Mel arrived at the classroom on time with Gabriella and the other nobles. When they entered, Professor Dereey was already packing up hand sized metal objects from a bag and placing them on a piece of cloth on his desk. Mel took her seat next to Austin and leaned over to him.

He looked at her with a frown on his face, but Mel kept her focus on Professor Dereey.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Tuning forks,” Austin said, sounding unimpressed.

“Oh,” Mel said. “Why?”

“What do you mean, why?” Austin asked. “They are the most basic component of magic practice. Have you never trained with tuning forks before?”

Mel winced. She’d never seen a tuning fork in her life. Of course, she knew what it was. She’d heard people talking about how a small metal object could imitate the sound of a pure note. But never thought they were actually used for anything else than tuning instruments, perhaps.

“No,” Mel said, and her gaze caught with Austin.

She pulled back, leaning away from him. His eyes were dark and intense, and Mel felt a sudden thump in her heart. She swallowed hard.

“Well, I hope you’re a fast learner.”

Mel shook her head. “Not really.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, then I will offer my personal tuning forks for you to borrow. I have practiced with them since childhood and know the different notes by heart. You can come by my house after class and get them.”

Mel felt strange about this, coming over to Austin’s house. She didn’t even know where he lived. He didn’t live in the dorms, that much she had figured, even though he sometimes ate at the dining hall.

“I don’t know,” Mel said. “Maybe.”

Austin shrugged and turned back to Professor Dereey, who had just finished placing the tuning forks down on his desk. He cleared his throat and Mel’s eyes landed on his thinning hairline.

“Welcome to today's class,” Professor Dereey said. “We will practice for the big test coming up soon. The first test of the semester. During this test you will enter a room with twelve tuning forks and we will call upon you to find a certain element’s tune among them. For example, we might say; locate wind, and you will have a couple of minutes to find the tuning fork representing wind.”

“A test?” Mel whispered to Austin.

Austin shushed her and Mel felt her heart racing. Panic spread out to her limbs, and she felt restless, like she wanted to run to the door and get out of here.

“Today I will show you why this is important to know,” Professor Dereey continued. “And you will get to play around with the tuning forks by yourselves for a while. But I expect most of you already know the notes of the elements by heart. Otherwise, you probably should not be here at Falden.”

Mel swallowed hard. She had no idea about any of the notes and felt like Professor Dereey’s eyes locked with hers for a moment. Mel felt like he knew she didn’t belong here and intended to smoke her out today.

The professor reached for his bag and brought up a silver amulet. He hung it between his fingers and the metal gleamed in the sunlight streaming in from the windows. Mel heard a distinct ringing from the silver. She could feel a note take form in her mind.

“A master elemental warrior can hear the ringing from a magical item,” Professor Dereey said. “This ringing is the pure tone of the element imbued inside the metal. But alas, no one here among us can, not even me. It is very hard to attune to the elements like that.”

Mel frowned. She could still hear that note ringing in her mind.

What did Professor Dereey mean? Could he not hear that? Could Austin not hear that?

“But both an elemental warrior and a mage smith need to know the notes by heart, even if they cannot hear them from the dragon fire itself. They need to know what magic is close by and connect to it. This is a water amulet, and I know the pure note of water. If I visualize this note ringing inside my mind and focus on connecting with the amulet, I can use the magic inside.”

Professor Dereey walked up to Isabella and handed her the amulet.

“Make it glow,” he commanded.

Isabella turned her blue eyes to the amulet. Her forehead grew wrinkles as she concentrated and Mel saw the amulet glow in a blue color. Patterns appeared from nowhere, gleaming in the metal, like veins holding the essence of life inside.

“Good,” Professor Dereey said.

He grabbed the amulet from Isabella, and she reluctantly handed it back to him. He pocketed it and closed the flap over the slit. Mel felt her jaw hang open and in a moment of self-awareness, she closed her mouth. She looked around at the other students.

Some were taking notes, others looking uninterested while watching the professor, and a few were staring off into the distance. No one except Mel seemed impressed by a little magical glow.

Professor Dereey turned to his tuning forks and picked one up. He hit the metal against the table and a note rang out through the classroom. Mel’s ears picked up the note and compared it with the note ringing inside the amulet.

Not a match.

The professor picked up another fork and hit it against the table. A note rang out and Mel compared it again.

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It was a match. It sounded just like the water inside the amulet did. Mel smiled.

He picked up one more tuning fork and hit it. The note rang out, and it was not the same as the amulet. He turned back to the classroom.

“Which one was water?” Professor Dereey asked.

Almost the entire classroom raised their hands, and Mel realized this must have been an easy question. Mel raised her hand as well, since she knew the answer. Professor Dereey pointed to Flavio in the front.

“Flavio. The second one.”

“Correct,” Professor Dereey said.

He picked up the tuning fork that was now established as water and lifted the amulet up from his pocket. When he hit the metal against the table and the sound rang out through the classroom, the amulet glowed. The blue pattern was back and Mel felt her heart warming.

“The dragon fire inside the silver reacts to its note,” Professor Dereey said. “It is its tune, and if you play it on a fork or in your mind, it will connect. This is the secret to how to use magic. This is the skill that the elemental warriors will perfect over years of practice at Falden and after school, it will be the skill that keeps you alive while fighting the beasts.”

He met the students' gazes, one after another, letting this fact seep into their minds. He watched them with attention for questions, but none arrived. Eventually, Professor Dereey announced it was time for the students to pick up the tuning forks and try themselves.

Mel approached the desk with hesitation, watching Gabriella pick up the one she had memorized as water. She remembered where Dereey had placed it, but if they were to jumble all the forks together, she didn’t think she could pick it out again. Not without hearing the amulet and being able to compare its sound.

Gabriella hit the tuning fork against the table and the amulet glowed blue. Mel felt the fork and the magic harmonizing, loving each other in a way. They were understanding each other, speaking the same language, and Mel felt the beauty in this.

“Can you hear that?” Mel asked Austin. “Feel that?”

He looked at her with a quizzical expression on his face.

“You mean the tuning fork with the water note?” he asked. “Yes, I believe everyone can hear it.”

“No, I mean…” Mel said. “I mean the harmony between them.”

Austin was quiet for a moment, listening. Gabriella hit the tuning fork again and Mel could see him straining his ears, focusing.

“No,” he said. “It’s just the water note. Can you hear the amulet?”

Mel shook her head, and a sheepish smile covered her face.

“Of course not,” she said. “I was just testing you.”

She didn’t want to admit she was freakish, different. She had heard Professor Dereey, and it was impossible for her to hear the amulet. Mel didn’t want to be known here for making the impossible possible. She had already had that life in Windbrook. Being special wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

The professor approached Austin and Mel, standing a bit to the side of the class. A different note flooded the classroom and Mel thought a student must have picked up one of the other tuning forks.

“Can you pick out earth?” Professor Dereey said and sank his eyes into Mel. “Since you seem to have time to stand here chitchatting, I expect you’re already an expert. So pick out the easiest element. Will you?”

The easiest element, Mel had no idea how earth sounded. There was no magical item with earth in this room, and she felt like she was swimming out into deep water.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Try,” Professor Dereey said, a sinister smile spreading on his lips. “Class, give Melissa Temper some room to find the right tuning fork for earth and no helping her.”

Mel swallowed hard. Of course, he had remembered her first and last name. She was the infamous student of the dragon cult, after all. The one everyone seemed to love to mock or pick to pieces with dissecting questions about her religion and culture.

Mel approached the table with the tuning forks.

She glanced over at the twelve forks splayed before her. She remembered the place where the water fork was supposed to be. That place was empty now. Mel didn’t even know where the water note was.

She picked up a random tuning fork and hit it against the table. Did this sound earthy to her?

She didn’t know. It just sounded like a pure tone, any pure tone.

Sweat trickled down her forehead and she turned with the fork in her hand toward the class and toward Professor Dereey. His eyes gleamed in the sunlight and Mel stretched out her hand with the fork to him. She had a chance of one in twelve. Maybe she would be lucky.

“This one.”

Professor Dereey shook his head.

“That’s wrong,” he said.

He nodded toward Isabella. She walked past Mel and gave her a tired glance. Isabella picked up a tuning fork and hit it against the table. She put it down, picked up another and so on, until she had found the one she was looking for. The one that was earth.

She turned toward the class and Professor Dereey and held the tuning fork in her hands, like a trophy.

“This one,” Isabella said.

“Correct.”

Mel’s hand fell to her side, and she placed the tuning fork back on the table. Her gaze caught with Austin and he looked embarrassed. Like she had publicly shamed him. Mel felt sick and wanted to run out of the classroom, run to her dorm, and hide under the covers.

Class ended, and Gabriella walked up to Mel. She put a hand on her shoulder.

“It could have happened to anyone,” Gabriella said. “I also need to brush up on the notes before the test. Okay?”

Mel nodded, but didn’t respond. Gabriella walked out of the classroom with the nobles and told Mel she would see her later. Austin stayed behind and when they were alone, he leaned against his desk, watching her.

“So do you want to borrow my tuning forks?” he asked again.

This time, Mel nodded.

“Yeah, I think I have to. Sorry.”

“No worries,” he said. “I’ve seen you study, working hard to learn. I know it takes time. It took me months to get it. To hear the notes and pick them out among a dozen others. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

“But how am I going to learn all this until the test?” Mel asked. “It’s only a couple of days away.”

“You will borrow my forks,” he said. “You will train every night and morning with them, then come to class, train some more in class and you will get the hang of things. You will probably annoy the hell out of Gabriella. She will beg you to stop. But you can do this.”

Austin gave her a wide smile and Mel felt her heart lift.

“Why are you being so nice to me now?” she asked. “Is it only because you feel sorry for me, having been born into the cult?”

Austin chuckled.

“No… Perhaps… I don’t know. I just like you more now that I know you haven’t been fed with a silver spoon and you’re not planning to scam the school out of an education.”

“Oh right,” Mel said. “Because you’re such a nice guy who really fought to deserve his place here, right?”

She lifted an eyebrow at him.

“Whatever,” he said, clearly a bit defensive about her jab. “You don’t really know me.”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“Look, I’m trying to be nice here,” he said. “Do you want the tuning forks or not?”

“I want them, sorry,” Mel said. “I’ll follow you to your place and get them.”

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”