Quen was accustomed to how much power it took to cool water with Blizzard. She hadn't done it with Peony in well over a month, but now that it was summer, she used that skill on a regular basis to cool water and tea to drink. It was something she could do almost without thinking about it.
She tried to think about that rather than her disastrous experiments with Fire over the past few years. She tried not to think about all of the times she'd blown up her fireplace or seared off her eyebrows or burned the ends of her hair. She was in the habit of doing breathing exercises before her magic lesson, but she did them again now to refocus herself.
Holding her hands against the bowl, she whispered the incantation for Fire and tried to imagine the spell the way she cast Blizzard, using only the slightest trickle of power.
Nothing happened.
She tried to feed the spell a bit more power, and then a bit more.
Suddenly and with a loud POP! the spell burst forth in flame and heat. Quen cried out and tossed the hot stone bowl to the side, spilling boiling water onto the casting room floor. Her hands throbbed and her skin felt tight. Blinking tears from her eyes, she cast Cure at her hands and breathed through her nose as the tingling coolness of the spell healed the burns on her hands.