Riddle seemed different.

Hermione knew she'd pushed her luck the previous afternoon, denying him water to the brink of unconsciousness, but she hadn't been able to stop herself. Some instinct had whispered, See how far you can go. He deserves it. Make him see the truth … make him suffer to see it.

She had expected Riddle to break out of the rules she'd set. Instead he'd snarled and glared and hissed, but had adhered to the guidelines. She'd felt as though she were holding a dragon on a rope tether.

And now this. They'd agreed on a day's work by the seaside, which required an hour's trip in a covered carriage to a private part of the coast. The instant she slipped inside the carriage, Riddle said, "You overextend to draw your water whips."

"Excuse me?"

"I saw it yesterday." For the past few days, when they'd met in the mornings, Riddle had treated her with cold skepticism. Now his shadowed eyes were riveted on her as though they were still mid-spar. "Every time you draw a water whip from the pond, you reach too far. It risks balance and costs time."

Hermione took her seat as the dragon moose began to tug the carriage. "I don't overextend. I favor a long reach because it gives more impact when the whip strikes."

"If you didn't hold your dominant elbow so closely to your ribs when you went into the lash, you could increase force without sacrificing time."

"Oh? Really? Anything else you'd like to teach me, in your infinite wisdom?"

"Yes." He began to reel through a list of every tiny fault he'd noticed in her fighting style the previous afternoon, everything from the placement of her feet to the micromotions of her fingertips.

Hermione's first reaction was indignation. She'd only been trying to wear him out. If she'd known that Riddle was tallying up some list of flaws, she'd have tried to be more precise. … Yet she couldn't help being flabbergasted by how much he'd absorbed. It made her mouth strangely dry, the way he talked about her form, as if he'd done nothing but review mental images of her since she'd left his villa yesterday.

She tried to argue some of the more subjective points, but she knew that the next time she fought, she would be able to think of nothing other than his critiques. Worse, by the time they left the city limits, Hermione realized she no longer wanted the list to stop. That greedy feeling was budding up inside her, like when she'd torn through scroll after scroll at the IBA. Hadn't she wanted to learn from him?

But I didn't want him to teach me, she thought as she shoved out of the carriage into air that smelled like salt. The carriage had begun to feel very small. I wanted to learn on my own. … I've always learned on my own. I don't need help from a murderer.

She slipped her robe off, leaving her swimwear underneath. "Come on," she said, marching down the beach.

They waded into the surf, the sun a brilliant coin overhead. Halfway through their warm-up, a push and pull of the waves for several meters in either direction, Riddle said, "I could always show you."

"Show me what?"

"Everything I mentioned on the way here." He gestured to the inlet, a white crescent of deserted beach. "No one will see."

"I'm supposed to be the one instructing you."

"Yes. You're supposed to be instilling me with some great appreciation for waterbending. Possibly we could achieve that by … waterbending."

Hermione stifled a tiny noise in the back of her throat. She didn't want to find anything he said funny. So instead she glared at him. Blades of sunlight were reflecting off his straight nose, his high cheekbones, his bare shoulders. She didn't know why she felt so agitated, or why this offer to help her felt like more of a threat than anything he'd done thus far.

Riddle's expression tautened. "It's ridiculous to turn this down. You've never had formal instruction. I have, from the world's greatest masters." He stepped through the surf toward her, the water parting at his ankles. "Most of what I've described is obviously the result of self-instruction. They're inaccuracies that any master would have trained out of you early in life."

Hermione's fists curled, and the seawater rippled out from her as if she'd emitted a shock wave. "So, you're reminding me how behind I am?"

"Yes. And that you need to fix it, if you're ever to be what you want to be."

"You don't know what I want to be!"

"Of course I do. You want to be unparalleled."

Hermione's nails dug deeper into her palms.

"And you never will be," Riddle went on, "if you don't—"

She lashed a water whip toward him. Riddle was ready. He leapt aside, then skated over the crest of a nearby wave, and as they began to spar again, Hermione's heart began to drum, and not because of exertion. For the first time in her life, she was waterbending in the light of day, out in the open. As if this were normal. As if she were allowed.

Scarcely five minutes passed before Riddle had her falling back into the surf. "Well?" he said as she staggered up, bending the stinging water from her face and eyes.

Her teeth were gritted. "I know." It was something he'd mentioned in the carriage. "I know. The stance on the return."

"Yes. Keep the heel in. Again."

He hadn't finished speaking before Hermione was diving forward, drawing a wave up into a sheet of rich blue water, and coming at him from the side. Riddle moved like a mirage, impossibly fast, and then he was next to her, his hand catching her wrist. "Release more quickly."

The closeness of his voice made Hermione flinch. "Release—"

"The wave." He let go her wrist. "Under counterattack you need to discard your previous moves more quickly. You held the wave because you were planning to redir—"

"To redirect it, yes, into—"

"It doesn't matter. Let go of your ideas of continuity. Not all your plans in a fight will come to fruition; being clever isn't the point. You have to realize when to abandon a plan and accept that in an instant. That's real adaptability."

"Real adaptability?" Hermione licked the salt from her lips. "So, you admit you've been listening to the tenets of waterbending I've been trying to teach you?"

"I already knew them."

"Yes, and now you're repeating them back to me, which suggests you're starting to see their advantages."

"They're an advantage to you," said Riddle. "You can't bend every element." There was a strange light in his eyes. Again Hermione sensed some difference in him. This was not the expression he'd worn during their first fight, when every instant had been a mutual attempt at domination. And it was a world away from yesterday's mutinous glares in the heat of dehydration. Now he was—studying.

What had shifted within his mind? What was this?

Hermione shoved the questions away and attacked him again.

She didn't notice how quickly time was passing. Minutes and hours seemed to disappear. Even when they took breaks to drink water from the vats in the back of the carriage, they never paused in their discussions of the spars, Hermione insisting that thinner tendrils of water occasionally meant more flexibility, Riddle insisting that more was almost always better. Then they were back in the shallows, and back into motion.

Hermione drank in the instruction as fast as Riddle could provide it. She'd read about everything he suggested, of course, and some of it sounded so basic that it made her defensive. But then, he was right that she'd had to teach it to herself. She remembered freezing a sheet of water against a tree at the IBA as a mirror, trying to get every stance perfect, not knowing from the weathered illustrations in old documents whether she was doing it properly.

And now—take everything you can get, she thought, as Riddle showed her adjustment after adjustment. Take what he can offer, because he won't be able to offer it for long.

The thought of killing him came to her again as they sparred. It came to her as he moved her wrists or shoulders into place with delicate touches of his fingers, brushing one hip to turn her stance. Hermione tried not to think about it, to think only of the change she could feel in her bending. When she took on an adjustment, the water flooded forward more eagerly, pushed by this muscle or that digit in a way that immediately made sense to her.

"Good," Riddle said once or twice, and the low, curt word made something on the back of her neck tingle.

She realized, eventually, that she was ravenous. When she looked up, she found with a shock that it was long past noon. They'd been at it for hours upon hours.

They retreated into the shade of a tree and spread a blanket on the sand. As Hermione bit into a soft bun, she watched the sea. Pinpricks of light were pressed upon its surface as if the sun meant to puncture the fabric of the water.

"Well?" Riddle said after a time.

"Well, what?"

"Do you feel the benefits."

He looked sidelong at her. Hermione had seen that expression before. Junior waterbenders in the Northern Tribe had worn it after she'd returned from the IBA, having made a name for herself internationally. It was the look of young people, especially young men, who desired her approval but didn't want to be seen to desire it.

There was something so childish about that, so naïve, that she had no idea what to say. Besides, surely she was mistaken? What could Tom Riddle possibly want with her approval?

She found herself saying, "You teach well."

His mouth thinned in displeasure. "No. I have no patience for it. I've been asked to instruct dozens of classes. Watching those people is maddening."

"What do you call this, if not teaching?"

He brushed sand from the tops of his feet. "Investigation."

They continued through the afternoon. As Hermione began to internalize the adjustments, the duration of their spars stretched out second by second. Thoughts of her assignment faded, and of Riddle's hideous past and dangerous future. There was only the relentless movement of their bodies beneath the merciless sun. The way he watched her, wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder. And she knew, now, the way he would remember and analyze. She knew that when he looked at her, he understood the drive behind every motion. Unparalleled.

#

"Have you seen it anywhere, yet?" said Ron.

"Pardon?"

Harry and Ron exchanged a look over the table. "The insignia," said Harry. "With the skull and the flame."

"Oh. No. I did look for it," she added. "I-I went into his villa to have a look around."

It was a lie. Riddle had shown her into the villa himself that evening, when they'd returned from the coast. They'd been halfway through a discussion about the library at Ba Sing Se University—he was describing a set of tablets that described ancient earthbending forms—when Hermione had realized she'd followed him into his living room. She'd stopped dead.

"Yes?" Riddle had said, watching her survey the place.

Again she had the sense that he wanted her to show some sign of approval. And it was true that she could find no fault with the villa's interior, which was meticulously kept, each item of fine quality but humble appearance. The one real display of wealth was a golden Fire Nation insignia hung upon one wall.

"I'm surprised you live so simply," she said.

"Why?"

"You were raised at court. You think you deserve worship. I'd assume you'd be more interested in grandeur."

One corner of Riddle's mouth lifted. "There's enough grandeur in the palace itself. I don't usually spend much time here. Tea?"

Hermione was about to say yes when she caught herself. It was improper to be in his villa after sundown. Her presence would be the kind of thing to spark rumors among the nobility—and doubly so if they'd been seen this way, both flushed and disheveled, her hair braided thickly with salt, Riddle's still damp from the seawater he'd kept running through it to cool himself.

And yet Hermione didn't move for the door. It occurred to her how quickly the day had disappeared, and that if she'd had another month of days like this one, it wouldn't have satisfied her thirst to know more.

It wasn't just a matter of appropriating what Riddle had learned from various masters. It was the way he thought about bending, a kind of flexibility and creativity that surprised her in ways she hadn't known she could be surprised anymore. Late in the day, as the sun had set, Hermione had begun again to show him forms from the style she'd developed. But this time, Riddle hadn't just listened with a sullen look on his face. He'd questioned her reasoning. He'd even suggested changes.

They'd stopped at the last gasp of sunset, her arms outstretched and quivering, her exhausted body having just completed a move she'd named the Three-Point Arrow. Riddle had suggested moving her left shoulder back, opening up the 'bowstring' section of the move, and Hermione was exhilarated by the way the 'arrow' was then freed to lash forward, no longer at risk of nicking her own bicep.

She'd watched Riddle move through the form in the dusk himself. The first try was competent, the second excellent, the third immaculate. The bolt of water shot out into the dark ocean from his fingertips like a bird of prey seeking a kill.

An hour and a half later, standing in his villa, Hermione realized she didn't yet want to return to Number 12, Dragontongue Road. She wanted to keep up the back-and-forth into the night, the mad energy of collaboration.

"I should go," she'd forced out.

"Should you?"

"Yes." Hermione swallowed. "I … I suppose you do this all the time with other masters. Developing new moves, and that sort of thing."

"No."

They stood in silence a moment. Hermione didn't know why she believed him.

Then she'd left the room, heart going strangely fast, knowing somehow that Riddle was watching her disappear from sight. They hadn't even said good night. The whole way home she'd thought about his hand pressing her shoulder back, the roughness of his palm, the way that under his pressure the Three-Point Arrow had locked perfectly into place.

And now Harry and Ron were looking at her with hesitancy. "Hermione," said Harry, "are you sure you haven't gone too far into this?"

"Yeah," said Ron. "I know you need to stay on top of things, now that he knows you're a fighter, but …" He traded another look with Harry. "It's going to be hard, killing him. Are you sure you're not making it harder on yourself?"

"Harder on myself?" Hermione said, more sharply than she'd meant. "Of course not. The more we waterbend together, the more I think about—about what a waste of an Avatar he is. So disgusting that he can take all that ability and use it for what he's planning. If anything, it's helping me prepare." She stood, heat needling her body. "I won't have an issue. You two just focus on making sure we can get inside."

Yet as she lay in bed that night, she had the feeling that she had lied again.

As she walked to the palace complex the next morning, she imagined forcing Riddle to the villa floor on the full moon's night, clenching her fist to stop his heart. But the images were disrupted by memories of the seaside—of speaking to him with the kind of immediate understanding that she associated with her own thoughts building upon themselves.

She arrived to find Riddle waiting in the courtyard. He looked up quickly at the sight of her as if he'd been anticipating her a long time. Her mind went strangely blank.

At the coast, the ocean had been always between them. Volumes of salt water shifting between their bodies, roaring and crashing softly around them, creating an omnipresent remove. Now the world was still and silent, and Hermione was acutely aware of the thinness of the air as she stopped a few feet from him. Nothing separated them.

They did not greet each other. It was as though she had never left.

"What is it?" Riddle asked, nodding to the box in her hands.

Hermione opened it to reveal the scrolls that she had brought with her.

Riddle lifted one into his hands and unrolled it, moving slowly, cautiously. "This writing. I've never seen this kind of script before."

"You won't have. These scrolls have to do with advanced healing; the text is hundreds of years old. They're usually not allowed to be duplicated or excerpted at length, even for academic purposes. If other healers from the South want to learn these methods, they need to travel to the North Pole. But the masters said I should bring copies. They suspected they might help me unlock your Avatar Spirit."

She expected Riddle to look irritated or dismissive, to return the scroll to the box and say, Advanced healing. So, this is of no use to me. But he kept scanning the vellum.

"I thought talking through some of the theory might help with your healing block," Hermione said. "Shall we read them inside?" She tried to sound brisk and businesslike, as if she weren't remembering standing in his villa the previous night.

Again, the day slipped away. They spent it seated upon comfortable cushions, poring over the scrolls. And though Riddle was quiet when she elaborated on the texts' descriptions of the Ocean and Moon Spirits, or of life in the Water Tribe, he sometimes asked questions that caught her off-guard.

"You were learning these techniques at sixteen?" he said over a scroll about the remaking and rejoining of veins.

"Yes."

"I suppose you were working toward the IBA."

"That's not really relevant to the topic at hand. But yes."

"Was your eventual goal to be an instructor there? To keep access to the library and your nighttime learning?"

Hermione studied Riddle. It was near sunset already, the reddish light catching upon his dark brows.

"The IBA doesn't have a Northern healing instructor," she said eventually. "If a waterbender wants to learn in our style, they have to travel to the Tribe itself. We consider life at the North Pole to be an irreplaceable supplement to training in the art."

Riddle looked suspicious. But he was still listening.

Hermione sorted through the scrolls and lifted one out. "See, here: procedures to be practiced and learned at the Noontime Moon. For three months in winter, there's no sunlight where our tribe is located. We're about a day's travel from the place where the sun only rises and sets once a year." Hermione traced the small moon drawn on the scroll. "You visited our tribe in the springtime months, so you would have seen sunrises and sunsets come in cycles, the way they do here. But you won't have felt the strength in waterbending that comes from that three-month night. And in the summertime, when the sun doesn't set for months, we train our endurance to last without the power of the moon. It's an exercise in extremes. As waterbenders, we learn to be more reliable than the world that changes around us."

As Hermione spoke, she felt a pang of homesickness. She missed the winter days spent carrying lanterns, each home built into an oasis of light and community. She missed the summer nights spent unrolling thick blankets over windows, the omnipresent sun blocked by thickly packed snow walls, which turned ethereal shades of deep blue.

And yet she had always felt so lonely there, forever out of step. Her parents had been absent and her friends complacent. Even at the IBA she had never felt at home. She had only ever chased at the feeling, caught it in snatches with Harry and Ron.

"So you mean to return to the North," said Riddle slowly.

"Yes."

"And what will you do there? Spend the rest of your life in hiding?"

Hermione tasted something bitter. She hated that Tom Riddle, of all people, was the first to ask this question. No one, not even Harry or Ron, had ever seemed to understand what it cost her to shroud half of herself in secrecy.

But of course Riddle does, Hermione found herself thinking. He had hidden the same way at the orphanage. He knew the feeling was that of strangulation.

"I can make expeditions for research," she said. "They'll last a number of months. I can practice then."

"So you'll live for the moments you escape your own life."

The words hit Hermione in the gut.

She floundered for a moment before forcing them back on-topic, turning to a new scroll about the limitations of the body. But she felt shaken. Maybe it had been for the best that she'd never spoken about these things with someone before. Maybe her aloneness had enabled her to feel like she had control of her own destiny.

Soon the sun had set. She only realized it was dinnertime when Riddle's attendant began to bring dishes to the table. Hermione half-rose, alarmed, but Riddle said, "I've already sent word to your hosts that you'll be taking dinner with me."

The attendant, Romilda Vane, lingered in the doorway, watching with interest. When Romilda saw Hermione watching, she flushed red and darted out of sight.

Riddle took his seat at the dinner table and looked at her as though to say, Well?

"I wouldn't want to review the healing texts while we eat," she said. "The masters took a long time to copy them out. I don't want to risk damaging them."

"Yes, I know."

Hermione's confusion deepened. They'd finished with false courtesy. If not a tool for his healing, what possible other reason was there for this invitation? Or for the casual way he'd said "Tea?" last night? Or for any of the questions he'd asked this afternoon?

The only thing she could come up with was the ludicrous idea that Riddle had developed an actual interest in her. But Dumbledore had made it perfectly clear that the only thing within the Avatar was the thirst for power, no matter the cruelty he had to inflict to make it so. He was supposed to be a creature without conscience, with no desire for friendship, connection, or likeness.

Yet here he was, having sent a secret message to Harry and Ron to encourage her to stay for dinner, as though—after twelve hours of joint study—he still desired her company. And here she was, with suspicion and curiosity warring inside her, demanding that she solve him.

She sat.

#

Harry received the messenger hawk at high noon and left immediately for the palace. The message read, in the Fire Prince's long, slanting script,

Potter –

Royal Armorer's answer intrigues me. Return at earliest convenience.

Draco met him at the top of the palace's vast front steps. He waved off the guards who were checking the seal on Harry's message.

"Prince Draco," said Harry with a stiff bow.

"Potter."

"So, what did you hear about the—"

"It is hot, isn't it?" Draco interrupted, yawning. "Come on. Let's talk in the gardens, there's some shade there."

As they returned down the steps, Draco shot a glance back. "You're going to ask me about illicit military equipment right in front of the palace guards?"

"I wasn't going to say it like that."

Draco, who had always lorded his two additional inches of height for all they were worth, looked down his spindly nose at Harry. "Sure you weren't."

Harry rolled his eyes, although he felt the odd urge to grin. They crossed over the golden bricks of the complex into a painted walkway, then, after passing an array of marble pillars, sidled into a garden where turtle ducks scudded across the surface of a pond.

"So," said Draco, settling against a willow. "The Royal Armorer told me that particular piece of equipment is still in development."

"In dev—so it hasn't been released to any troops yet, after all."

"Yeah, Potter, that's usually what 'in development' means."

Harry scowled and tried to ignore the way the sunlight was falling through the willow leaves onto Draco, fluttering across his neck and collarbones. The prince looked exceptionally well-groomed, as though he'd combed his hair and steamed his silk robe immediately before Harry's arrival.

For some reason, Harry had also found himself straightening his own uniform in the mirror before coming here, as though he were about to do something important, rather than exchanging barbs with the git of the century.

Seeming to enjoy Harry's glare, Draco stretched his arms out and let his hands come to rest behind his head. "In any case, the thing definitely shouldn't have been anywhere near civilians. Where did you say it came from, again?"

"Er—the Harbor District. I can't remember the number of the exact office, but I'll retrace my steps and send it to you by hawk." Malfoy didn't look entirely convinced, so Harry quickly said, "Listen, I've got another question, while I'm here."

Draco lit a stream of flame above his index finger, examining it. "Fire away."

"It's about my friend, Hermione Granger. She's trying to help Avatar Riddle with the Avatar State, and I was wondering if you'd seen them around here. Together. At all."

The stream of flame over Draco's index finger had gone out. "What's it to you?" he said slowly.

Harry hesitated. The previous night, Hermione had returned to Dragontongue Road near midnight, protesting that nothing had happened besides a long dinner and conversation at Riddle's villa. But she'd definitely been avoiding Harry's eyes.

He and Ron were beginning to grow seriously concerned that Riddle had done something to her—hurt her, or threatened her. And while Harry didn't really think Draco would know anything about the truth, maybe he could wring out some clues as to what Riddle might be trying.

"Well," Harry said, "Hermione's my friend, and she's been staying to work with him quite late. And—" Harry hunted for an excuse and remembered a story he'd heard last summer, rumors about Riddle bedding some noblewoman just because he'd kissed her hand at a dinner party. "—and I don't want there to be stories about her. You know how the court gets."

"Your … friend. Of course." Draco's tone grew distinctly colder. "Wouldn't want people imagining things. Unless they're not imagining anything."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, as far as I know, Riddle and Granger have been holed up in his villa sixteen hours a day." Draco reached for one of the willow's swaying branches and began plucking leaves from it, letting them drift into the water. "It's not a massive stretch of the imagination, is it, Potter?"

Harry's jaw went slack. He'd only been looking for an excuse, he hadn't actually thought Hermione could be involved with Riddle. She couldn't really have been taken in by him, knowing the truth—could she?

"Oh, come on. Is it really some huge surprise Granger's gone soft over him? Everyone loves Riddle." There was definitely something malevolent in Draco's voice now. "The Fire Nation, my parents, even the generals. … Rosier and Mulciber and Nott and the others are always scurrying around after him, like he's the one who's an honorary general, not me."

Harry noted the names. Rosier, as a High General, would be nearly as untouchable as the Fire Lord, but Nott had only been promoted from Lieutenant the previous year. Maybe Harry could find a way into his offices to poke around … maybe he'd find something about the tripping weapon or Ron's insignia.

Draco was plucking leaves more violently now. "You know, we were at the IBA for seven years," he muttered. "You could've told Granger any time. And then I wouldn't—" He cut himself off.

"What?" said Harry, now completely lost.

"Never mind." Draco let go the branch and stalked away from the willow tree. "But she's living with you, Potter. I mean, I'm surprised you didn't tell her you were keen on her during your romantic reunion."

Understanding hit Harry. He was so relieved to know what Draco was talking about that he laughed.

Draco's expression iced over. He turned and strode away.

"Hang on," Harry called. "I—what are you—it's not like that!"

But Draco was talking over him. "You've got your information. Now get off the grounds or I'll have the guards remove you."

#

"My lord," said Fire Lord Malfoy, kneeling in the antechamber to Tom's villa.

Tom gave his head an impatient jerk. "Stand."

Lucius rose. "I wished to inform you that High Admiral Lestrange has completed the plan for the deployment of the armada."

"Keep your voice down," Tom hissed, glancing back. There was no real chance of Granger overhearing, of course. He'd asked Vane to stay in the villa's living area to occupy her for just that reason.

Yet the idea of Granger learning anything about his invasion plans wormed into the back of his mind, troubling him. There was something more there than the fear of exposure.

"Of course, my lord," whispered Lucius. "Do you wish to see the plan? The admirals are waiting in the palace's war chamber."

"I'll review it later. The waterbending master is still here."

"Ah. Of course. I apologize, Avatar. … The peasant woman has been demanding much of your time." Malfoy's lip curled. "I can have her removed."

Tom's impatience contracted into anger. "Have her removed? Don't you think I could remove her myself if I wished it?"

"I—of course, my lord, but—"

"Get out." He had no time for Malfoy. And the admirals and generals, whose deference usually felt pleasurable—what were they, really? Fawning sycophants, like the rest of the world. They had nothing to offer him that he didn't already know.

Tom stalked through the halls of the villa. Only when he returned into the living room did his agitation recede. "That will be all, Miss Vane."

The servant bowed before scuttling out of the room, leaving Granger rising from a comfortable chair, a cup of tea in her hand. "What did the Fire Lord want?" she asked.

"Nothing important. A bending demonstration for the upcoming summer festival."

"I see." Granger set her teacup upon the table. "Shall we go, then?"

"Yes. This way." Tom led her through the villa's back door, where a palanquin was waiting to bring them to the High Temple—and the entrance to the Dragonbone Catacombs.

He took her hand to help her into the palanquin. Her body tensed when their fingers touched.

That day on the beach, Tom had felt an unknown prickle at the back of his neck as he and Granger had worked in tandem, exchanging stray words in instinctive understanding, creating new shapes and rhythms with their bodies. Now, as he settled beside her in the palanquin, the feeling recurred. Like the stir in the air before the moment the lightning came to play around his fingertips.

An hour later, they were walking through the red-dark passageways, the skulls of dragons looming to the left and right. The walls of the catacombs were painted with lush historical murals, the tombs of ancient Fire Lords set into deep crevices with golden memorial statues.

"Have you been here before?" said Granger as they turned through the labyrinth.

"Yes. Often." Tom didn't elaborate. He'd visited the Dragonbone Catacombs to study the military approaches of previous Fire Lords, to learn from their mistakes. It had surprised him to find that there were few Fire Lords who had ever thought as he did, so few who saw the way the Fire Nation's prosperity and enlightenment should be shared throughout the world.

He glanced down at Granger. "What do you expect to find here that would be any use in healing?"

"I'd have thought that would be obvious, given today's lesson."

Tom held his handful of fire aloft to light the way, not wanting to admit that he could see no link at all. The day's so-called 'healing lesson' had consisted of Granger telling him old Water Tribe tales and asking for folklore from the Fire Nation in exchange. For the better part of the day, they'd walked through the city and passed fables back and forth, Tom battling disdain and annoyance.

But nested deep beneath those feelings was satisfaction, because Granger was beginning to look at him with the same frustrated intent that Tom felt. He considered how late she had stayed at his villa the previous night, her time and attention consumed by him alone. Every moment of her waking hours, she was devoting to him. The idea had made a slow, heated pleasure course through him, itself like magma.

Now Tom said, "I suppose you're looking for more mythology. More of the Fire Nation's superstitions to compare to the Water Tribe's."

"It has nothing to do with superstition." Granger stopped. "Here."

She strode into a hall of firebending history.

Tom followed, eyes narrowed. Granger's footsteps echoed down the hall into the dim light. Small flames burned in the walls behind panes of red glass. They stained her crimson, turned her brown eyes to black discs. She was bringing them all the way to the end of the hall, to the very oldest records of firebending history.

"What is this?" Tom said as she eased a scroll carefully from its slot.

"Today's lesson wasn't about mythology. It wasn't even about spirituality." Granger unrolled the scroll onto a small plinth designed for perusal. "It was about commonality. I thought you might find a way to appreciate the Water Tribe's history if you saw that our traditions and heritage are similar to the Fire Nation's in certain ways. But then I thought maybe there was an even more direct … here."

She straightened up from the plinth, triumph on her face. "I remembered doing at the IBA about a group of firebenders who visited the North Pole a long time ago, a group of royal ambassadors. This was centuries upon centuries back, just after the unification of the Fire Islands, when the modern conception of firebending was hardly even created. Look."

She pointed to the scroll. Tom stayed where he was. Another trick: the thought was awakening in his mind, the thought he'd had when deprived of water. Granger had used dehydration to fascinate him, to lure him, and now she was going to do something else to try and shake his beliefs.

"Look," Granger insisted. She lifted the scroll from the plinth and held it up. "It's a description of how those ambassadors brought back bending methods from the Water Tribe and fused them into the Fire Islands' existing style. They became part of the Royal Fire Academy's first teachings." She replaced the scroll on the plinth and faced Tom, firelight dancing in her eyes. "Which means dozens of the most basic firebending forms are influenced by the Water Tribe. You can read about them. It's right there."

Tom was standing very still now. Everything felt suddenly wrong.

He had always chosen firebending above all else. He had left the orphanage and never returned. As for the family that had abandoned him, he had made certain that his father and grandparents would never be part of his life—nor, indeed, anyone else's. Though he was the Avatar, with all the elements within him, and though his scum of a father had been of the Water Tribe, he had chosen who he was: a man of the Fire Nation.

So Tom had thought. But in this moment, the world seemed irrevocably intermixed. He felt the way everything was intermixed in his own body, and it shook him so badly that he took a step backward.

"It's no surprise," he forced out. "I know the nations have influenced each other's bending styles."

"You do, do you?" Granger's voice was sharp now. "Then why do you look like you've just swallowed a mouthful of pine needles?"

The fire in his palm burned hotter. "Maybe it's because you've wasted my time bringing me here, just to insist on this everything-is-one airbender philosophy that I've been hearing since I was twelve."

"Hearing, but not understanding, obviously."

"Hearing and disagreeing!" His head was beginning to pound. "Maybe the rest of the world is intertwined, but I am the Avatar. I am … the purpose of the Avatar is for one exceptional individual to create balance among the nations. One unique individual! There is no point of comparison!"

"You think you're the only person who's unique? Why, because you have bending abilities no one else has?" She let out a harsh laugh. "Well, then, how about the ten-year-olds in my tribe's healing huts who have more ability to heal than you do?"

"You want to talk about ability?" Tom hissed, stalking up to her, lifting the palmful of flame to cast light on her expression. "Why should I listen to any talk of ability from someone throwing away her natural capabilities the way you are?"

"Throw away? I haven't thrown anything away! I've worked for fifteen years to develop—"

"You've spent fifteen years cowering in the shadows. And yesterday you told me you've resigned yourself to an entire life cowering in the shadows."

"So?" she spat. "Don't pretend like you care. If I threw away my home and my past and sacrificed everything for my bending, it wouldn't make any difference to you. You'll teach me yourself, you'll work with me in a way you admitted you've never worked with anyone else, and yet when you find out my people had a part in Fire Nation history, you act like it's some disgusting affront. Thank you for showing me so clearly what you think of me."

"Don't be ridiculous. That history has nothing to do with you." Tom's head throbbed more violently. His anger was swirling into frustration. "You've been forced to live on the outskirts, you've developed your own methods—you're so desperate to align yourself with those people that you can't see you're different from the rest."

"No." Granger drew herself up. He could see the flush on her cheeks even in the dappled colors of the flame. "I'm no different from my tribe. Everything I've done is because I love waterbending. Because I'm a waterbender. If you think anything about me is worthwhile, then you have to accept where it comes from."

The silence seemed to pulse. The vengeful part of Tom—the part that loathed her for dragging him here and destabilizing him, the part that resented every instant of his fascination with her—wanted to spit back, Then there is nothing worthwhile in you. But even as the thought rang in his mind, he found himself envisioning the both of them very young. Granger at five, himself at seven, both realizing their abilities and growing excited. Granger at eight, himself at ten, cloistering themselves with childlike determination.

He saw their adolescence. Granger at fourteen, himself at sixteen, clawing their way up their respective ladders, voracious for knowledge and ability, bent on excelling in a way that had never been seen before. Granger at seventeen, himself at nineteen, she tearing through texts at the IBA and crafting a new language for the body, he already planning a life that would reshape the world to his understanding. Across the world from each other they had been doing these things simultaneously their whole lives. And now they had been brought into collision here.

Only then did Tom realize how close they were to each other, Granger's fists clenched at her sides, the fire in his hand flaring hot and bright, emitting waves of heat that pulsed against their cheeks.

He was gripped by the sight of the fire glowing in her eyes. Like twin stars burning in her unmasked face. He could not look away. Her gaze moved to the tip of his nose, to his mouth, back to his eyes. He felt, again, that pulse of red-hot pleasure: that she was here, regarding him with a fury like devotion, staring at him as if he were the most important question she might ever need to answer.

And none of that might have mattered if she were any different—if she were not one of the world's foremost healers, if she were not the developer of the martial style that had taken him so by surprise—if she were not a waterbender.

"I know," Tom said, low and avid. Again he felt that prickle like electricity. "I know what you are. I know where you come from. I still don't believe you're like them."

He could see her resentment, her disgust. "Like my own people?"

"Like anyone. Except me."

Her eyes widened. Everything fell away from her expression but shock.

Tom allowed himself to relish that look for a single moment. Then he lowered the palm of flame and turned to go. "Come," he said. "Your friends will be wondering where you are."

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