I understood what that meant. If I accidentally set a fire or created an earthquake that destroyed centuries-old vineyards and forever ruined his family name, that would be bad. Anything short of that should be fine.

I rubbed my hands together and smiled with satisfaction, then asked, “How about it? Shall we learn some magic?”

The vineyards were different from anything I’d known at the mines. There, the world was gray and dusty, and the people weren’t much better. But though I always knew I’d find a more beautiful world one day, I had never expected anything like this vineyard. The rolling hills carried row after row of green vines. Here, where I stood with Crispus and Aurelia, we were surrounded by tall trees that must have been there since the first breath of man. At the far end of the field was a pile of ruins that looked as if they had been decaying for hundreds of years. It seemed odd to find rubbish in an otherwise fine field, and I asked Crispus about it.

He shrugged. “I don’t know much. My father said it’s the ruins of an old temple that used to be on this land. The temple once held the body of a vestalis who was punished for violating her oath, probably buried alive. A few years ago, I tried to get closer and see it, but a large wolf appeared so I ran away. There wasn’t anything to see anyway, just broken rocks.” Then he clasped his hands. “Shall we begin?”

Aurelia and I stood in the shade of one of the tallest trees with blank expressions. Neither of us knew where to start. Such as it was, I was the only one here who’d actually used magic, and since most of those experiences had been disasters, I suddenly felt nervous about practicing.

“My father believes the magic responds to your emotions,” Crispus said. “It comes on strongest when your emotions are most intense. You were terrified in that arena.”

“That’s ridiculous.” I forced out a laugh and eyed Aurelia to see if she would think worse of me. “Terrified isn’t the right word at all.” Which was a perfectly true thing to say, though admittedly, this was only because what I had felt then was far beyond terror.

Aurelia didn’t seem to care. She only said, “Crispus is right. When you bent the metal in the caravan, you were angry with Felix. And what about when Radulf attacked us underground?”

Crispus’s jaw dropped. Obviously he didn’t know that story. “Wait a minute,” he said. “You’ve already fought Radulf once?”

I shook my head. “No. And if it was a fight, then I lost. But you are right about my emotions being connected to the magic.”

“Which is what makes this magic so dangerous,” Aurelia said. “Emotions can be unpredictable and hard to control. I don’t decide to get angry or sad or even happy. I just feel the way I do.”

Inwardly, I smiled. Maybe she didn’t decide to become sad or happy, but I’d certainly seen her get angry.

“Then that’s what I have to learn,” I said. “I have to let myself feel enough to generate the magic, but then control the emotion.”

Crispus seemed ready for that. “My father had servants working down here throughout the night.” By then, he had grabbed a rope with a wooden handle at the end. The rest of it was strung up high into the tree, though the rising sun made it impossible to see where it was tied. “Here, Nic. Take this.”

I grinned. “Why?” My hands were already on the handle, so I hoped it wasn’t anything too risky.

“Just hold on.” He started to walk away, then turned back to me. “Seriously, hold on.”

I redoubled my grip and by the time I looked back at him, he was already midway through releasing another knot around the tree. Before he was entirely finished, the rope pulled violently from his hands and flew into the air. At the same time, I noticed a stack of bricks almost above my head plummeting to the earth, mortared together and attached by the same rope. I was at the other end, and as they came down, the rope flew through a pulley above us and yanked me high into the air.

“Nic!” Aurelia yelled. It had happened so fast, I wasn’t sure that she had seen what happened. Beside her, Crispus was laughing harder than someone ought to, given that I was now dangling nearly thirty feet above the earth. With the pulley above me, I was too low to reach the nearest branch and too high to jump. Another branch was below me, but a ways behind me as well, and I didn’t trust that I could reach it from here.

“I bet that bulla is warming now!” Crispus said, regaining some seriousness.

“Are you joking?” I scowled down at him. “Get me down!”

“Is the bulla warming?”

I closed my eyes and felt for it at my chest. At first there was nothing, but then the bricks settled and the rope punched me even higher. I gasped as I almost lost my hold. The bulla definitely reacted to that.

“It’s warm,” I said. And with that acknowledgment, magic flooded in through my chest, so fast that it nearly suffocated me. “I’m going to fall!” I yelled. The heat alone was making my hands sweat. “This is too much!”

“Not if you control it!” Crispus pointed to the bricks, now in a pile on the ground. “Lift them and you’ll come down. But not too fast. Control it.”

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to breathe, and feeling the flow of magic. Last night’s experiment with the Divine Star had been like cool water through my veins, but the bulla was warmth, closer to the way sunlight feels after a cold night. It might respond to my strongest emotions, but magic was so much bigger than a simple emotion. It was strength, and power, and raw energy. And with each use, I was becoming those things too.

Using that strength now, holding on to the rope became easy, so I focused on the stack of bricks. A quick test from my fingers rustled them.

“You’re doing it!” Aurelia said.

With some effort, I allowed more magic into my hand. When I first sent it to the bricks, they rose in the air by a few inches. Then as I started to descend back to the ground, more magic emptied than I had intended. It shot from my hand with far too much force and hit the bricks like an explosion. The bricks flew into the air and I worried they’d come back down on Crispus and Aurelia, so I used another nudge of magic to push them farther away. That sent the bricks spiraling around one of the branches where they quickly became tangled in the thicket of leaves. I lost my grip on the rope, and would’ve fallen except the force of pushing the bricks had also blown me backward. Suddenly I found myself clutching the tree branch that had been behind me.

“This is a terrific plan you came up with!” I yelled to Crispus. “I’m having a great time!”

Now it was Aurelia who was laughing, so hard that tears were streaming down her cheeks. “You should’ve seen your face!”

“If it’s so funny, then come up here and describe it to me!” I swung my body to the top of the branch but it was already groaning beneath my weight.

Below me, Aurelia removed the bow from over her shoulder and nocked it with an arrow. “I can help you,” she said. “I’ll shoot the arrow into the tree. Tie your rope to it and then you can slide down.”

It was a terrible plan. But better than what I had now, which was no plan at all, so I scooted aside to make room for her arrow. She shot it, but instead of hitting the tree, it arced to the right, heading straight for me.

I ducked as it flew past me, grazing my hair. “I forgot how not helpful you can be!”

She glared at Crispus. “He shoved me!”

Crispus only shrugged. “You’re up there to learn magic, not to be rescued by a girl.”