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Herrick knew he was right, and he knew he was foolish for hiding this from Maude, but in the quiet moments when he wanted to tell her what he was feeling, it was easier to get lost in her body rather than relive the memories that haunted him.

"I don't mean to invalidate your feelings," his friend continued.

"What you've gone through changes a person, something I'm sure you are realizing now, but you've been changing ever since you met Maude.

What I said in Ljosa still applies: let yourself be changed.

Let yourself feel more than what you were raised to believe, and you might find that there is a part of you that yearns to be freed.

The part of you that revels in bloodshed, the part of you that understands Maude's anger because it echoes yours. "

He could only stare at his friend, the person who knew him better than anyone except maybe Hakon. Was he right? Did he really seem so different when his strict self-regulation was dimmed?

"And your fear of her fire?" Gunnar said, holding up his hand to stop Herrick from protesting his choice of words.

"That fear will fade when you forgive her and yourself for everything that has happened.

You know you are safe with her, your anger and hurt are holding you back from remembering that.

We all have to forgive ourselves for our failures, because holding them against each other is only going to make us fail again. "

Could it really be so simple? he thought as Gunnar's words seemed to echo in his broken soul.

"I just know that if you let this get between you and Maude, it will be harder for her to let you in than it was before.

She might surprise you and be able to help you through this.

If anyone understands rage and grief, it's her," Gunnar said before standing and turning away from Herrick, leaving him in the trees alone.

The camps scattered throughout Hilgafell started to bubble with sleepy voices and the sounds of sliding fabric from tents opening as everyone woke to the new day, but it was all muffled to Herrick as he thought about what Gunnar said.

His friend was right— he had been changing long before Baldr entered his life.

He thought the fraying edges of his sanity were being held together by sheer will, but perhaps thats what was wearing them down.

Maybe letting go, unraveling the tight knots he built around himself over the years, was exactly what he needed to take that last step toward his true self.

For as long as he could remember, Herrick had exercised strict control over himself: his body, his emotions, his heart, his galder , and his duty. He compartmentalized everything, including his fury that simmered deep beneath the many layers of control.

He'd once told Maude that her rage matched his, and it was beautiful.

It was the truth; he just never let his rage see the light of day.

The only time it slipped through was when he was fighting.

Now, it seemed to slip through when he least expected it to.

The tight grip on his control was slipping, and Gunnar was telling him to let it.

To let his darker side out as it had been begging to do since he had been freed from the Palace of Wind and Embers dungeons.

The thought should have scared him. So why did he feel lighter as he headed back to the cabin?

The first thing Maude noticed was that she was sweating. The cooling presence she had gravitated toward in the middle of the night was gone; his distress that had called to her in his sleep, her heart answering it with a comforting touch, was absent.

Still half asleep, Maude reached out, but her fingertips only grazed the furs she lay on that had long since been cooled from abandonment.

Herrick had risen without her. Had she overslept?

Her heart started to race in her chest as she bolted straight up, looking around the shared sleeping space in the cabin.

Though she and Herrick had drawn a privacy curtain around them, Maude could still hear the soft snores and deep breathing of others who were still lost to their dreams.

Light trickled in through the cracks between the wooden logs that built this cabin, so it must have been later in the morning than she realized.

Wrapping one hand around her throat, Maude slowed her breathing until she no longer felt her heart was trying to outrun her body.

Rubbing the remaining sleep from her eyes, she turned to put her feet on the cold floorboards and stand from the low cot she and Herrick had wordlessly agreed to share.

Though things between her and Herrick remained unresolved, their interactions strained by the mistrust and betrayal that they each felt, she still needed to know that he was okay.

As she reached down to grab her shirt from on top of her pack, Maude felt the soft, bell-like shape of dozens of tiny flowers.

She pulled the sprig of heather from where it lay atop her clothing, a soft smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Of course, the beast left her flowers like she was some summer maiden.

She should have rolled her eyes, but instead, Maude felt a foreign fluttering settle in her stomach as her chest worked harder to catch her breath.

Shaking herself from whatever was taking hold of her, Maude stood and donned her shirt, but not before she tucked the spring of heather into one of the thick braids of her long hair.

Pushing past the heavy tapestry that separated the front of the cabin from the sleeping quarters, she found her father sitting on one of the cushions with a bowl of porridge in his hands.

Lush blueberries and strawberries the size of her thumbnail were mixed into the hot breakfast, the smell of brown sugar and cinnamon wrapping a warm hand around her heart for a moment before melancholy settled in her chest.

"Now I know where my mother got her sweet tooth from," Maude said in a way of greeting Aeric as she spooned some porridge into her bowl. "She used to load up on sugar and berries when she ate this. I never understood why she insisted on this breakfast when we had so much else available to eat."

Her father chuckled, the sound both loving and sad. "Sylvi had a weakness for summer berries. Have you ever had the wild strawberries that grow in the north during the summer months?"

Maude shook her head, so Aeric extended his bowl to her and gestured for her to take some of the smaller strawberries.

Warily, Maude raised a berry to her lips and prepared for the sour burn that usually accompanied small fruits if picked too soon.

Instead, when the wild strawberry touched her tongue, a sugary sweetness exploded across her taste buds.

It reminded her of the hard candy she and Bryn sneaked during the summer solstices from their childhood, but the longer she chewed, the more natural it tasted.

The taste wrangled something deep in her soul, the galder that lived there thrumming to life.

Choosing to run with the instinct she didn't know she possessed, Maude reached an internal hand towards the strings that glittered within her mind's eye before plucking the pulsating green and brown thread from the bundle.

Instead of the destructive sparks she had spent her life controlling, life burst within her very cells as she pulled her galder to the surface.

She thought about the wild berries, the feeling of summer on her tongue, and sunshine on her skin as she gripped her galder tighter.

The floorboards beneath the cushions they sat on creaked as small vines sprouted between the cracks in a circle around Maude.

The longer they grew, the darker they became.

When the large leaves began to sprout, their dark veins became visible in the morning light as they continued to grow rapidly.

Maude spied the bundle of berries beneath them, starting to grow before her eyes.

The small green and white berries quickly turned into a deep ruby that made her mouth fill with saliva.

"Well done, minn m?ne ," her father said softly, his voice holding the awe that Maude felt in it.

She tentatively reached out with her shaking fingers and plucked a strawberry from the vine in front of her.

When she popped it into her mouth, she expected it to taste as horrible as she must be on the inside.

She thought that since she had grown the berries, her darkness would be latched onto them.

Instead, she found the berries to be just as sweet, if not a little smokier than berries ought to be.

Chest tightening for a moment before she became breathless, Maude drank in the idea that she could create something so pure, so untouched by the worst parts of her. Her throat thickened as her eyes began to burn.

"It seems you have inherited my Elven affinities for galder ," Aeric continued. "You'll have to train with all the elements now that you know you can control them."

As quickly as Maude had been able to grasp at the new galder , it slipped from her fingers and disappeared within herself.

She sucked in a shocked breath, feeling like she got the wind knocked out of her with how fast it had retreated from her control.

It was easier to wrangle the different elements when she was fighting; her mind focused on one task rather than in the quieter moments when her anxieties crept in to darken her mind.

"I lost it already," Maude huffed as she tried to catch her breath.

"I can't always reach it. The only other times I've been able to use it was when we were escaping Logi, and I cracked the earth beneath my hands.

I passed out, though, and don't remember what happened after that initial contact with the earth galder .

It felt more… instinctive somehow. I wasn't in control, my desperation to protect my friends took over. "