I gravitate toward the fire that is the center of everything.
Someone puts a cup in my hand. Ceramic, rough-made, warm. Whatever is inside it is amber.
I know now isn’t the time to drink and be merry. But fuck it. I toss it back.
It’s strong and tastes like honey and something that burns clean on the way down. I take another sip before I’ve finished processing the first.
Orion drops beside me at the fire, close enough that his arm presses against mine. Not reaching for me. Just there. Present. The conversation from the walk sits between us like something we’ve set down carefully, knowing we’ll pick it back up.
I don’t want to pick it back up. I want to chase my buzz.
Whispen has already made seventeen friends.
I don’t know how. I looked away for four minutes and he’s now sitting on the shoulder of a man twice Orion’s size, apparently teaching him something that involves a lot of hand gestures.
The man looks equal parts terrified and delighted.
“He’s going to cause a diplomatic incident,” Finnian says, settling on my other side.
“He causes diplomatic incidents in empty rooms,” I say. “At least here there are witnesses.”
Finnian makes a sound that is almost a laugh. His shoulder finds mine. On my left Orion’s warmth, on my right Finnian’s.
His hand finds my knee under the firelight. Not holding. Just resting there, his thumb traces once across the fabric.
A lump forms in my throat. I can’t help it. It’s the presence that matters the most to me.
The fire burns in front of us and the village breathes around us and somewhere above that stringed instrument still plays, joined now by percussive, the music building into something with bones in it.
A woman near the fire starts to dance.
Then two more.
Then the little girl who stared at my feet appears from behind a hut, grabs the hand of a boy approximately her size, and drags him into the dancing whether he wants to be there or not.
I watch them. The way she moves, completely unself-conscious, her whole body committed to the music, her face the specific joy of a child who has not yet learned to be embarrassed by wanting things.
I used to be like that.
The soil pulses under my feet. Faint. Warm. Like something checking in.
Against my hip, the ruby pulses in answer. I’d almost forgotten it was there. Almost. It’s been quiet since I pocketed it in Kieran’s room, but now it hums, resonant, like it recognizes the magic rising through my feet.
I don’t take it out. Don’t examine it. Just note that it’s awake now. I could find Kieran but I don’t want to. Not yet.
I press my toes into the earth and the pulse answers, stronger this time, moving up through my feet and into my legs and settling somewhere alongside the wild magic that has been waking up in pieces since I first touched the Dark Forest floor.
There you are, it says.
I close my eyes for just a moment.
I know, I think back.I’m here.
“You’re glowing,” Orion says quietly.
I open my eyes. Look at my hands. The faintest blue-green at my fingertips, the thorn-patterns moving under my skin in slow spirals, lit from within, responding to the soil and the fire and the magic woven through this place.
“Huh, look at that,” I say automatically.
