Esmera finally knew what it was like to be deaf. Or at least as deaf as the sorcerers who didn't possess the auditory magic she had taken for granted before she realised what it was. Either way, she didn't like the feeling.

She was a parrot whose wings had been clipped, a peacock whose glorious iridescent feathers had been plucked by the Milatanurans who considered them sacred.

She ran her fingers over the piano keys, not watching their movements but only listening to the sounds they made. She could hear the drastic difference between the notes emanating from opposite ends of the keyboard but not the subtleties between them.

The keys had sounded like a gradient once, deep and low and loud, transforming into something high and light and shrill. Now, only the extremes could be heard, even if Esmera closed her eyes and focused on the sound with all her might.

Still with her eyes closed, she tried to tap her way through a song she wrote many years ago after her first heartbreak, but the notes all sounded wrong. Esmera had been able to use her ears to guide her once, but now all she had was her eyes.

She felt almost as though she had lost an arm or a leg. She didn't understand how anyone else could go through life with such minimal hearing, but then again, everyone in Milatanur had their own ability, and they probably felt as lost as Esmera did when they had practised their powers to the point of exhaustion for the first time.

She opened her eyes, resigning herself to them being all she had. Touch could do nothing for her when she hadn't yet memorised how this piano felt. Every key was smooth and cool and the same. Smell and taste were both of no help.

Her eyes directed her to the correct keys, and the tune playing in her head suddenly rang through the air around her. she smiled at how right it sounded, how familiar it was even though it took her to one of the many parts of her past she'd rather not revisit.

She murmured the words of the song to the tune, not trusting her ears to tell her if she was being too loud. She couldn't risk it, not in a home she shared with others. Not when one of them was a prince she had been betrothed to, who had the annoying habit of asking questions with painful answers.

On this stormy night

There's nothing but steam coating my windows

The wind howling like it has no place to go

Even the stars are in hiding

For all I know, they may not even be shining

As I sit here, cold and alone

On this stormy night

I look to the light

And I see you

Nobody but you

And you smile

And I forget the cold and darkness

Just for a little while

And I want to stay like this forever

But all things end

Even this stormy night

"I've never heard that song before," said a voice beside her.

Esmera nearly jumped out of her skin, cursing under her breath. Even so, she realised it was loud enough for Tauram to hear when she opened her eyes to see him smirking at her.

"You are going to give me a heart attack one of these days." She huffed.

He put a silver tray with two glittering glasses of familiar white-grey juice on it on the piano top. "Would some litchi juice be enough to resuscitate you?"

Esmera's eyes clung to the glass. The truth was, she was parched, but she somehow managed to tear her gaze away to shoot him a glare. "I don't know. Does it have hearing healing properties?"

"Your hearing is going to be fine, Esmera, litchi juice or not." Tauram handed her a glass. "You haven't been straining yourself, have you?"

Esmera let out a breath, sheepishly retracting her hearing. She took a sip of juice, focusing on nothing but the taste before setting the glass back on the tray. She had been straining without meaning to, trying to latch onto any sound that would make her feel like herself again.

Whether it would return or not, she had no idea, but she would take Tauram's word for it. Hope was all she had. It was all she had ever had on those cold, dark nights, and the lonely days she had thought would never end.

"Esmera." Tauram took her hands off the keyboard and clasped them in his. "Tell me about it."

She avoided his eyes, instead looking at their intertwined fingers. "About what?"

"Your song."

She hazarded a glance at him. "How did you know it's my song?"

"Lucky guess." He grinned.

Esmera wriggled her hands out of his and clasped them on her lap. "It's just a silly little something I came up with a while ago."

"I don't think it's silly." Tauram tilted his head.

"The story behind it is."

"I like your stories, Esmera."

"Really?" She peeked up at him.

"Really." He took her hands in his once again, and she realised there was no running away from him or her past, and maybe it was better that Esmera had met someone who would force her to confront the memories she tried to avoid. Maybe then she would stop being so afraid of them.

"I was sixteen, and my first boyfriend had broken up with me."

"That's not that bad." Tauram raised his eyebrows. "I was expecting something scandalous."

"This was scandalous to me at the time." Esmera looked down at their hands again. "He left me for someone else."

"I'm sorry."

Esmera smiled faintly. "You don't have to be. I'm long over it."

"Are you though?"

Esmera sighed. She was over that heartbreak but not over the similar ones that had followed. That's why she still remembered the song. She sang it to herself on those nights there was no one around to hear it. It made her feel like there was hope, that the strife and struggle and darkness would lead her somewhere bright and worthwhile.

"These kinds of things keep happening to me, so no. I guess you're right." She kept her eyes down.

"I think you choose jerks who don't see your worth. That's the problem."

"Are they all jerks or is love just painful by nature?" Esmera wondered aloud.

Love was a risk. It made Esmera bare all her deepest vulnerabilities.

It was standing on a precipice and trusting someone to catch her before she fell. It made her put her heart in another person's hand and gave it no protection if he decided to toss it away.

Stephan had hurt her, but the reason she had stayed with him for so long was that he wasn't always like that. Sometimes he was kind and gentle and funny and romantic, and Esmera knew that he loved her. Other times he was violent and cruel, and she was no longer so sure about who he really was until the next morning when he'd wake up as the Stephan she loved and remembered and promised that the one she feared would never touch her again.

If he had loved her, and he had hurt her, what made those two things so different?

She was caught in the riptide of her thoughts until Tauram pulled her back to the solid, safe shore.

He tilted her face up to his so that there was nowhere to look but those eyes she tried so hard to avoid for fear of all the lovely, painful things they could do to her. "I don't think love has to hurt, Esmera. I think it can make you smile when you thought you'd forgotten how to. It can make you laugh even when you don't want to. It can make you care about things that had lost meaning to you."

His eyes held hers in a way that made her breathless, speechless, senseless.

"You think?" Esmera asked softly.

"I do," he said with a small smile. "Or at least, I'm starting to."

"What made you start?" asked Esmera, even though she had some idea if the way Tauram's gaze wandered to her mouth and the thumb tracing over her jaw was any indication.

"I met someone in the art museum I own in Arkōsāra. She was staring at one of my paintings with awe. I didn't know her when I saw her, but there was something familiar about her."

Esmera's breath caught as she relived the enchantment of their first meeting with Tauram. She had been so taken with his style, his smile, the way he knew what to say to tease and thrill her. It was almost embarrassing to remember, but Esmera couldn't regret it because it had brought her here.

Tauram released Esmera's fingers, freeing his hand to cup her cheek. "There was something about her that made me remember who I was before I decided to stop being him," he murmured.

"Which is?" Esmera leaned closer to him, and he mirrored her motion.

She tried not to pull back because of her fear of what getting any closer would mean, but she didn't think she could even if she wanted to.

She had shut her feelings away after Stephan because she had thought it would keep her safer, but she couldn't hide anything from Tauram Morghis even if she tried.

Maybe it was because he knew her roots, how they had given rise to the flowers and thorns she bore without understanding how they had come to exist. Maybe it was because she wanted him to know who she was now, just like she wanted to know him.

Tauram's eyes fixed on hers, certain but gentle. "He is someone who vowed to defend his kingdom and protect the woman he was meant to marry, and he is a man of his word."

Esmera's lips had barely parted to speak before Tauram was pulling her to him, silencing her mouth with his.

She had wanted to say something to fill that space between them, but she didn't know what. Besides, there was no need. That gap was filled by their bodies, by the heat between them.

Tauram was Esmera's safe place in a world she didn't know, a sanctuary in a life that had only ever endangered her. She would run into the arms he held out, return the caresses he offered for as long as they lasted.

She slid her fingers into his hair. She may not be able to hear much, but her heart beat loudly enough to echo through her ears. She tasted the sweetness of litchis in his mouth, smelt the mountain earth that was as much a part of him as he was of it, felt the blazing, unmistakable ardour where their lips met.

Esmera lost herself in Tauram for a moment and then, once she had recovered from the slow, gentle intoxication of his kiss, she pulled back.

"You don't mean this, Tauram." Esmera turned away from him and balled her hands in her lap.

How could he when he loved a queen or whoever Ghallia had been before she married into royalty? What could a prince possibly want with a poor orphan who couldn't do anything properly, not make a frappe, not hold a marriage together, not even listen to flowers whisper without crumpling?

"That's not true." Tauram cradled Esmera's chin in his hand, turning her to face him again. "I've been wanting to kiss you since I saw you in the museum. I didn't understand why at the time, how I could have this strong a feeling about someone I just met, but when I discovered who you were, it made sense." His free hand flared towards hers for a moment but then stilled in his lap as he clenched it. "Esmera, if you don't want me to kiss you, just say so, and I will honour your request."

And then Esmera was the one drawing him to her with the ferocity of an avalanche, forgetting all about the piano in front of them. They were an island in the world on the piano stool, and all that existed for Esmera was Tauram's fingers running through her curls.

She couldn't breathe, but she didn't want to, not when she could ball her fists in Tauram's tunic, not when she needed to give her breath and herself to him.

Not when she knew there'd never be another moment like these sacred first few kisses.

She gasped as he pulled her closer by her waist. He moaned against her as their bodies collided, and she was curling into his embrace, into the solidness of his shoulders.

"So, this is what you two are doing while I'm finalising arrangements with our memory walker for tomorrow," came a cool voice from the doorway leading into the sitting room.

Esmera and Tauram pulled apart. He dropped his hand where he twirled her curls around his fingers but kept it on the small of her back, a reassurance and a promise. Still breathless, still burning, Esmera swiped a subtle hand over her mouth, but that only strengthened Belaren's suspicions instead of quelling them if his little smirk was any indication.

Behind him, the entrance hall was dim. The silver leaves on his deep purple shirt shimmered as if a gentle breeze ruffled them on their embroidered branches. He wore his hair pulled back.

"I thought you were at Anjarah's house." Tauram raised his eyebrows at his friend.

"I was."

"Did you meet her son yet?" Tauram asked, tracing discreet patterns over Esmera's hip that made her want to kiss him again.

"No. He's away on a school trip, but that's not what I came to tell you." Belaren waved away any reply Tauram might have made.

There was one hovering on his tongue. Esmera could tell from the way his eyes gleamed.

"I called Varali using Anjarah's telephone to confirm for tomorrow." Belaren looked between Esmera and Tauram, narrowing his eyes. "You haven't forgotten about that, have you?"

"Of course not!" they protested in unison.

"I'm honestly offended that you would think so little of us, and I'm sure Esmera is too." Tauram shook his head.

"Surely I can't be blamed for your activities that I accidentally witnessed in our shared home."

"Touché." Tauram rolled his eyes. He tracked his fingers down Esmera's thigh that faced the piano, out of Belaren's sight, but she was sure her leaning into Tauram was a dead giveaway.

"Is there anything else?" asked Tauram, his tone as even as if he wasn't the reason Esmera was biting back a moan.

"Varali is still available at midday tomorrow. She'll meet you at the Finnaaz estate, or what's left of it, anyway," said Belaren.

Those words brought Esmera crashing back down to the earth from the clouds Tauram had taken her floating among.

Tomorrow, she would return to the place she was born to uncover the secrets that made her who she was. She had never wanted anything more than that in her whole life, but now she was afraid of what she might find, of the blood staining her family's history now soiling her present, of a truth she may not be ready for.

But this was something that had to be done to defeat King Ruagu.

Tauram must've seen the way Esmera withdrew into herself, the solemnity her gaze assumed. He squeezed her knee. "Thank you, Belaren. We appreciate you." There was a finality in Tauram's words that told everyone that it was the end of this conversation.

"As you should." The lord's eyes flitted between Esmera and Tauram again. "Just make sure that whatever you're doing in your free time doesn't make you lose sight of our goal. We must defeat Ruagu and save Milatanur by the end of this week."

With that, Belaren left the room, sweeping through the shadowy hallway to his bedroom and taking the bleakness that had accompanied his words with him.

He must know the painful realities of Milatanur better than Esmera did. He had lived here longer than she had, after all. Perhaps he, like her, was starting to see a future in this place that had initially seemed as barren as any of the other pastures Esmera had set out to explore.

That could be the only reason why he was reminding Esmera and Tauram of a mission he had never even wanted to be part of.

That gave Esmera the hope her conversation with Tauram had given her. Despite all the hatred and hardships, there was love in this world, and there would be victory. She would ensure it even if she had to fight for it. Even if she had to give her last breath for Tauram, for Milatanur, for all the people who had no idea that their lives rested on four pairs of unsteady hands.

"Now, you need to do something that doesn't involve your hearing at all." Tauram took hold of Esmera's hand. "Where's your book?"

Her gaze rested on it where it lay on the couch. "I finished it."

That was why she had hazarded a chance on the piano, but it wasn't the best idea. She could only heal her hearing by resting it.

Tauram's eyes glittered. "I can think of something else we can do."

Esmera bit her lip. "We?"

"Yes, we." He leaned in and brushed his mouth against hers, taking her back to that dreamland she had drifted through before Belaren interrupted them.

Esmera's eyes remained closed for a few moments after Tauram pulled away. She opened them to find his soft, amused gaze on her.

"But it does depend on you. Will you let me paint you?" He cocked his head.

"Tauram, surely you can find a prettier subject."

There was beauty carved into every facet of Milatanur. There were the mountains, the flowers, the sky, even the silk cushions on the couches, all breathtaking, dazzling in a way Esmera wasn't.

"I politely disagree, Esmera Finnaaz," Tauram said before pulling her to her feet and up the stairs to his studio for the second time that day.