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This will destroy him, she had thought,but he won't understand.

She had hastily scribbled out a few words onto a paper and addressed it to Herrick:

This isn’t about you

I need to do this for myself--

I must. Please forgive--

Forgive me.

Maude ripped the bottom part of the page with the request she knew he would never be able to honor and left it on the bed they had shared. On top of the damning note, she balanced the necklace he had given her to remindher that her power was not destruction but strength. Her heart clenched at the sight of it, the pain almost so unbearable that she wanted to stay.

She had turned from the necklace, from the emotion choking her, and hardened her heart again as she stepped toward the window.

She’d returned to the roof and slung her mother’s shawl over the rope before leaping. The wind cut around her almost flying form, deafening her with its volume. Maude couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own heart shattering, though. Tears burned in her eyes, but she kept moving forward. Her boots hit the rooftop Revna had landed on only minutes before her, shaking Maude to her very core.

Refusing to look over her shoulder, she kept moving. Opting to scale down the side of the building, she landed on the top of a stable that had two horses already saddled for a journey.

Revna.

She must have known that Maude would want to flee after what she read about. Bryn seemed to know her sister all too well.

Placing her packs in the ones already on the horse, Maude swung herself on top of the great beast, its blood bay coat shining like spilled wine, just like hers under the moonlight. Placing her bow in her lap, Maude kicked her heels back and leaned forward, the horse following her commands smoothly.

They burst into the rounded streets, startling the few citizens still awake in the long hours of the night. Maude steered the beast left toward the western gate they had entered through, paying careful attention to the streets and turns she needed to utilize to get out of the city.

“Concentric bullshit,” she muttered to herself as she navigated the arcing streets.

Finally, the tall stone gates loomed in front of her; the carved wooden doors sealed shut for the night. Refusing to slow, Maude shouted to openthe gates to the few guards who were posted. When they didn’t, Maude held her palm out in front of her, hergaldermoving through her in large waves that she could barely contain for much longer.

“Please don’t make me do this,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

When the gates didn’t budge, Maude shut her eyes and propelled a large stream of her fire. It slammed into the glossy wood and instantly went up in flames. She flicked her fingers, creating an air shield around her and the horse, before they leaped forward through the flames of the crumbling gates and into the wild lands of the Dead Wastes.

Maude spared a glance over her shoulder to make sure no innocents were injured. Her flames that she had directed toward the gate were spiraling into and around the city walls now, harmlessly bouncing off the gray stone that they had used to rebuild the city after her mother had burnt it down.

Fitting that Maude would be the one almost to destroy the city again.

As she watched her flames continue to dance within the city, she realized she was not in control of them anymore. Unsettled, Maude tried to push it to the back of her mind unsuccessfully. She had difficulty controlling hergalderdue to her heightened emotions most of the time, but never had it behaved this way. It was acting like it had a mind of its own, like it was entirely apart from Maude.

She kept her eyes forward as the rolling wastes blurred past. Herrick would be looking for her soon. Her chest caved in at the thought of him, the now constant pain threatening to overwhelm her. Perhaps this was why hergalderwas reacting this way. She had always had the strongest hold of hergalderwhen she was with…him.

Even now, the further she was from him, the less she felt him. It was an indescribable feeling that settled in her chest— an almost empty, gaping wound where he had previously buried himself.

Pushing away the new hollowness that settled into her bones, Maude tried to focus on the journey ahead of her to Logi. She already had a plan in place before she met with Revna, thanks to her friends.

Another sharp ache in her chest formed. Gods, would they ever be her friends again after this? Unable to process her thoughts clearly, Maude instead allowed herself to mourn the life she thought she could have with her friends, with Herrick.

Three days. She had three days to wallow and rage at how the gods had managed to take every good thing from her before her life had begun. Three days to try and understand why no one told her the most important part of her fate telling from all those years ago. It was enough time to gather herself enough to finish the only task that kept her from living a full life; it would have to be.

She kept her head down as she rode into the dawn on her stolen horse, allowing herself to be consumed by her rage and misery. Her eyes burned with unshed tears, and her throat thickened with the emotion that swelled in her. But still, she fled from where her heart desired to stay.

Maude rode through the rest of the night and well into the day until she cleared the Dead Wastes. She had only spotted one group ofdraugrand had easily demolished them, finding herself unable to pass up the opportunity to let out some of hergalderthat had been swirling beneath her shell like a second skin.

A small fire crackled in front of her behind the large boulder she had found that separated the Dead Waste from the red sands of the desert that she was so familiar with. Her back to the rock, Maude watched the flames and embers reach up toward the night sky like they wished to be a part of the heavens and the gods who lived there.

The letter from her sister was burning a hole in her pocket. Maude pulled out the wrinkled paper and scanned over the contents for what felt like the millionth time. Skipping over the parts about her father, she reached the part of the message that had rocked Maude so viscerally that she had gone into a fight-or-flight panic.