Morning came soft and bright over Stoneford, and the town felt different. Doors stood open. People talked in clumps in the lanes, pointing toward the blackened storehouse and then toward the healer's hall. When Rowan stepped outside with Brennar and Ari, he didn't make it three paces before someone pressed a small loaf into his hands.
"For last night," the woman said, eyes shining. "You saved my brother."
Rowan tried to answer, but his throat closed. He nodded instead. She nodded back and hurried away, wiping her face with her sleeve.
Children tailed him wherever he went, two steps behind like a flock of curious birds. They whispered and dared each other forward.
"Ask him!"
"You ask!"
A brave one finally tugged Rowan's sleeve. "How did you make the water fly?" he whispered.
Rowan crouched so they were eye to eye. "I didn't make it fly," he said. "I just… asked it to help." He tapped his chest. "And I breathed slow."
The boy tried one deep, serious breath and grinned as if he'd discovered a secret.
Brennar laughed. "Careful," he said to Rowan. "You'll have them all flooding their dinner bowls."
"Then they'll learn to mop," Ari said dryly, but her tone had less bite than usual. She was watching the street beyond the children—the way the guards leaned in to hear a captain's quiet orders, the way two councilors in tidy cloaks paused when Rowan passed and didn't quite meet his eyes.
Lyra stepped into the doorway behind them, hair braided tight, apron clean. She handed Rowan a cup of broth even as a baker pressed a second loaf on him.
"He needs food, not gifts," she told the baker, though there was no heat in it.
"It's both," the baker said, smiling. "Let the boy have both." He lowered his voice. "Some of us haven't slept from worry. Last night… he gave us a breath back."
Rowan took the cup with both hands so he wouldn't drop it with the bread. "Thank you," he said again, and meant it.
They didn't go far that morning. Rowan still tired easily. Lyra kept one eye on his color and the other on his pace. But everywhere they walked, someone stopped them to say thanks. A council messenger tried to speak with Ari; she sent him away with a look that said later. Two boys ran past beating a bucket like a drum. Market folk waved from stalls. An old man saluted with the crooked dignity of someone who had worn a uniform once and never stopped. Rowan felt the attention like sunlight on his skin—warm and strange and a little too bright.
In the square, a small group started clapping as he and Brennar crossed. Rowan froze, heat rising in his face. Brennar kept walking, clapped once himself, and then threw his good arm around Rowan's shoulders.
"Don't stiffen, river boy," he murmured. "You did good work. Take the air and keep moving."
Rowan moved. The clapping faded. He breathed slow, the way Lyra had taught him, and found his feet again.
Back at the hall, Lyra set him at the table to grind willow bark while she checked bandages. He worked the pestle with steady turns, glad for something humble to do. The door swung open and a guard captain stepped in—a square man with a polished breastplate and tidy beard. He smelled faintly of oil and rain.
"On behalf of Stoneford," the captain said, voice smooth, "I offer thanks to the young man who saved a ward from burning." He nodded the right amount of respect toward Rowan, then looked past him at Lyra and Brennar. "The council will, of course, send a proper note."
"Words are welcome," Lyra said, not pausing in her work. "Bread and timber will be better. Three families lost roofs."
The captain's eyes flicked to her, then away. "We are… organizing." He cleared his throat. "We will also need to understand the extent of this boy's abilities. For safety."
Brennar's smile did not reach his eyes. "He knows enough to put out your fire. That safe enough?"
Ari's voice came from the doorway, cool as shade. "If you'd like a lesson on asking instead of ordering, I'm sure Rowan can arrange it."
The captain adjusted his polished cuffs. "No offense meant. Only prudence." He inclined his head and stepped back into the street.
When he was gone, Brennar let out a low sound. "Polite as a snake."
Lyra wiped her hands. "He's not wrong to ask," she said, then looked at Rowan. "But they don't know the right questions yet."
"What are the right ones?" Rowan asked.
"How long can you hold before you shake. Whether your breath can anchor you when others scream. If your gift listens when you're hurt." She set a bowl of water in front of him, the same as before, and tapped the rim. "Practice."
Rowan practiced. He watched the surface and found the steadiness underneath the noise of the day. He let his shoulders drop. He breathed in for four, held, and let it out. When he stopped, the bowl was still. Lyra's mouth softened, the ghost of a smile he'd learned to read.
Afternoon slid toward evening. The town settled into a happy kind of tired. People swept ash from doorways. Someone you couldn't see played a whistle low and sweet from an upper window. The smell of stew drifted across the lane.
As the light thinned, Rowan slipped out alone. He followed the lane toward the wall, letting the quiet stretch his legs. He didn't go far—Lyra would scold him if he vanished—but he needed space where no one pressed bread into his hands or thanked him until his ears rang. He walked the length of the watch road and put his palms to the cool stone. It held the last of the day's heat. From somewhere beyond, the river's voice reached him: not a roar now, just a steady run, like breath through a sleeping chest.
He stood there a while and listened. Belonging, he thought. The word felt fragile and big at the same time. He had hated being stared at. He had loved it too, a little. He did not want that to be the thing that moved him.
A pebble clicked on roof tile.
Rowan looked up. A shape crouched on the roof across the lane—too still for a stray, too poised for a drunk. For a breath it was only silhouette: a person low to the ridge, weight balanced on the balls of the feet. The figure's head tilted as if measuring him. Something slender glinted faintly at one wrist and then went dark.
"Hello?" Rowan called, not loud.
No answer. The figure didn't flinch. It simply slid backward like a shadow being pulled and was gone beyond the roofline.
Rowan waited, every hair on his arms lifting. He told himself it could have been any watchman. A town runner. A thief sizing up windows, nothing to do with him. The stories he told himself were neat and sensible. He did not believe them.
Bootsteps sounded behind him on the watch road. Ari came to a stop at his side and leaned her shoulder into the wall, eyes on the same roof.
"You saw it," Rowan said.
"I saw someone," Ari said. "Too smooth for a patrol. Too quiet for a drunk." She didn't look at him. "Popularity draws two kinds of people. Friends and hunters. Learn the difference."
Rowan swallowed. "Which was that?"
Ari's mouth made a small, unreadable line. "We'll find out."
They walked back together. Lanterns lit one by one along the lane, gold in the deepening blue. People waved them goodnight like nothing bad could happen with the lamps burning and the buckets stacked, ready. At the hall door, Brennar stuck his head out and squinted into the dim.
"There you are," he said. "Thought you fell in the well."
"Not today," Rowan said.
Lyra glanced up from her stool, took in their faces, and asked no questions. She passed Rowan a cup and tapped the rim. He breathed the steam and felt the knot in his chest loosen a little.
Outside, somewhere beyond the roofs, a watch whistle sounded twice and then once, the pattern Ari had told him meant all's well. Rowan listened, half comforted, half wary now that he knew how many eyes a city could have.
He lay down later and stared at the rafters. Voices drifted through the shutters: a tired laugh, a cart rolling late, the soft creak of leather from a passing guard. He forced himself to breathe slow. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. The river inside him answered with a quiet run.
He almost slept. Then he saw, in his mind, the still shape on the roof—the way it had watched, the way it had vanished without sound. The warmth of the day's praise thinned at the edges. Pride settled into something steadier. Resolve, maybe. Or the start of caution he hadn't had before.
Rowan rolled to his side and closed his eyes. Tomorrow would come, with practice and smiles and questions he didn't yet know how to answer. He would meet it with breath and water and whatever courage he had.
On the roof across the lane, nothing moved. But he knew it now: not all eyes on him were friendly.