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I’m full to bursting when Saga slips away from the fire, rummages among our supplies, and returns with a tray of jewelry and an alarmingly sharp-looking needle. She thrusts the tray into the firelight and orders me to scoot closer, too, so she can see better.

“Gold or sapphire?” she asks.

I laugh. “What?”

She rattles the tray and shoves it nearly into my face. “Sooner we do this, sooner it heals. Now. Gold or sapphire?”

I focus on the tray and the dozen or so earrings spread out on it. Some are simple gold twists, some are heavy with jewels.

I look at her in absolute confusion, and it’s her turn to laugh. Vil’s laughing, too, into his tea on the other side of the fire.

“You’re posing as Skaandan royalty, Bryn,” says Saga. “If you don’t have an earring or two, your story will fall apart pretty quickly.”

“Oh.” I take another look at that needle. “Will it hurt?”

“Nothing you can’t handle.”

“That means yes!” says Vil helpfully.

Saga swears at him and then turns back to me. “Will you please pick out the ones you like? Two or three will do to start. I would have done this weeks ago, but you only decided you were coming this morning.”

I sigh, studying the earrings carefully, then choose two simple gold rings and a single flashing ruby.

Saga nods approvingly. She uncorks a bottle of strong-smelling alcohol and pours it on a cloth, which she then dabs onto my left ear.

She jabs the needle in without any sort of warning, and a bright prick of pain shoots through me.

I curse perhaps more vehemently than the situation requires, up and down the pantheon of all twelve gods.

Saga just laughs and pierces my ear twice more.

Then she fits the earrings in and hands me a fresh mug of tea by way of apology.

Vil winks across at me, his eyes glittering. “No one else lets her touch them with needles anymore.”

“I did a fine job!” Saga objects.

Vil ignores her. “They look nice, Brynja.”

His compliment warms my belly nearly as much as the toasted cheese, but it doesn’t do much to dull the smarting pain of my ear. I chase down the tea with the remaining contents of that potent bottle.

The rain stops altogether, and stars prick through the clouds.

We sit around the fire, everyone but Pala—she and Commander Leifur will trade off standing watch through the night.

Indridi keeps glancing at Vil. Vil keeps looking at me, a question in his eyes, wanting perhaps to continue our interrupted moment from inside the tent.

But I’m tired and my ear hurts and I don’t know what I want. A river rushing in the dark. Blue pebbles in the palm of my hand. His magic bursting bright inside of me. I push the memories away with an inward curse.

Saga has brought out her carving things, her fingers deft in the firelight as she works on a knife hilt.

I squint to see what she’s carving: a sun design, the rays wrapping around the hilt.

It’s beautiful, and the familiar snick of her knife cutting into the wood comforts me.

Saga is not a great advocate of being still.

When she has to be, she carves to keep her mind steady and her hands busy and, she informed me once, to keep from shouting at whoever is making her be still in the first place.

“Stories,” Saga declares, blade glinting. “Before we sleep. You start, Brynja.”

Vil smiles across at me, and despite myself my chest goes tight. Indridi pokes at the ground with one finger. The fire seems to flare a little hotter.

I stare at Saga’s hands, at the carving taking shape, and stop myself from tugging at my throbbing ear.

“The Black God ruled in his darkness,” I begin.

“He covered all the world with it, ignoring the pleas of the other gods. So the Red God, the god of fire, and the Brown Goddess, the goddess of the earth, came together and made between them the twelfth god—the Yellow God, the god of light. He was powerful, nearly as strong as the Prism Goddess, but he was yet very young. All the gods and goddesses agreed to send him to defeat the Black God, but they didn’t understand quite what it would cost.”

“No one ever understands what something might cost,” says Saga agreeably. Snick snick snick goes her knife.

Vil is watching me so steadily I have to fix my eyes on a distant point in the night sky, lest I get too distracted to finish.

“Light and darkness met on the highest mountain of the earth,” I go on.

“Little by little, the Yellow God defeated the Black God.

Thread by thread he stole the darkness away, until what little was left of the Black God was able to be bound into a pillar of smoke.

The other gods and goddesses appeared, congratulating the Yellow God.

The Prism Goddess encased the smoke of the Black God in glass, and the Brown Goddess buried it deep within the mountain.

“But none of them had counted on the boundless power now contained within the Yellow God. When there is no darkness, how can the world sleep? When there is only light, how can you see the stars? The world was too bright, and the Yellow God too powerful.

“So the gods and goddesses reached a compromise. The Brown Goddess dug into the mountain and retrieved the smoke bound in glass. The Prism Goddess cracked the glass, enough so that every night the Black God could seep out and blanket the world, for a little while, with his darkness. But no one ever saw him in his true form again, for the greater part of his power, the very spark of his soul, dwelled within the Yellow God.”

I fall silent, watching the flames—the mark of the Red God—spin up into the night. I can still feel Vil’s eyes on me, but I don’t raise my own to meet them.

“I’ve heard that story many times,” sighs Saga. “But no one tells it quite like you do, Brynja.”

I shrug, but I’m pleased at her praise.

“Indridi next!” Saga crows. She puts down her carving knife and blows shavings off the hilt. The design is finished now, and I know from experience she’ll lacquer it, then fit it around the blade. Then it will be done, and she’ll start carving something new.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” says Indridi tightly. “I don’t have any stories.”

“Of course you do. You’ve told them lots of times. What’s going on with you?”

Indridi’s lips pinch together and she doesn’t answer, her hands twisting together in her lap.

Knots pull tight in my stomach.

“Leave her be, Saga,” says Vil after a moment. “It’s late. We should all get some sleep—early start in the morning.”

Indridi shoots him a grateful look, and I forcibly shove down another pulse of jealousy.

Saga gives a very overdramatic sigh but acquiesces, packing up her carving things and leading Indridi and me back to the big tent.

“Indridi, what’s wrong?” Saga asks quietly when the three of us have folded ourselves into our bedrolls. Pala will not join us until later, when Commander Leifur relieves her watch.

“You know you can tell me anything,” Saga goes on. Her voice is infinitely gentle.

“There is nothing to tell, Your Highness. Truly.”

Saga sighs. “You didn’t have to come, you know, if you didn’t want to.”

For a moment silence spins between us, broken only by the distant pop and crack of the fire.

“I wanted to come,” says Indridi.

No one says anything more.

We sleep, and I dream, as I often do, of falling.