Fireheart, Age 6

"How was your day, sweetheart?" her father said. The family sat around the dinner table. Before her father had spoken, they had been sitting in silence.

"It was boring and torturous" Aelin looked at her uncle and saw that his eyes were reminding her that she couldn't make a statement like that without evidence. Hence, she added, "Lady Marion tried to get me to eat fish for lunch, and then I ran out of books to read, and it was pure torture because she wouldn't let me go to the library to get another one."

"So what?" her cousin asked, "You probably just reread the one you finished, or read one the other hundreds of books you have hoarded in your room," Aelin stuck her tongue out at him.

"Don't stick your tongue out at the table, Aelin. It's not polite to do that right now." Her father critiqued. He was smiling, though, so he wasn't really upset about it.

Her mother glared at her father. "It is not polite to stick your tongue out at all, Rhoe. Do not encourage her. Mistress Prewette has enough trouble as it is, teaching her etiquette. You should not encourage her."

"She's still a child, Ev. She's still allowed to be improper sometimes."

"She is going to be queen someday. She needs to learn these things now. Besides, people are already watching her."

Her uncle finally broke in, "That is enough, you two. Let us move to the next subject." When her parents fell silent and looked chagrin slightly, Uncle Orlon turned his gaze to her and gave her a slight smile.

"You know you can always borrow a book from mine or your parents' collection. Not requiring you to leave the royal apartment, I see no reason why Marion would take issue with that. And fish is not really that bad, young one. You just had a bad experience that one time…"

Aelin had stopped listening. Shooting through her veins was a familiar sense of dread. She did not want to be queen. She wasn't even four, and people were already worried about every move she made. Sometimes, she wished that she could fade away to someplace, where there was less pressure. Nothing was worse than being forced into ruling.

Her stomach began to ache and burn. The burning feeling began to flow through her veins until she could have sworn that she was on fire.

"Something's wrong!" her cousin's voice shattered through the room. Aelin tried to turn her neck enough to look at him, but it hurt too much. Her mouth filled with smoke, her teeth burned. It needed to get out, needed to get out, needed to stop.

And then she was pelted to the ground by water. It stung her skin, and she heard the sizzle of steam. It suffocated the fire burning in her and cooled her skin.

But it did not last, and her body began to reheat.

Cold hands touched her, and she smelled her mother's lavender perfume. She opened her eyes, and Evalin was peering down at her with concern, but her voice held no softness, only firm resolve when she spoke.

"You need to calm down. It will only get worse. Take a deep breath, and concentrate on something else. Anything else, as long as it's calming".

Aelin tried, she really tried to follow her mother's orders. But her skin was so hot!

Seeing her daughter struggling, Evalin tried a new tactic.

"Do you remember that time we held a concert in the ballroom? And how pretty the music was? What was that one song you really liked? That one that man played on the pianoforte? You went around humming it for days."

Her voice was hoarse, but she managed to choke out, "River flows in You."

"That's right. Let me see it went something like…." Her mother said before she began to hum the song. Listening to the melody, Aelin began to calm down. Slowly, she became more and more aware of her surroundings. Her clothes were soaking in some places and burned away in others. Sometime during her episode, she had toppled out of the chair, and scorch marks were surrounding her. Where her elbows he rested on the table, the wood was burned away. The room was clear of people besides her and her mother, but she could Aedion struggling to get back in. And her mother's dress was scorched from where she had brushed up against her.

Guilt tightened her stomach. "I'm so sorry I ruined your dress." Evalin looked down, just now noticing the marks, and she chuckled.

"Don't worry about it. It's a small price to pay for helping my Fireheart."

Furrowing her brow, Aelin asked, "Fireheart?"

"It's fitting, Evalin explained, "You've always had this burning passion in you. You care so deeply about so many things. Your stories, Terrasen, your family." Evalin stopped for a moment and noticed that her daughter had truly calmed down and was fully concentrating on what she was saying. "It's not your magic, but that passion that drives you. They light up your heart. Your love lights up your heart."

Aelin smiled. "I like that. Fireheart."