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“Yeh tellin’ me the mage’s been hidin’ me wine here all along?” Salem hollers.

Esra takes one from Tasheem’s arms. “Hector, sweet boy! Come here and try some wine. I think you’ll find it quite pleasing.”

“Esra,” Dawsyn warns. She remembers the effects liquor had on her not so many months before.

Hector approaches with something like benign curiosity, a lamb to slaughter.

“That drink will muddle you, Hector,” Dawsyn calls to him, but it’s too late. He takes the bottle that Esra uncorks and within moments, a third of the wine is gone.

Hector splutters, his nose wrinkled in disgust. A blush rises up his neck. “It is awful,” he proclaims.

Tasheem laughs first, the sound muffled as she tries to hide it. Then Esra starts, his face a picture of shock. Slowly, the rest begin to chuckle as Hector gags, the cacophony growing.

At that moment, Ruby steps out of the brush with her arms full of kindling. She looks around at them all, confused, and then sees Hector. “Why does your face resemble an arse boil?” she asks dryly, and the rest fall into fits of unbridled laughter.

By the time the sun sets and the air cools, Esra has found a mandolin inside the cabin and brings it to the camp to play. Hector and Tasheem have their arms linked and are skipping circles around each other, and Gerrot is leading Ruby in some kind of folk dance. Rivdan has had two entire bottles of wine to himself and has fallen into a drunken sleep without drawing any attention to himself at all.

Esra passes the instrument to Salem, who plays with surprising skill and sings a hearty ballad about a woman who stole his shoes but won his heart. It makes Dawsyn throw her head back and laugh.

Esra spins Hector around the fire for a while, both as drunk as the other, but when Esra sees Dawsyn sitting alone he breaks away to coax her up. She has had her fair share of the wine and finds herself feeling pleasantly light – just the thing for a woman primed to combust. The liquor adles her, as it did months before in some godforsaken tavern. It loosens her limbs, makes each movement languid and unhurried.

With a bottle in one hand, Dawsyn allows Esra to lead her into a strange skip around the circle, following the silent instruction of Gerrot.

The more wine Dawsyn sips, the more frenetic the night becomes – a tangle of laughter and firelight and fast music. Her entire body hums. Not with magic or rage or lust, but with something else. Her cheeks hurt from grinning too widely, her belly from laughter, her feet from dancing, and yet none seem to pain her at all.

Ryon, who at first refused the offer of wine, eventually fell to the lure of its numbing bliss. He now offers his hand to Esra and leads him into a clumsy but exuberant turn about the fire while the rest clap out of time. Esra spins out of Ryon’s arms, and both men pull another partner into the circle. On and on it goes, and Dawsyn finds herself pulled in to dance with Hector, with Ruby, and then, inevitably, with Ryon.

How he glows.

He takes up her hand and the small of her back and pulls her into a gallop, following the others around and around. Dawsyn has to grip him tightly to avoid losing her footing, and she does so without reserve, without inhibition. The wine has taken away her fear. All that’s left is the blur of orange light as it whizzes by, the vastness of him surrounding her. His smell, his voice, the gentle way his hand clasps hers, and she thinks she’ll never find another man, half-human or not, who will make her ache half as much as this.

“Did you say something?” Ryon asks her suddenly. But he is whisked away, pulled into the arms of Tasheem, while Dawsyn is spun into the clutches of Esra, and the dance continues.

They carry on for hours. Dawsyn dances with Ryon several more times, and with each turn she relaxes further, holds herself closer.

Eventually, the wine gone, Tasheem and Esra stumble away to collapse on softer ground. Hector throws up his share of the wine somewhere nearby in the forest. With a weary Gerrot alongside him, Salem begins to play a slower, sadder melody. Ruby continues to dance alone with a surprising amount of grace, despite her unfocussed stare.

It leaves Dawsyn to steal away under the cover of night, out to the forest, silver and beckoning. She trips and feels nothing but giddiness. A pleasant tilting of her vision.

“Dawsyn.”

Ryon. Always Ryon.“I am all right.”

“Where are you going? You’ll become lost.”

“Even better.”

A curse, and then footfalls behind her, or perhaps beside her. It is difficult to tell. She continues on.

They trip over tree roots and become entangled in brambles. Ryon saves her from walking headfirst into a wide tree trunk, and it sends him into a stream of expletives while she chuckles.

“You lose all sense of preservation when you drink, girl.”

“You seem preserved enough.”

“Only because I can hold my own drink with more dignity.”

Dawsyn looks up at him and tries to narrow her eyes. She has no idea whether it is effective. “I accept your challenge.”