“He is comfortable and resting now,” Julio said. “There is nothing more we can do but wait until he awakens. You should get some fresh air and partake of some sustenance. Your hunt for night ’shrooms will begin soon.”

“But I want to be ’ere when he—”

“It could be hours,” Julio said, coaxing her gently with his hand toward the exit. “It’s probably best if he sleeps through the night anyway.”

She knew he was right, but it still felt utterly wrong to leave him there. When the door closed behind her, it made an ominous sound, an irrational finality to its slam, as though that door would never open again.

“Stop bein’ a dolt,” she muttered to herself, staggering over toward where Gruff was tending a crackling cookfire. While poking a stick at the embers to stoke the flames with one hand, he used the other to turn a spit that skewered a hunk of meat now dripping with fat.

“Heard what happened,” the dwarf said, putting the stick down to scratch at his beard. “Mirac told me. Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

“Congratulate me? Fer whut?”

“For using your Ability again and poppin’ out another gold leaf. I know you’ve used it twice before, but this time was different. You tried to use it, and you did!”

Deep inside her, Perfidy knew what she’d done, but because of what she’d done to Jereb she’d sort of forgotten about it. “I did, didn’t I? I used my Ability.” Her eyes were wide, lips curling slightly at the edges. She didn’t care much about the gold leaf, which was probably bad considering how much the others clearly wanted to get more of them, but it just felt small compared to that feeling of power inside her when she refused to succumb to gravity’s ever-present pull toward the earth.

“Aye, probably because you stole ol’ Brenner’s magic stick, eh? So you can give most of the credit to me then.”

She glared at him. “A coincidence,” she said flatly.

“Hey, don’t be like that! But I also wanted to congratulate you for doing somethin’ I’ve wanted to do for a while now: Give Jereb a knock on the head. Ha!”

“I feel kinda bad ’bout that.”

“Why? It was a fight. In a fight, there are winners and losers. You always want to be the winner. So don’t feel bad about it when you are.”

“I guess.” She slumped down, poking a rock with her toe. The afternoon was beginning to wane now. There was a skittishness to the daylight as it drifted gradually toward night, the sun’s rays dancing closer and then away again, as though afraid of the shadows creeping in from the edges of the clearing. She brightened up as she thought of something. “Hey, we have the same number o’ gold leaves now. I s’pose that makes us equals, eh?”