When Dragons Burn

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Rayna

The cabin had a small woodstove in the corner, the kind with a door that stuck and a dented kettle sitting on top like decoration. There was a stack of split logs by the wall and a crate of kindling under the cot. Someone had swept once and then given up; dust clung to the baseboards, and a spider web rope hung in one corner like fishing line. It felt abandoned but not ruined—good enough.

I kept my hands moving because if I stopped, my brain would sprint circles around the word wounds. I didn’t have space for circles. I needed a heat source, a way to dry us out, and a place to put my worry that wouldn’t get in the way.

I shoved two logs into the stove, crumpled old trail maps for tinder, and snapped kindling until my palms stung. The matches were in a red tin on the shelf. The first one broke. The second caught. I fed the flame in small pieces and watched it lick up the paper, then the kindling, then the edge of the log. The stove groaned as metal heated and settled. When the fire took, I opened the damper and watched orange life crawl into the wood’s cracks. It wasn’t pretty, but it was heat.

I wiped my hands on my pants and turned back to the cot. Miron lay where I’d left him, foil blanket tucked to the waist, my extra T-shirt padding the splint. I’d cut his ruined shirt away and worked around everything else as best I could. The bandage across his ribs was already stained through in places, but the bleeding wasn’t free-flowing anymore. I peeled a corner back to check and felt my throat go tight. The edges of the gashes looked… sealed? Not closed, not in the way sutures would do it, but drawn together like someone had run a hot wire along them. The skin around them was angry and too smooth.

I set the dressing back gently and taped it again. “You’re okay,” I said, because talking kept my hands steady. “You’re doing fine.” I wasn’t sure who I meant—him or me.

He made a low sound. Not a groan exactly. It rolled deep in his chest and came out like a word I didn’t know. A second later he spoke, soft and rough, something that wasn’t English. The vowels were clean, the consonants hard. It didn’t sound like pain babble. It sounded intentional. A language. My neck prickled.

“Miron?” I leaned over him so he could see me without lifting his head. “Hey. I need you to speak English if you can.”

His eyes were half-open. They tracked, unfocused at first, then settled on me. The color startled me again—brown with a warm edge, like light through amber. It could have been the cabin lamp making it weird, the small one by the radio with a yellowed shade. I pushed the thought aside. “You’re safe,” I said, making my voice flat and calm. “We’re in a ranger cabin. I’ve called for help. I need to change your dressing soon. Do you understand?”

His mouth moved. “Understand.” The word sounded like it cost him to say.

“Good. Can you rate your pain?” I caught myself and almost laughed because this wasn’t the ER. Still. “I mean—how bad, zero to ten?”

He blinked slow. “Seven.” He swallowed. “Maybe… eight.”

“Okay.” I checked my kit. No IVs, obviously. No narcotics. Nothing that would touch an eight. “I can give you ibuprofen. It’s not much.” I shook two into my palm and touched the back of his neck to help him tuck his chin so he wouldn’t choke. His skin felt hot under my fingers—hotter than a fever. My instinct said pull back. I didn’t. I braced his head and helped him sip again. He coughed once and got them down.

The heat got to me even from inches away. Not just warm skin from a high temp. This felt like standing a foot from a space heater on full in a coat. The foil blanket trapped it. Steam lifted off his shoulders where the blanket didn’t cover. I looked at the stove because I needed a normal reference point for heat. Normal was contained. Normal came from wood and fire and a flue. This came from a person’s body.

The radio crackled and died back to static. I set the handset down and pulled my chair closer to the cot. The legs scraped the floor and sounded too loud. “I’m going to check you again,” I said. “Don’t try to move. You’ll pop the bandage.”

He said something in the other language again—shorter this time, almost like a reply to someone I couldn’t hear. His eyes slid shut and opened again. The gold edge of his irises caught the lamp and held it. Skin at his collarbone glowed faintly, like the heat under it wasn’t content to stay hidden. For a second I thought I was lightheaded from not eating properly. Then the glow faded and the room looked normal again. I rubbed my eyebrows with my wrist and told myself to focus.

Airway, breathing, circulation. It’s a loop you run until it’s muscle memory. His airway was fine. His breathing stayed shallow but consistent. Circulation—warm, obviously. Cap refill decent. No cold sweat. The shock signs I expected weren’t presenting the way they should with this much blood loss. That should have been good news. It didn’t feel like it. Nothing about this felt like a box I could check.

I changed the outer dressing, replaced it with fresh pads, and rewound the bandage. He flinched when I tightened it. “Sorry.” I used the kind of sorry that means I know it hurts and I’m still doing it. He grimaced, breathed out, and let me tie off the wrap. The bandage held.

“Drink?” I asked. He nodded. I helped him again, a few sips at a time. His throat worked as he swallowed. He closed his eyes and said another line of that other language, softer now, like he was talking to himself. It didn’t sound like prayer or curse. It sounded like memory.

“What language is that?” I asked. “If you can tell me.”

He opened his eyes again, focused on me with effort. “Old,” he said, after a moment. “Family.”

“You’re not from here?”

His mouth moved in something like a smile, small and quick. “No one is from here,” he said, and let his eyes drift.

I checked his splinted arm. Fingers were pink and warm. He could wiggle them when I asked. Good. I shifted my chair back an inch and realized sweat had stuck my shirt to my spine. The combined heat from him and the stove turned the small room into a damp sauna. I shrugged out of my jacket and draped it over the chair back, then tucked the foil blanket tighter around his hips.

The fire popped. The lamp hummed. The storm pushed at the windows and whistled under the door in a thin line. I wiped condensation off the inside of the glass with the heel of my hand and looked into the dark. No headlights. No movement. The trail would be a mess if the rain kept up. Thirty minutes could easily become ninety. I forced myself not to do the math on how much blood he’d lost, how much I could lose and still talk, still answer questions, still make wry comments about how small I am.

His breathing shifted. Not louder, just… deeper, for a few breaths in a row. I watched his chest rise and fall under the blanket, watched the bandage lift and settle, and told myself that was good. Then he murmured again, the unknown words dragging like cloth over rough wood, and his skin lit from underneath with that faint gold. Not light like a lamp. A glow. It built under his collarbone and along the ridge of his shoulder and then faded out like it thought better of being seen.

“Miron?” I said, quiet. “Stay with me.”

He answered in English this time. “I am… trying.”

“You’re doing fine.” I reached out and set my hand on his forearm to anchor him. Heat bled into my palm through the damp skin. It almost hurt, like holding a mug that’s too hot a beat too long. I kept it there. His muscles loosened a fraction under my fingers.

He blinked, slow, then looked at my hand. “You don’t pull away,” he said. His voice had more to it now; the rasp thinned.

“Should I?”

He closed his eyes. “Most do.”

Most. The word sat heavy and strange. I wanted to ask what that meant—most what? Most who?—but the part of me that reads people told me I’d get a better answer when he wasn’t half out of it and bleeding onto a ranger’s bed.

I stood to stretch and felt pins and needles run down my left arm. I shook it out, grabbed the kettle, and set it on the stove to warm. The familiar routine of cheap cabin cooking steadied me. I dug a protein bar out of my pack, broke it into small pieces, and forced myself to chew. Food made my hands stop shaking. Water made my head clearer. I didn’t take my eyes off him for long.

When the kettle puffed steam, I poured hot water into the thermos and held it against my own jacket to warm the fabric before draping it over him like an extra layer along the edges that weren’t covered by foil. The heat there felt redundant, but heat earned is still heat.

He watched me do it with that odd puzzled look. “You are small,” he said again, less confused this time. It might have been humor. It might have been a symptom.

“And you’re heavy,” I said. “We’re even.” I dragged the chair closer until my knee touched the cot leg. “Tell me something. Anything. Keep your brain awake.”

He shifted his eyes toward the ceiling, then back. “Name is Miron Sanaron,” he said, the last name careful, like he expected the sounds to cut me. “I was… hiking.”

It was such a bad lie it almost made me smile. “Sure,” I said. “And a bear did this?”

His mouth twitched. “Not a bear.”

“What then?”

He studied me like he was trying to sort a problem into categories. For a second, something in his face went still—military, maybe, or just stubborn. Then he said, “I don’t know the words you would accept.”

“That’s the best non-answer I’ve heard all week.” I glanced at the radio. “Help is on the way. You don’t have to explain anything until you can breathe without wincing. Deal?”

He exhaled, which might have been a laugh. “Deal.”

The radio finally cracked to life with a voice that was clearer than before. “North Ridge cabin, this is Ranger Two. We’re on the service road. Mudslides in two spots. ETA twenty to thirty. Do you copy?”

I jumped to grab the handset. “Copy. Patient male, multiple lacerations, possible rib involvement, left forearm fracture. Conscious, oriented times… two? Name Miron. Vitals stable right now. We’re warm and dry.” I paused. “Well—warm.”

“Keep him there. We’ll signal with lights before we reach the cabin.”

“Understood.” I set the radio back and let my shoulders drop a fraction. Twenty to thirty. That I could hold a person through.

I turned back to Miron. He was watching me with that same steady attention, like he was cataloging each thing I did and storing it. The glow under his skin had faded again. The heat hadn’t. My palm still tingled where I’d touched him.

“You okay?” I asked.

He took a breath. His gaze flicked to the stove, the door, my hands, then back to my face. “You should be afraid,” he said, quiet, not a threat, more… assessment. “You aren’t.”

“I’m busy,” I said. “Fear can take a number.”

He nodded once, like that made sense, and let his eyes close. “Stay,” he said, softer. It sounded like a request and an order at the same time.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, and meant it. I checked the bandage one more time, adjusted the blanket, and sat with one hand on the cot frame and the other near his wrist so I could feel his pulse without making it a production. The room smelled like wet wool, wood smoke, and something like hot metal. The storm leaned against the windows and moved on a little. The stove snapped and sighed. He breathed. I breathed. We waited for lights on the road.