The pocket of leftover fire breath that surged out of the vessel’s burst sump didn’t scald Joren’s skin like the earlier steam bursts. Instead, as the amber-tinted shimmer wrapped around his soot-streaked forearms. Then he rose into his nostrils, it felt terrifyingly, seductively gentle. It was the distilled tail-echo of the young fire spirit the Aperture Court had tightly packed in the bottom of the shell to make its host’s training feel easy.
In half a heartbeat, as the warm vapor pressed against the pores of Joren’s wrists, the dull, grinding ache of his recovering Coal channels vanished. The heavy iron pry-chisel in his left hand suddenly felt weightless. A smooth, golden current of borrowed Flame strength began to hum along the outside of his arms, offering to flow straight into his chest, snap the rusted fourth bolt with a flick of his wrist, and lift him out of the pit with the radiant, clear aura of an inner-court prodigy.
No one in Ash Reed’s upper hall would ever know. He was only salvaging scrap iron for an ally. If a stray mouthful of spirit breath happened to smooth out his scarred spirit veins. Meanwhile, he freed the fourth rib for Daro’s longsword, he could tell himself he had taken it for the sake of the valley’s defense.
