessa Tern drew in a sharp, horrified breath, her hand flying to cover Avel’s eyes. Bram Ash took half a step backward toward the window. His heavy jaw dropped in stunned, disbelieving silence.
Beneath the pale skin of Len’s chest bone, the courier status ledger was blazing.
Normally, for an outside runner on the Tern Road, a personal ledger was a faint, unobtrusive pattern. A network of semi-clear, pale-blue lines that rested dormant beneath the deep skin, visible only. Just then, a courier consciously focused his intent during an official postal muster. It was an office baseline, recording five earned improvements. Surefoot, Long Breath, Road Sense, and two tiers…
