Chapter 5 Burned Fingers

Hazel's POV

"You've been here before."

It wasn't a question. I said it flat, the same way he said things, like maybe copying his tone would make him answer faster.

Osric didn't look away from the shelf, but something in his shoulders went tight. "I told you where it was."

"You told me the wrong shelf. Then you looked at exactly the right one without checking."

"Lucky guess."

"You don't seem like a lucky-guess kind of person."

For a second I thought he'd actually answer , really answer, not just toss a flat line back at me and change the subject. His mouth opened. Then he reached past me, pulled the moth-silk down himself, and set it on the table like the conversation had never happened.

"We don't have time for this," he said. "Sunrise doesn't wait for either of us to feel better about it."

He wasn't wrong. I let it go, filing the shelf thing away next to the note in my pocket, another piece of a puzzle nobody was handing me the full picture of.

We worked in silence for a while after that, if you could call it silence with the cauldron hissing and bubbling low behind us. He measured out the lavender oil first, three careful drops, then slid the bottle toward me.

"Your turn. Same amount, second jar."

I poured too fast. The lavender oil sloshed over the rim, more than double what he'd used, and I braced for him to say something about it , the kind of comment that would've made my whole chest go hot and defensive.

He didn't.

"A little heavy," he said, calm as anything, "but lavender's forgiving. Just add less of the next ingredient to balance it." He didn't sigh. He didn't roll his eyes. He said it the way you'd tell someone which fork to use, no weight behind it at all, and somehow that was worse than if he'd laughed, because I didn't know what to do with kindness I hadn't braced for.

"You're not going to make fun of me for that?"

"Should I?"

"Most people would."

He glanced at me sideways, something unreadable passing behind his eyes. "Most people are wasting their time."

I didn't have a response for that, so I reached for the next jar instead, quicker than I needed to, determined not to let the moment sit there long enough to mean anything.

The next few steps went smoother. He talked me through crushing dried petals between my palms, showed me how to tell when the liquid in the cauldron had turned the right shade of amber by smell instead of sight, corrected my grip on the stirring rod without once making me feel like my hands were the problem. I kept waiting for the moment he'd get impatient. It never came.

"Why does it matter so much to you?" I asked, mostly to fill the quiet before it filled itself with something else. "Getting this exactly right. Most people just want the potion. You're acting like one wrong measurement ends the world."

He kept his eyes on the cauldron. "Because it might."

"That's not an answer either."

His jaw worked once, the same small motion from earlier, like he was chewing over how much truth he could afford to spend. Then, quietly, without any of the flatness from before: "This potion is the only thing that makes my life bearable. Not helpful. Not nice to have. The only thing."

The words landed heavier than they should have, coming from someone who said almost everything like it cost him nothing.

I wanted to ask what that meant , bearable how, bearable why , but before I could get the question out, his whole face closed again, fast, like a door slamming somewhere behind his eyes. He turned back to the cauldron and didn't say another word.

The quiet stretched. I counted my own heartbeat to fill it, one, two, three, waiting for him to add something, anything, to soften what he'd just handed me and then yanked back.

He didn't.

I told myself it didn't matter, that I didn't need him to explain himself to keep brewing, and reached for the next step in the recipe on my own , a pinch of powdered root, meant to go in slow, one grain at a time, while the mixture cooled between additions.

I didn't wait for it to cool.

I was too busy watching his face, still turned away, still giving me nothing, and some stubborn part of me decided I didn't need him hovering over every single step to prove I could do this. I dropped the whole pinch in at once.

The cauldron hissed like something angry waking up. Steam shot upward, thick and sudden, and I yanked my hand back half a second too late , a bright, sharp sting flaring across my fingertips where a splash of the mixture caught skin.

"Hazel,"

He grabbed my wrist before I even registered pulling away, turning my hand over fast, checking the burn with a focus that didn't match the flat voice from thirty seconds ago. His hands were warm , too warm, warmer than a person's hands should be , and steadier than mine had been all night.

"It's fine," I said, staring hard at the reddened skin instead of at him, because looking at him right now felt like admitting something I wasn't ready to admit. "I've had worse."

"You added the root too fast."

"I know that now."

"You should've waited for me to tell you it had cooled."

"I didn't want to wait." The words came out sharper than I meant, more honest than I meant. "I didn't want you thinking I couldn't do a step on my own."

Something shifted in his expression , not quite surprise, but close to it, the kind of look someone gets when a stranger says something that hits closer to true than expected. He didn't let go of my hand yet. He just held it a second too long, thumb resting light against my wrist like he was checking something other than the burn.

"Nobody thinks that," he said quietly.

"You don't know that."

"I know you finished a potion by yourself an hour before I ever offered to help."

I looked up at that, right into his face, and for one long second neither of us said anything at all. His eyes had gone gold again, faint, barely there, the way they had in the doorway , except this time he wasn't a stranger anymore, and I wasn't sure that made things better.

He let go of my hand first.

"We should keep going," he said. "Not much time left."

"Osric."

He didn't answer.

"Osric, what did you mean, bearable?"

Nothing. Not a word, not a glance, not even the small tired sigh he'd give when he thought a question was a waste of breath. He just stood there at the cauldron with his back half-turned, jaw locked tight, staring into the steam like it held the answer he wasn't willing to hand me himself , and the longer he stayed silent, the more it felt like whatever he wasn't saying was the only thing in the room that actually mattered.