Porus pressed me down, and the surf lapped at my hair. I grabbed a handful of wet sand and rubbed it on his face.

"Bitch!" He said, releasing me to get the grit out of his eyes. Rolling onto my side, I crawled out from under him, but he grabbed my ankle before I could get up.

"Help!" My heart was pounding crazily, a wild manta caught on a harpoon. My feet kicked madly to prevent Porus from crawling on top of me.

"You're going to like this," he panted, "fight it all you want." My face hurt, and I was dizzy. Had he just hit me? His hand clamped over my mouth and muffled my scream.

Then he gone, and there were shadows moving all around. Someone was helping me up, and I could hear Castor yelling, which was crazy. I was never going to see Castor again.

My ears rang, but the shadows were becoming human.

"Did he hurt you?" Castor said, he was holding my shoulders, practically holding me up.

I blinked a him.

"I mean..." Castor looked terrified, I felt bad for him.

My pants were still half on. "No." I said. "He hit me, but I'm okay." I pulled on my trousers, it was slow going. Then Castor put a warm wrap over me, it was scratchy and smelled like him.

"Take him," Castor said. "Cut him."

I'd never heard him talk like that before, it was beyond anger, it was disgust. Castor was the gentlest boy I'd ever known, soft as the rain, but he'd been a foster before, now I was in his world.

"What are they going to do?" I asked. Castor's friends, or whoever they were, were dragging Porus across the sand and over the stones to a place out of sight. He wasn't even resisting.

"Take away the part of him that caused him to offend you."

I threw up. Then I was in a tent lit by a lantern. Castor was there with me holding a cool rag to my forehead.

"You have a concussion," he said. "That guy hit your head, or you hit it on a rock on the way down. Just try to stay awake." He used the rag to apply pressure where my hair was sticky with blood.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"This is my bachelor party," he said. "How did you get here?"

So I told him about my journey in the clouds, the hunters and the violent koi. Then the pirates who took everything I had and left me with the Baker and Marisa. It was a little fuzzy, everything was, but I got through it without any breaks.

"That guy Porus," Castor said, "he's a leaf dealer, and a pig. I'm sorry."

"He brought me here." It may have been the concussion, but I didn't know what else to say.

"What's going you happen to him?" I asked.

"After what we did, nothing. He'll survive as long as it doesn't get infected."

"I mean the law. Will watchmen come?"

"No. He didn't break any laws."

"He attacked me."

"And you could file suit against him, but that would reveal who you are. He'd be put to death for touching a princess, but if you're nobody, nobody cares."

"What about what you did to him?"

"I'm a Livius. He offended me at my party, so I'm within my rights."

Thinking about the legalities helped take my mind off of what had happened, or almost happened. In Euphoria, crimes against anyone outside of the royal family were treated with equal seriousness. An assault, with witnesses, could result in confinement and forced labor or restitution along with reeducation. Particularly dreadful crimes resulted in a choice between death or banishment, and many chose death rather than being ejected from heaven's kingdom. Allowing bad acts to go unpunished was bad for everyone, that's why our system worked the way it did. Gracia had a different way of looking at things. The act was less important than who was acted upon.

My silence worried Castor. "I'm getting married in two weeks," he said. "Aster will be at the manor in a few days. If I find you a position, it would have to be outside, where she wouldn't see you."

"I don't need that," I said. "I'm working for the Baker."

"You want to stay there? I can still get you a place with someone else in the city."

"I think I can learn more where I am, and I want to try to help Marisa. You can tell the Baker I'm your friend and he'll assume whatever he wants. It'll keep me safe. Can you give me some money? I figured out how the coins work."

Castor tried not to laugh. "I'm sure you did. I'll get you whatever you want, okay. And I'll check in on you when I can. I don't know this Baker, but I'll deal with him if you say he can be trusted. As long as you won't be in danger, that's what matters. If I don't like him, we're finding you a place with me. No argument."

"Thanks, Castor." The tears came out of nowhere. Nothing about the world outside of Euphoria had been like I'd expected, and nothing in my life was like it had been, except for Castor. He was the same boy I'd known since we were kids, even if he was capable of being harsh, that was a good thing when it meant protecting those he cared about. He cared about me.

Castor pur his arm around my shoulders and I leaned in to him until the tears ran out. "I missed you." I said.

"It's been like a week."

"A long one."

"For me too." He squeezed.

"I'm sure the duties of a groom to be are overwhelming."

He ignored my comment. "Are you sure you don't want to go home? Everyone went crazy when you left."

"No, I've made my choice."

"Can't your dad just ask the spirits where you are?"

"Outside of Euphoria it will take time, and I think I can do something about it when he tries."

"You’re going to put your magic against his?"

"Like a stone diverts a river."

"You're the expert, a family of witches."

Castor's beach party went all night. I insisted he not shut it down prematurely, so there would be fewer questions about who I was and why I was important to him. Porus was gone, so after I'd gotten myself cleaned up, I was free to roam among the revelers. Marisa was still engaged with an older man, though she did give me a smile as I went by. The glassiness in her eyes told me she'd been smoking. I refused several more offers to try leaf, but I was largely ignored. Maybe it was because they had seen what happened to Porus, or it could be that I was really invisible, I was glad to be able to stand apart from everyone. My head ached dully, and I felt a bit like a ghost watching myself move around the fire. I'd been attacked, and if not for Castor's presence it would have been so much worse. I shivered thinking about it, and saw my sister staring at me out of the fire. What was my little incident compared to her whole existence?

Ahriman was the master of misfortune, was he trying to tell me what he could do to me if I continued to defy him? What if someone like Porus was the father of my daughter, would I be more willing to give her up then? My stomach clenched, and I could taste bile at the back of my throat. No, no to both. She would still be an innocent.

I accepted some wine to settle my stomach, it was undiluted, and after a second glass I found myself swaying to the music, there were pan flutes now, and a few singers. My headache was gone and my whole body felt warm and soft and pricked with fleeting lights.

"Look how you dance," I told the fire, "like you want to be one of us." No one seemed bothered by my mumblings, and I was enjoying myself, so I continued.

"I bet you'd be a fine partner." There were a few pairs dancing by the firelight, and Castor was there too, only he wasn't dancing, he was watching me.

"Come on," I waved at him, "come here."

"You've sampled the wine," he said, suddenly very close to me.

"It was sweeter than what we drink in the mountains."

"Grapes instead of rice, I'd be embarrassed if it wasn't sweeter." He looked worried, his soft brown eyes were so concerned my heart broke and I wanted to laugh.

"Do you remember the formal?" I was referring to a ceremony I'd been forced to host every year since entering puberty. The princess had to dance with everyone who asked her, and the first year Castor never had. We hadn't been as close then, and afterward I'd stormed up to him and demanded we dance because I'd thought he didn't like me, but really he'd been afraid.

"I remember," he said.

"Then dance with me." I held up my arms, and he followed suit. We didn't actually touch, that wasn't a part of this particular charade, but we came within a hair of each other again and again, which was almost more exciting. Our feet were meant to be tracing a diagram, and he was off point in almost every respect, but I could see the signs of the compass clearly in my mind. We circled each other, moved apart and came together, within a breath of together, and our hands grazed when he was too close. Whether it was an accident or on purpose, I didn't mind.

It was a fire aspected dance, meant to express hidden passions, and it was so easy to do with him. My bare feet marked lines in the sand, tracing the diagrams between us, and the other revelers backed away to watch. It was certainly a foreign thing, the Gracians expressed themselves differently, and the motions of the formal might have never been seen outside Euphoria before.

Then there were gasps. Surely I wasn't that impressive. Castor's smile fell away and he was left open mouthed, stock still in his tracks.

"What?" I said, I felt so light I could have taken flight. The world was brighter.

"Joi." He said.

"Juno," I corrected him.

"Juno," he said my name again carefully, as if not to cause alarm. "You are on fire."

"What?" I held up my hands, and tracers of orange and gold crawled along my arms like gracious serpents. My feet were glowing, not hot but pleasantly, like a candle's glow. It was under my clothes, not burning them but shining through.

"Oh," I said, "oh no." I ran back to the tent and hid myself behind canvas. The flames followed me, crawling under the flap of the tent and singing it slightly.

"Please," I said, "stop."

It did stop, but it didn't go away. It slid off of my body and pooled in the sand like some sort of burning broth. It was mostly red and yellow, but two azure points formed near the middle like eyes.

"What are you?" I asked.

The flaming mass seemed to consider my question, then dialectic signs began appearing just above its head in white arcs of flame, as if it were a compass answering a reading.

Spirit, it wrote.

I forget about the rest of the world, about Castor and all the drunk Gracians who'd seen me summon this thing, I even forgot about Porus and what he'd tried to do to me. This was more important.

I had called a daemon.

To date, I had never so much as seen a daemon other than Ahriman, and he was only visible through bronze mirrors. Normal daemons didn't have a physical form, or they occupied a physical form without being separate from it, like Keyrin and the other flying ships. I'd communicated with daemons using compasses, matchmakers did that all the time, but they never saw them.

"What's your name?" I asked it.

It signed confusion.

"What should I call you?"

Confusion again. Did it not have a name, or somehow not know it? Not all spirits had names, but if they were had any interaction with humans they almost always gained one. Could I be the first person this flame spirit had manifested for?

"May I call you Hikami?" It blue eyes grew wide within the larger orb, and I sensed its satisfaction like the kiss of sunlight on my skin.

The flap opened, and Castor looked from to the daemon on the ground before stepping inside the tent and carefully around the ball of fire.

"I told everyone it was a trick," he said. "Most of them are so high they're going to think they imagined it." He stood as far as possible from the daemon. "Joi, what happened out there?"

"I called out the spirit of the bonfire," I said. "I didn't mean to.

"How can you do that?"

"I didn't know I could."

"Are you going to keep it?"

"Its name is Hikami." The daemon nudged closer to me when I shared its name, and Castor shifted uneasily.

"Can you make it go away?"

Go away? Why would he ever want something so wonderful to go away? I held out my hand and Hikami stretched toward me, flickering against my fingertips.

"He's harmless," I said.

Castor reached for the spirit, but drew his hand back sharply before making contact. "It's fire," he said. "How are you touching the fire?"

"He's my element," I said. "And I'm the one who called him. I've never read about this happening, so the best I can do is say I have an affinity."

"Can you hide him at least?"

"I don't know." I leaned in toward Hikami. "Can you keep others from seeing you?"

Rather than signing an answer, Hikami flowed up my arm and into my hair, which immediately became the color of a sunset. I could feel his warmth on my neck, but it wasn't unpleasant.

"Wow," Castor said, "that's...less noticeable, I guess."

"Do you like it?" Whatever effects the wine had had on me were gone, but they had been replaced by a purer lightness. I felt like I could float away.

"It's different. I liked your hair before, but it's not bad."

"Thanks." I had so many questions, and I realized there was no one who could answer them for me except my father. He was the only other person who could command daemons, he and grandfather, and I couldn't talk to either of them. I would have to figure this out for myself, but I had Castor to help me now, and Hikami.

"I'm going to work this out," I said, "but I still need you to talk to the Baker for me."

"You still want to stay there?"

"It's still not safe for me to move close to you, and if anyone tries anything, I'll burn the place down."

"That's fair." Castor said, looking at my hair. "Let me find you something to wrap that in."

"Why?"

"It looks...do you know the story of Aurelia?"

"Sounds familiar, did she kill a lot of people?"

"In battle, yes. She was a farmer's wife, and her husband was conscripted to fight in the Darkanian wars. Anyway, he died, and she swore to go to war herself until she could recover his body and have his children."

"Wait, what?"

"It's a myth, don't question it. The point is, she shot flaming arrows from a magical bow she got from the goddess of the hunt, but she didn't actually need any arrows. Whenever Aurelia needed to shoot she plucked a strand of her hair and it became a burning arrow. That's what your hair looks like."

"Maybe I should try it."

" What I'm saying is that Aster has red hair, but it doesn't look like yours. You're going to stand out."

"Okay," I said. "What have you got?"

Castor took a scarf from one of the girls outside. It smelled like leaf smoke, but it allowed me to hide my hair in a messy bun. Stray strands fell over my face, their hue shifting with the light, but that would have to do. The party was winding down, and Castor dispatched one of his friends to escort me home. The tall, dark skinned man didn't say much of anything, but his name was Towark and his family was from Koscon. Though I didn't ask, I knew that meant they'd likely been brought over as captives or purchased as bonders.

Marisa didn't come home that night, and no one commented on her absence in the morning. I took my usual place a the counter as the early customers came in, and the Baker didn't react to my hair.

Patches asked if I was okay, and seemed surprised that I was. It was hard to tell if he even noticed my changed appearance, he was so distracted.

Marisa came in midmorning looking exhausted and bedraggled. Her eyes were red and I could smell the leaf on her from two paces away. She handed the Baker a pouch of coins and went directly upstairs. Not a word was spoken by either of them, and she didn't meet my eye when I greeted her.

Around midday, Sponga appeared in the entrance to the shop. He saw me, ducked back outside, and then gestured gratuitously for the Baker to come talk to him.

The huge man was in no hurry to comply, cleaning his hands thoroughly and putting away his rolling pin before lumbering past me and around the counter. They closed the door, but I could see them through the window.

Sponga was upset, and gesticulating forcefully. He pointed at me several times, then grabbed his crotch. The Baker took it all in stoically, shook his head, and shooed Sponga away like a bothersome child. Then he reentered the shop, locked the door behind him, and shuttered the window.

"We need to talk." The Baker said.