A flash of lightning flooded the room with painful brightness. As it receded, so did Tauram's strange magic. He reappeared so suddenly he startled Esmera into pulling her hand away from his.

"Do you have to be so dramatic?"

"What is lightning for if not drama?" Tauram grinned up at Esmera. "Besides, it's not every day I come across someone I thought was dead for nearly 23 years."

"I can see why that would call for theatrics." Esmera rolled her eyes. "But if you keep surprising her, you may just make that a reality."

"That's dark, Esmera." Tauram looked down at his familiar so Esmera couldn't see his eyes.

How could she explain to him that the only way she had made peace with the difficulties in her life was by seeing the humour, no matter how feeble, in every harsh situation? Would someone like him even understand?

"But point taken." Tauram looked up, his face serious. "I'll stop."

Beneath Tauram's chair, Lundas's blotchy coat camouflaged him in the shadows, just as Tauram's ability hid him in plain sight.

"That's how you disappeared when we were at the museum." Esmera stepped around the coffee table and back into the toasty warm embrace of the fire.

Tauram inclined his head in what Esmera took to mean "yes", but that wasn't enough for her.

She folded her arms across her chest, her eyes demanding an answer. "Why did you run off like that?"

It gave Esmera some relief to have the question she carried within her out in the open. She would've only asked Tauram more questions about the paintings. He'd had no reason to fear her, and certainly no reason to vanish like that.

Tauram's reply only returned the unease to where it sat on Esmera's chest.

He turned away, smoothing his already creaseless shirt. "I think we're getting off-topic again."

Esmera huffed. She had heard that response so many times it was starting to grate on her.

Who was Tauram to decide what was off or on topic for this conversation? Esmera had so many questions, but it seemed like answers about Milatanur and her status in the kingdom were all Tauram was willing to give her.

Still, they were better than nothing. Esmera was more enlightened than she had been this morning. It felt like a distant time when years of knowledge had been packed into the hours since.

Esmera rifled through her mind for a safe question to ask. "If you can turn yourself invisible, what's my power?"

Everything felt like too much when Tauram fixed his eyes on Esmera. The fire was too warm, Esmera's t-shirt too scratchy, her socks too wet against her feet.

Tauram's gaze lingered so on her eyes, then her mouth that she wondered whether the answer to her question rested in the set of her lips.

It probably did. After all, Milatanur's magic involved the senses. That was why Tauram was staring at Esmera like that, not because he liked looking at her the way she did at him.

The thought threw cold water over the strange heat building within Esmera. She looked to the fire to reclaim her good sense. Clearly, she had lost it somewhere between asking about her magical ability and now.

She took a breath. She would have to stop confusing people's motives and expecting them to be kinder than the rest of her life had been to her if she didn't want to get hurt again.

She gave the truth a few moments to sink in before hazarding a glance at Tauram.

He studied her the way one might examine a complex painting, but he had been silent for so long that Esmera couldn't help but wonder if she had asked another question that was out of bounds.

The lightning struck in time to highlight the wicked smile on Tauram's face. "Maybe you have enhanced smell." There was a playful gleam in his eyes. "I did catch you sniffing the painting earlier."

Esmera wished that the fireplace would swallow her up and spit her out through the chimney, but it didn't have one, nor did her will have any power over it.

This would be one of her embarrassments that followed her everywhere, it seemed, just like that time she had tripped in front of everyone in the dining room at the orphanage one unfortunate evening.

Esmera wouldn't accept the humiliation without trying to make herself heard.  "I told you, I was—"

"Looking for something you had dropped?" Tauram raised his black eyebrows. They were striking, like charcoal etched onto his brown skin. "No, you weren't."

Why was this man so annoying? From his cluelessness when he didn't know the answer to his smugness when he did... Esmera balled her fists. She had never met such an infuriating person, one she wanted to snap back at so desperately.

That thought gave her pause. When last had she wanted to speak her mind? When last had she dared to fight back instead of lying back and letting things happen to her?

It had been long ago, in those misty memories of the days before Stephan answered her every disagreement with his fists.

But Stephan was in Esmera's past, and she wasn't scared anymore.

"Fine!" Esmera threw her hands up in annoyance. "I was listening to the painting."

Only when she spoke the words in her careless irritation did she remember that they sounded even more ridiculous than smelling a painting. After all, that was why she had lied in the first place. All the same, after the truths Tauram had shared with Esmera, he deserved at least one from her.

The stillness that settled over Tauram gave Esmera some satisfaction. Little rendered the man speechless from what she had seen, but she had succeeded. Tauram's brow furrowed as he studied her while tracing a finger over Lundas's head. The clouded leopard gave a soft, contented purr.

"You were listening to the painting?" asked Tauram.

"Yes." Esmera jammed her hands in her pockets for fear that their fidgetiness would make her more ridiculous in Tauram's eyes.

He could only take so much of her weirdness before he banished her from his apartment, and she had to make sure he had answered all her questions before that inevitability.

"The painting was talking to me, just like the flowers do."

"You hear flowers too?" Tauram's eyes went wide.

"Yeah." Esmera frowned. "Doesn't everyone in Milatanur hear the flowers?"

"No. I've only ever met a handful of people who do." Tauram leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand.

Esmera blinked. She had assumed that the magical kingdom grew magical flowers that sang while those in Arkōsāra were silent. She had never imagined she was one of few who did.

It was typical of Esmera's luck to be an oddity in a kingdom of oddities. Growing up, she had always been the girl with the strange olive skin and thick acorn-brown curls, and it seemed that, even in the place where she belonged, she'd always be different too.

"Esmera, tell me what you hear." Tauram went still in his seat.

Even Lundas froze underneath his chair, his large, luminous eyes fixed on Esmera.

She closed her eyes and took a breath.

The world around her had always been overwhelming, too energetic for her to keep up with. It was only by peeling apart the layers of sound and processing them individually that she could understand them.

"I hear you," she said. "Breathing."

Tauram's breath hitched as she spoke. "What else?"

"I hear the hissing of the fireplace. Not just this one but the ones in the apartments below. I hear the raindrops slamming into the windows and the outside walls. A couple is arguing in the apartment beneath us." That brought a wry smile to Esmera's face.

The neighbours had always complained about her and Stephan's loud fights. Even when her lip bled and her eye was swollen shut, she had forced her fingers, the only unbroken parts of her, to type a response to their texts, promising that they'd keep the noise down.

"And?"

Esmera silently thanked Tauram for speaking at that moment and yanking her from the grasp of her painful past.

She burrowed her focus down the countless storeys of the skyscraper until it reached the ground floor.

"The receptionist is clicking a pen. A maid dropped her phone on the marble floor."

"By Munasha." Tauram's eyes were wide. "Can you really hear all of that?"

Esmera's eyes flew open. "Of course! Why would I lie?"

It was just like a man to assume the worst of her. It was the story of her life, so why did it keep surprising her?

Tauram raised his hands. The gesture did little to appease Esmera, at least until he spoke. "I never said you were lying. I just haven't met anyone like you in years." He shook his head. "I would've never expected to find a śradūgara in Arkōsāra, of all places."

Esmera drew a shaky breath. He had called her a śradūgara.

Auditory sorcerer, whispered a voice in Esmera's mind, the same one who knew Jilhari and Munasha and the meaning of Arkōsāra.

"You're saying my hearing is my power?" Esmera couldn't help the disappointment that trickled into her voice.

She wasn't sure what she had been hoping was her power, maybe the ability to heal with a touch or taste a lie. Either way, her power seemed lame among all the possibilities that existed.

"I'd say so." Tauram leaned back in his seat, eyes glittering with an interest that made Esmera feel like maybe her ability wasn't that boring after all. "Let me guess, you're musical as well."

"I am." Esmera cocked her head. "How did you know that?"

He certainly couldn't have told that from her appearance. With her damp curls, stained t-shirt and faded jeans, Esmera didn't look musical at all. Not as much as Tauram did anyway, with his sleek hair, elegant fingers and tailored pants.

He gave Esmera a gentle smile. "Your father and your brothers shared that ability. Their enhanced hearing made them excellent musicians."

Maybe Tauram had been trying to show her the wonder of her power, but she still didn't see it. She sighed. "Not much use in music now is there?"

Music couldn't combat enemies or escape death. If it could, the rest of the Finnaz family would be alive to confirm that today.

Tauram must've been thinking along the same lines as Esmera because his smile turned sad. "There is always use for art. You'd be surprised how useful our musicians are during wartime."

Esmera considered his words, but she couldn't make music and battle go together in her mind. "What do you mean?"

Tauram braced his elbows against his armrests. "It's impossible for an enemy to succeed in a sneak attack. Our śradūgaraha can hear them and their weapons from kilometres away. By the time they arrive, believe me, we're ready for them."

Esmera nodded, turning her eyes back to the fire. "I suppose that makes sense."

If an army was headed for Tauram right now, Esmera would hear them. Even an assassin at their quietest wouldn't escape her notice. Nobody could be completely silent, no matter how hard they tried.

That brought a small smile to her face. Maybe she and her power could be useful, even if they would only serve to rescue one of the most annoying men she had ever met.

Still, he was also one of the kindest she had come across. Esmera snuck a glance at him. Maybe saving him wouldn't be such a bad thing. It was people like him who softened the harshness of the world for all those who had to endure it.

Tauram rested his chin on his hand. "This also explains why you understand the dialect of central Milatanur."

"Oh?" Esmera turned to him, intrigued.

"Auditory memory."

Esmera swept her hand through the air to tell him to continue. "I'm going to need a little more than that. You know I'm not familiar with Milatanur."

"Ah, how could I forget?" Tauram leaned forward, once again as if he had a secret to share. "Every part of Milatanur has a different dialect, but because the royal family rules from central Milatanur, that's the default political language and the most widely spoken. You must've heard your parents speaking it when you were a baby and memorised it, which is why you can understand it now."

Esmera couldn't help it. She burst out laughing.

Tauram folded his arms, narrowing his eyes at her. "I would love to know what's so funny."

"You're saying a baby memorised a whole language and still remembers it 23 years later!" A giggle bubbled from Esmera's lips. "That's as believable as saying an infant slipped between the fingers of a murderer."

"Then how would you explain your understanding of central Milatanuran? Why else would you be standing before me when everyone else in your family is dead?" For once, there was no amusement in Tauram's face, no sparkle in his eyes, no quirk in his mouth. "This is all real, Esmera. I don't understand much more of it than you do, but I know that for sure."

Just like that, Esmera sobered up. Tauram was right, as much as it annoyed her to admit it.

Something strange had happened 23 years ago, and only by accepting who she was and the events that had occurred would Esmera ever get to the bottom of it. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she realised it was too much to hope for. She wanted to make peace with her past, at the very least, because all she wanted was to move into a future that wasn't governed by it.

Esmera leaned against the wall so it could take some of the weight off her legs, soaking in her thoughts while avoiding Tauram's distracting gaze.

Everything that had happened, no matter how incredible it seemed, was possible because magic was real.

Esmera was magic.