Everyone left extra early the next morning, rejuvenated with a sense of purpose from the news that Maelia would be in the palace soon. Cyrene was alone, eating a small breakfast, when there was a knock on the door.

“Your laundry, Lady Haenah,” a girl called from the hallway.

“Yes. Come in, Elzie.”

Elzie entered the room and set down a bundle of laundry on the trunk at the foot of Cyrene’s bed. “I had your cloak mended and washed three times, as instructed.”

She stood and plucked the cloak off the top of the stack.

It was the disgusting thing Ceis’f had gotten for her on short notice when outside of Strat. Her own cloak had gone missing, and she was glad that she had not brought the ermine-lined red one Edric had given to her as a present.

Thankfully, after a few good washes, this cloak looked to be in much better condition—not anything she would have worn at home, but nothing that would make her stand out in a crowd.

“Very good,” Cyrene said. She dropped a silver Aurumian trinket into Elzie’s hand and then dismissed her.

As soon as the door closed, Cyrene threw the cloak around her shoulders. She tucked her dark brown hair up into a cap that she had taken from Ahlvie’s belongings and then threw the hood over her head. Her own blue dress from Byern fit snug to her body, and without the added bulk of the Aurumian dresses, she felt like she could walk freely for the first time in weeks. As long as she kept her head down and returned quickly, no one would be any wiser that she had left The Lively Dagger.

Cyrene had memorized the comings and goings of Madam LaRoux by the distinctive sound of her gait. Every morning, she would meet with the gentleman across the hall for a half hour and wouldn’t return upstairs until lunch. She never bothered Cyrene. In fact, Elzie was the only person Cyrene ever spoke to in the inn. She wanted to keep it that way.

The familiar clunk, clunk of Madam LaRoux’s steps sounded on the second-floor landing. Cyrene pressed her ear to the door and waited. Like clockwork, Madam LaRoux knocked on the door across the hall. A man welcomed her inside and then shut the door.

Cyrene would have thirty minutes to get out of the building without Madam LaRoux knowing, and then she had the rest of the afternoon to herself before anyone else returned to the inn.

Cyrene slung a bag over her shoulder and slunk out of her room. The hallway was empty, but she encountered a man walking up the stairs. She kept her head low and hoped he’d just walk right by.

“Where ya goin’, missy?” he asked, stopping her in her tracks.

“To collect a tray for Madam LaRoux,” she warbled meekly.

“Well, tell the old hag to bring me some more of those breakfast rolls.” He strode past her and smacked her on the bottom as he passed.

She took a few deep breaths in and out before continuing down the stairs. All she wanted to do was turn around, throw the man back down the stairs, and teach him a real lesson about how to treat a woman. But she couldn’t afford that complication at the moment. So, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.

Elzie was helping another man, who kept trying to get her to sit on his lap. Cyrene was grateful for the distraction, but it did nothing but fuel her anger. She hurried out of the open front doors and onto the busy streets of Aurum.

It took her a while to regain her bearings in the foreign city. Back home, she had always had the mountains to guide her. Now, she had only the sea at her back and the looming castle on the hill. She located a street that she had taken on the first day, and the map came back into her mind. She retraced her steps, but without Ceis’f there for comfort, she saw what she had missed the first time.

Dirty faces. Hunger. Poverty that clogged the streets. Women and children left out to starve.

She swallowed and kept moving forward. These things didn’t exist in Byern. There was always plenty. That was what the Class system was for. At least, that was what she had always thought before.

Have I been blind to this in my own city?

Either way, she didn’t understand how the King Iolair could rule over people he allowed to suffer while he looked down on them from up high.

It made her stomach twist as she veered through the streets. She didn’t feel safe again until she was out of the winding streets and in the woods. She took a deep cleansing breath. It surprised her how at home she felt out here, considering she had lived her entire life in a big city and only the last couple of months in the woods.

But Aurum wasn’t Byern.

With the city behind her, Cyrene headed deeper into the woods at a brisk pace. If Avoca couldn’t sense the elements pulsing in the city, then Cyrene wanted to be as far away from the city as she could get. Avoca had told her that, once she could sense the pulse of the elements, then she could start manipulating them with more ease. It was the reason Avoca could still use her magic, even in the city. But Cyrene saw little hope for herself in that environment. It would hurt nothing to sit outside and meditate all day. She did the same thing in the room, and she couldn’t spend any more time in it.

She walked until she could no longer hear the sounds of the city and then found a small clearing in the woods. She took off her cloak, removed the cap, and let her long locks fall down nearly to her waist.

Taking a seat on a section of soft grass, Cyrene closed her eyes and opened her mind.

She could immediately tell the difference between the city and the woods, not that she found a pulse. But it was definitely quieter out here alone. Since she was closer to the elements she was attempting to tap into the meditative state came much quicker.

She went through the exercises—earth, air, water, fire.

Each one came back blank.

No pulse. No magic. Nothing.

By lunch, she was starving. She took a short break to eat the bread and fruit that she had brought with her in her pack, and then she got back to work. She only had a precious few hours left before she’d need to return, and she didn’t want to waste any of it.

Cyrene rearranged her skirt and then closed her eyes again to try to reach for her powers. Almost as soon as she reached her meditative state and opened herself up to her magic, she felt something stir within her chest. Her eyes flew open in shock, and she lost whatever had been happening. Her breath came out in short gasps.

“What was that?” she wondered aloud.

It certainly wasn’t the soft flutter she had been feeling all this time. That was like hitting a wall. It definitely was not like the well of energy she’d used to create the force-field pulse. But it wasn’t like any of the pulses that Avoca had said she would feel.

But Cyrene couldn’t just ignore it. If it meant she could feel anything, then it was worth it.

Wiping the worry off her face, she waited until her heart rate slowed again, and then she reached back out for her calm state. It hit her full-on.

A heartbeat. A crescendo.

Not a pulse. A coursing boom that could have burst her eardrums if she had been listening to it outside of this state. She resisted the urge to clutch her head to stop the noise. She wanted the noise.

As she peeled back the layers of what she was listening to, she realized that she had intentionally grasped her magic for the first time. She fumbled with it and then felt it drifting away.

Then, she remembered all of Avoca’s lessons. Instead of trying to direct the magic, she let it direct her. She stopped trying to work with it and just let it set the pulse.

The noise picked up pace, and everything steadied out.

It was a pulse.

A real pulse.

A heartbeat.

Fire.

She was fire!

Yet it all felt so different than how Avoca had described fire. No sizzle intensified with the flame. In fact, there was no flame. The pulse felt like a jumbled mass of confusion. Like the heartbeat was running. Like it was something.

She quickly grabbed her bag, cloak, and cap and then ran toward the pulse that still echoed in her mind. She never released her magic in fear that she would never be able to find it again. Her legs pumped beneath her as she followed the feeling inside her. When she sprinted into a clearing, the heartbeat she had been following started to fade.

“No!” she cried.

She couldn’t let this slip away. She had come all this way. She had to discover what it all meant.

Then, she saw the most beautiful white-tailed deer stride into the clearing. It was a massive buck with enormous antlers. The deer turned in her direction and looked directly at her. She watched with bated breath as the fading heartbeat continued to hum in the background.

The deer inclined his head in her direction. It was the deer. He could sense her, too.

They shared a moment where she could feel every heartbeat from the magnificent creature. If this was fire, it was incredible. Her magic felt full and whole, not overwhelming, not like it was going to make her collapse.

She was one with the deer before her.

Then, he stumbled forward, and that was when she saw the arrow protruding from his side.

Her hand flew to her mouth. She had seen hunting expeditions while growing up. It was basic survival methods to hunt deer from the mountainsides. She understood why this was happening, but it didn’t make it any easier to watch the magnificent animal die. Not when she could feel everything.

A second arrow whizzed through the air and thumped heavily into the creature’s neck. The fire went out. The heartbeat quieted. All was still once more.

Even though she knew it was pointless, she dropped her things, rushed to the animal, and fell at its side. Tears immediately hit her eyes, fresh and hot, and she released her magic in a rush. No magic could bring back the life of this animal. And if that kind of magic existed out there, it was not something she was interested in.

She realized then, quite plainly, that what she had heard wasn’t fire at all. It was the actual heartbeat of the buck. She had never been surer of anything in her life. She felt like she owed him something for surrendering his life and for inevitably giving her the key to her magic for the very first time. But the creature was dead, and she could never thank him for his deed.