By the third day, the world was nothing but white and the creak of leather.

  Elowen sat inside the wagon, her eyes tracing the pattern stamped into the small brass brazier—a tumble of leaves and flames that might have been either. The quilted leather walls dulled the sounds outside; only the occasional call or jolt reminded her they were still moving.

  Twenty-one days, Roderic had said. She’d never counted days before. Now she felt every single one.

  She pulled out her flute.

  The first notes were tentative, fingers stiff from cold. Then muscle memory took over. The melody curved through the cramped space, soft and clear.

  Outside, Roderic reined his horse closer to the wagon, head cocked. The music seeped through the leather, thin but insistent. He frowned once at the distance, then swung down, tied his horse to the back, and hauled himself inside.

  Elowen broke off mid-phrase, eyes widening as the door opened. Her hand flew to her lap.

  “Oh,” she said, warmth rushing to her cheeks. “I—”

  “Don’t stop.” The words came faster than he meant them to. He stepped inside, softer this time. “I came to listen.”

  The small space seemed to shrink. She hesitated.

  He gave a brief, crooked smile. “I insist.”

  She tried to match it, failed halfway. “If you insist…” She couldn’t remember when his smile had begun to loosen things she meant to keep tight.

  She adjusted her grip, pushed stray curls behind her ear, and lifted the flute again. Her hands trembled. She forced a breath deep into her lungs and began.

  Roderic sat opposite, near the door, shoulder resting against the wall. He meant to close his eyes but found he couldn’t. Her lids had a faint lilac cast in the warm light. Loose golden curls framed her face where the braid had given up. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat inside the wagon and the embarrassment of playing for one listener instead of many.

  He focused on the music instead.

  It wasn’t court-perfect. It was better. The tune rose and fell like a memory half-remembered, notes looping back on themselves, never quite landing where he expected. There was a lightness to it, but a thread of something older underneath—loneliness, maybe, or stubborn hope.

  Outside, a faint breeze licked at the seams of the wagon. The canvas shivered.

  Elowen felt it—an almost imperceptible shift in the air, like the first inhale before a word. Some part of her reached for it without thinking. The melody stretched, lengthened, as if making room.

  By the time she let the last note fade, her pulse was racing.

  She opened her eyes. He was watching her.

  “That was…” he began, then stopped, searching for a word that didn’t sound foolish. “Good,” he settled on, lips quirking.

  She smiled, too quickly, and looked down. A shield.

  He cleared his throat, as if remembering why he’d come. “What happened in Aurendal hasn’t repeated,” he said, that familiar line appearing between his brows. “But the wind moves around you differently now—during the trial, even now, when you play.”

  She fidgeted with the flute. “I don’t know how it happens,” she said. “I haven’t exactly wanted to stir it, not when it feels so… unpredictable.”

  “I know,” he said. “But if it’s going to appear when you’re frightened—or angry—we can’t afford for it to surprise us. If you’re willing, we could try to understand what triggers it.”

  Suspicion and something more tangled crossed her face. “And what would that entail, exactly?”

  “Nothing new. Just…more deliberate. What began with Eryndor wasn’t wrong—it just wasn’t useful. You’re past that now. I believe we can press further.”

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  He waited. And eventually, she gave the smallest nod.

  ----

  In hindsight, she should’ve asked more questions.

  Because an hour later she was face-down in the snow again, the blindfold biting at her temples like before the tournament, lip throbbing, palms burning, Roderic’s staff pressed lightly against her ribs.

  “Elowen,” he said, a little breathless himself. “Up.”

  She planted her hands in the snow and pushed—cold slicing her fingertips, muscles trembling. “It’s getting dark,” she muttered into the ground. “And I’m hungry. I don’t think you can starve the wind out of me.”

  “You’re blindfolded,” he observed dryly. “How exactly can you tell it’s dark?”

  “It’s colder,” she shot back. “And we’ve been here forever.”

  “That,” she announced to the snow, “is enough. I’m done.”

  He paused. “Are you?”

  She stayed where she was, stubbornness radiating off her.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I’m calling Brandt.”

  She rolled to her side so fast the world tilted. “Absolutely not.” She scrambled upright on shaking legs. “I’m getting up, I’m up. And if humiliation could coax the wind out of me, I assure you’d have managed it by now.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” he said midly. “Brandt prides himself on…results.”

  She groaned. “We’ve been at this for days. I don’t feel anything. Not the wind, not my legs, not my arms.”

  “But your mouth soldiers on. Noted.”

  She snorted despite herself.

  Bootsteps crunched behind her. Brandt’s voice floated over. “Heard my name—usually means trouble.”

  “Stand at her back,” he instructed. “No bravado. She needs precision, not bruises.”

  “Reassuring,” Elowen muttered.

  “You don’t just listen for the wind”, Roderic said. “You sense it. And now, I want you to cast it outward.”

  “Take your mark,” he said again, already moving.

  She moved with him.

  The first strike she blocked on instinct.

  The second slammed past her guard.

  The third—she tried to read with her eyes. Foolish.

  She hit the ground again, snow smearing the blood at her lip.

  Heat rose under her skin.

  “Elowen,” Roderic said quietly. “You’re chasing movement. Stop chasing. Feel where it begins.”

  She hated how his voice cut straight through her temper. Hated more that he was right.

  She drew a long, steady breath. Cold slid over her cheeks. Snow sighed beneath boots.

  Two bodies moved near her. The world narrowed to that.

  Roderic and Brandt continued to circle. Her head twitched toward every sound, every crunch of snow.

  “That’s listening,” Roderic said. “Not sensing. Take your mark.”

  She planted her feet.

  A strike caught her ribs before she’d even braced. Pain flared. Her breath broke out of her in a gasp.

  “Elowen. Focus.”

  “I am focusing,” she snapped.

  But she heard it—that thin, sharp edge of panic trying to masquerade as control.

  She forced a breath.

  Then another.

  The world stayed stubbornly blank.

  Another blow sent her down. Snow bit her cheek, cold and merciless.

  Roderic and Brandt murmured nearby—irritation, confusion—but they sounded far away, muffled by the roaring in her chest.

  She was tired of this.

  Tired of failing.

  Tired of pretending she didn’t care if she failed.

  Tired of forcing herself to earn something she didn’t even understand.

  She pressed her palm into the snow. She felt the cold, and found it unmoving and indifferent. The opposite of her frantic, scrambling mind.

  What if the problem wasn’t that she couldn’t sense it? What if the problem was that she never stopped trying to outrun her own fear long enough to hear anything else?

  The thought landed with a clean, dangerous clarity. It felt like a door she hadn’t known was locked, clicking open.

  She stopped bracing. Stopped reaching. Stopped fighting the air as if it were another threat she had to survive.

  Something inside her, bruised and honest, went still.

  And in that stillness…

  A curl of wind brushed along Roderic’s arm, a tiny ripple she felt before she could ever hope to see.

  His tall outline took shape. A silver impression of him carved from the air. Even the thin scar on his neck broke the flow, a line where the wind refused to touch him.

  Behind her, Brandt shifted. Like a breath into the snow.

  But she felt that too. Like a heavier disruption, a shape gathering itself.

  Roderic lunged.

  She braced too early. This was so new and disconcerting. The ground found her again, knocking the air from her lungs. Snow burned her lip as it split.

  A sound escaped her—anger frayed thin by exhaustion. She shoved upright, breath ragged.

  “Take your mark.” He said.

  This time she didn’t reach. Didn’t chase some fleeting sensation like a starving girl begging for scraps. She sank into stillness.

  Air.

  Pressure.

  Breath.

  Hers.

  Roderic moved first, his precise, clean pressure slicing toward her. Brandt moved second, he was a heavier disturbance, blunt and impatient.

  The wind hesitated—as if asking her what she wanted.

  She answered.

  Air burst outward in a violent sweep—snow fountaining around her, the ground trembling under the force.

  It rippled outward, catching Roderic squarely. He staggered back, boots carving deep, startled lines through the snow as he fought for balance. Brandt didn’t have time for that—he hit the drift in a sprawling tumble, a burst of frost rising around him .

  The world went very still, impossibly quiet. Even the air felt different, as if it recognized her before she recognized herself.

  Then Roderic let out a short, astonished laugh.

  Brandt wheezed, still on his back. “Crowns above,” he groaned. “Next time you’re angry, warn a man. Or at least aim at him first.”

  Elowen tore off the blindfold, hands burning. “I’m not even sure what I did.”

  “But you did,” Roderic said, stepping closer, studying her as if seeing something he’d been waiting for. “You did.”

  His breath lifted in the cold. “And everything shifts from here.”