She's inside, May cried. Alden froze, dread turning his limbs to stone. The smoke rolled thick, the flames roaring. Before he could move, a blur darted past him. Yanni wrapping a wet blanket around her shoulders and plunging into the burning dark.
Yanni. The fire swallowed her whole. Inside, the heat clawed her lungs raw. She followed the child's coughing, stumbling over fallen boards until she found June huddled beside a trough. "Hold on," she rasped, covering the girl with a blanket, shielding her with her own body.
Together they crawled, choking, the air glowing white hot. Outside, Alden fought through smoke, tearing at the door with his bare hands. When it burst open, Yanni stumbled out, carrying June against her chest. Her hair was singed. Skin blistered, but her eyes, those eyes were alive.
Alden caught them both, falling to his knees in the dirt as Eli and May rushed forward. For a long moment, the only sound was fire and breath. Then Alden spoke, voice raw. "They said you bewitched men." Yanni blinked through tears and ash.
"And do you believe them?" He shook his head slowly, pressing his forehead against hers. "I do now," he whispered. because my heart's not mine anymore." The words hung between them as rainless thunder rolled through the mountains. By dawn, the barn was a black skeleton against a pale sky.
The fire had spared the house, but the smell of smoke lingered sharp, stubborn, unyielding. Yanni's hands were wrapped in linen. Her palms blistered. June slept beside her on the couch, hair matted with soot. Alden sat nearby, his face drawn but gentle, watching both of them as if afraid they might vanish.
Outside the first faint breeze since spring swept through the valley. It carried with it the smell of wet earth, a promise. Morning came soft and gray. The sky smudged with ash and dawn. Coyote Bend lay half in ruin, half in peace.
Smoke still curled from the black ribs of the barn, and the ground shimmered with the strange stillness that follows disaster, that fragile hush between loss and gratitude. When the first wagon from Dry Creek rolled into the yard, Yanni thought her eyes deceived her. Towns folk, men who'd spat her name a week ago, now stepped down, eyes lowered, hats in hand. No one spoke of curses. They came with buckets, hammers, and boards.
Perhaps it was guilt. Perhaps the desert had finally taught them humility. May met them with her apron still dusted in flour. "Well," she said, "if you've come to stare, you might as well lift something while you're at it." The men obeyed without a word.
Alden didn't join the rebuilding. He stayed near the porch where Yanni sat, her hands swathed in white linen. June slept curled against her side, her small face pressed to Yanni's shoulder, soot still clinging to her curls. The faint rise and fall of the girl's chest was the only rhythm Alden trusted anymore. He knelt beside them, hat in hand.