Page 6

Behind her, where the firelight stopped and the trees began, something changed about the dark. It took on a texture, as though the air had thickened enough to see. And as though it were looking back.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up so fast it hurt.

The thing that was with us did not have a body the way bodies are supposed to be.

I told myself I needed more water. I told myself tomorrow would be a headache. I told myself a lot of things, very quickly, in the voice I used to manage my own emotionally delicate boss. The voice was, for once in its career, not believed.

“The women who came before us,” Aurora was saying, “did the work of survival so that we could do the work of arrival. And arrival, my loves, is not polite. And you are here because what you want most is the other half of the fire you were lit from.” She looked at each of us. “Your twin flame is not a fantasy. He is not a manifestation technique. He is a person, as real as the woman beside you, and he is out there tonight, feeling the exact ache you’re feeling, and not knowing your name yet. Tonight we fix that.”

A small murmur circled the fire. Priya watched Aurora with that divot back between her brows. “Tonight is both very old and very new. We are doing what women have always done at fires. We are putting a wish into a flame and asking the flame to hold it. But a twin flame is not wished for. A twin flame is called. One fire signaling another. The sigil is your half of the flame, written in your own hand, cast into the fire. And not long from now, his half will answer.”

She paused, her gaze turned toward the stones on the ground, as if listening to someone the rest of us couldn’t hear. Then she nodded so slightly I almost missed it. “Now listen. The fire is not a metaphor. I want you to hear me say this and then please laugh, because I sound very serious, and that’s embarrassing for everyone.”

A ripple of obedient laughter flowed, but it was nervous laughter, its rhythm too fast. Aurora still smiled in approval.

“The fire is the oldest interface we have. You give the fire something and it gives something back. But the fire keeps very good books. It does not forget what was given to it. And when you ask for a flame—a living flame, a him—it does not forget what was promised in return.”

She let the word land. Promised.

Then she pulled the circle back into warmth with another smile, but not all that warmth returned. Some of it had been left behind, in the dark.

“So when you write tonight, write him true. Not the love you think you deserve. The one you’d say yes to with your whole life. Write him the way you’d write a vow. Because that, my loves, is what the fire reads it as. The Sisters will hear it. The Mother—”

She paused, barely, her hand correcting the air, as if amending her language for a listener. “—And the One Who Keeps will hear it too. The one we don’t name, and who has been here longer than any word we might have for Him.”

The dark moved behind her.

Not metaphor. The dark moved, the way the surface of a lake ripples when something heavy on the lakebed has decided to shift, and the temperature on my arms dropped, all at once, like I’d just opened a large freezer.

Across the fire, Callie stifled a gasp. Her hand had gone to her forearm, her face still blank, like she was catching up to what her body had noticed.

Beside her, Priya had gone completely still, her attention locked on a single point in the dark behind Aurora’s shoulder.

And Jess, who had been still for two hours of jeep and dinner, tightened her jaw, like she’d decided to stay right there despite the urge to bolt.

Callie’s eyes met mine for one full second. You felt that, her eyes said.

Yes, mine said back.

Aurora, who had been speaking the whole time, was still speaking: “The fire gives you exactly what you asked for. So be specific. And be ready to receive.”

“My loves,” she said. “Welcome to the rest of your lives. Half of the flame is in your hands. Go write the other half home.”

Kai was now behind her, handing her a metal goblet that looked older than the country we were standing in. She held the goblet up, as if presenting it to the fire.

“The wine of transformation,” she said. “Tonight the fire will give you back yourselves, but more.”

She came to Callie first and dipped her thumb into the cup. The pad of it came out dark and gleaming. She drew a single line down Callie’s forehead, from the hairline to the brow.

“There you are,” Aurora said softly.

She moved to Priya. Same gesture. Same line. Priya kept her eyes open and watched Aurora do it, and I saw the divot come back, and I saw her accept it. And that was the most terrifying thing I saw that night, because Priya didn’t accept anything.

Then Jess. Jess closed her eyes and let her chin tip back so the firelight caught the line of her throat. I thought, distantly, oh, that’s what Jess looks like when she lets a thing happen.

Then me.

Aurora’s dress smelled of woodsmoke and jasmine oil. Her thumb came up. The pad of it was warm. The line she drew down my forehead was warm too, and slightly tacky, and I thought, that’s not wine.