“I understand, my king.” The massive room swallowed Rielle’s voice.

King Bastien nodded, paused. The gray threading through his black beard and the laugh lines across his brown face made him look older than Rielle had ever thought him before.

Then his gaze hardened. Rielle resisted the urge to take a step back from the new, dangerous charge in the air.

“How long,” he asked, his voice cool and matter-of-fact, “have you known yourself to possess elemental magic?”

Somehow, Rielle had thought this would begin with something less direct. A question or two, or five, that would give her time to find her voice.

But at least, perhaps, they thought she was only an elemental and not…whatever she truly was. Maybe her punishment, then—and Tal’s and her father’s—would not be as severe as she had feared.

The prophecy’s words ran through her mind: They will carry the power of the Seven.

“Since I was five years old,” she answered.

“And how did you come to this conclusion?”

He asked it so casually, as though they did not already know the answer.

A chair creaked as someone shifted their weight. Rielle glanced over and found Tal’s sister, Sloane Belounnon, with the rest of the Magisterial Council surrounding the Archon. She sat rigid in her seat, her dark, chin-length hair looking unusually severe against her wan skin. She looked as though she had not slept.

How must Sloane feel, to know that her brother had kept such a secret from her?

“When…when I was five,” Rielle continued, “I set fire to our home.”

“How?”

“I was angry. My mother and I had had an argument.”

“About what?”

It sounded ridiculous, horribly small. “I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wanted to sit up with Father and read.”

“So,” the king said calmly, “you set your house on fire.”

“It was an accident. I was angry, and the anger built up until I could no longer contain it. I ran outside because the feeling frightened me. It felt like something inside me was burning. And then…when I turned around,” she said, the memory clawing at her, “I saw fire consuming our house. One moment it had not been there, and the next, it was.”

“And you had caused this.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know?”

How did you see your own hand moving and know it was attached to your arm and your shoulder and your blood and your bones? Like that.

“I knew because it looked and sounded and felt like me,” she explained. “It felt the same as my anger had felt. The same scent, the same flavor. I felt connected to it.” She hesitated. “Grand Magister Belounnon has since helped me understand that what I sensed in that moment was the empirium. The connection between myself and the fire was the power that connects all things, and I had accessed it.”

Rielle dared to look at the Archon, sitting beside the Magisterial Council. He stared back at her, his small bright eyes unblinking. The torchlight made his pale skin and smooth head gleam.

“And was your mother able to escape?” the king continued.

Rielle’s throat tightened, and for a moment she could not speak. “No. She was trapped inside. Father ran in to get her and brought her out. She was alive, but then…”

Say it, child. The voice returned, compassionate. Tell them. They cannot hurt you.

With the stone saints staring down at her, their unfeeling eyes cold and grave, the strange voice should not have been a comfort. But hearing it nevertheless settled her churning stomach.

“I was afraid,” she continued, “when I saw my mother. I had never seen burns before. She was screaming, and I yelled at her to stop, but she wouldn’t, and then…all I could think was how I needed her to stop screaming.” She hurried through the story, as if trying to outrace the memory of those climbing flames. “Then she stopped. Father laid her on the ground, begged her to wake up. But she was dead.”

The room shifted, murmuring.

“And you have hidden this murder from us for thirteen years,” King Bastien declared.

“It was not a murder,” Rielle said, wishing desperately to sit. Her body still felt bruised from the fight in the mountains. “I did not mean to kill my mother. I was a child, and it was an accident.”

“We are concerned with facts here, not intentions. The facts of the matter are that you killed Marise Dardenne, and you have—with the help of your father and Grand Magister Belounnon—lied about it for thirteen years.”

“If someone had asked me if I had killed my mother, and I had denied it,” Rielle replied, looking straight up at the king, “then that would be a lie, Your Majesty. Keeping a secret is not lying.”

“Lady Rielle, I am not interested in semantics. You concealed the damage you were capable of doing while you ate at my table, while you were schooled with my son and niece, and thereby placed them and all those around you in danger. Some might consider such a deception treasonous.”

Treason. Rielle kept her eyes on King Bastien and her hands flat against her thighs. If he had meant to frighten her, he had succeeded.

“And on the day of the race,” said the king, “not only did you start a fire when you attacked those men—”

Anger bloomed inside her. If she was to be found guilty of treason, then she might as well earn her punishment. “When I saved Prince Audric’s life, you mean.”

A louder murmuring rose from the gallery, but King Bastien simply inclined his head. Rielle knew it was the only thanks she might receive, but it was enough to give her a bit of courage.

“When you attacked those men,” the king continued, “you not only started a fire. You ripped open the earth. You carved sheets of rock from the mountains. One of the surviving racers has described you gathering sunlight from the air using only your hands. Another claims you threw the assassins from their horses by no visible means she could detect. Even though the assassins themselves were elementals, you easily overpowered them.” The king looked up from his notes. “Does that align with your own recollection?”

Then they did know what she had done, that she was no mere elemental. Her jaw ached from clenching it. “It does, Your Majesty.”

“So then, you are not only a firebrand but an earthshaker, a sunspinner, and also, perhaps, other things. I think you will understand our alarm as we contemplate what this means. No human who has ever lived has been able to control more than one element. Not even the saints.”

A tiny spark of pride lit inside Rielle.