Heart Burn
Firebug“Heart Burn” is the heading of chapter 10, where concern over Cade’s unexplained delay unfolds alongside a small but striking eruption of heat. The phrase works as a double register: Ava is emotionally strained, while an object in her hand becomes hot enough for someone else to take it with an oven mitt.
Literal and Emotional Registers
Ava has been traveling for hours and presses Duncan for news of Cade, who has not arrived despite having only needed to cross town. As she speaks, her throat tightens. She does not notice that the ladle has turned molten red until Lock removes it from her hand with an oven mitt. The title’s force lies in that proximity: distress is voiced in the same moment that heat becomes visible and physically dangerous.
Context and Effect
The scene does not explain the phrase as a diagnosis or give it a single literal meaning. Instead, the chapter heading places emotional strain beside an uncontrolled sign of heat, while the conversation keeps its immediate focus on Cade’s absence. Duncan says he had offered Cade an escort and was about to send a scouting party; Ava’s alarm and the glowing ladle therefore enter a scene already shaped by uncertainty and waiting. The title compresses those elements without separating feeling from bodily consequence.
