On the second night on the road, Dren set a flat stone on the ground between us and told me to make a flame the size of a coin.

  "I don't think that's a good idea," I said.

  "You've been making fires every morning for three years," he said. "Same size every time. How is this different?"

  "Those were—"

  "Those were what?"

  I didn't have a good answer. Those were the same thing, actually. The morning fires were discipline — I'd just told myself they were punishment instead of practice. Funny how those can look identical from the outside.

  "A single flame," Dren said. "Coin-sized. I'll watch. If it grows, I'll tell you."

  I looked at my palm.

  The pressure was always there. That low, constant heat living under my skin. I'd gotten so good at keeping it locked down that most days I forgot it existed.

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  Opening it — even slightly — felt like standing at the edge of a very high ledge.

  But I thought about the morning fires. Hundreds of them. Small, controlled, exactly the size I decided. I'd been practicing control this whole time without calling it that.

  I unclenched. Just a little. The way you'd crack a jar lid instead of unscrewing it.

  A flame appeared in my palm.

  Coin-sized. Yellow at the base, blue at the tip. Steady as a candle in a windless room.

  I stared at it.

  Three years. Three years of treating this like a monster I was keeping caged, and here it was. Sitting in my palm like it was normal. Like it was just a thing I did.

  "Good," Dren said quietly. "Hold it. Don't feed it. Don't starve it. Just let it be."

  I held it for a full minute. Maybe more.

  When I closed my hand, it went out clean. No smoke. No spreading. Just — done.

  "Tomorrow morning," Dren said, "before we leave. Flame on, flame off. Twenty times. Same size each time."

  I looked at him.

  "That's it?" I said. "That's the training?"

  "For now." He leaned back. "The power is already there. You've been developing it for three years without knowing it. I'm not teaching you magic. I'm teaching you to trust what you already know."

  Lyra was watching from across the fire with an expression I couldn't read.

  "What?" I said to her.

  "Nothing," she said. But she was writing something in her notebook, and she wrote it for a long time.