“It’s a constellation. Vulpecula. The fox. That’s what my surname means.” She picks at the edges where it’s starting to scab. “I guess—it sounds stupid, but I got it to remind me who I am. That I belong up there.”

Santi flicks a leaf off the edge, watches it make its erratic way down. “Why would you need a tattoo to remember that?”

He probably doesn’t mean it as an insult. But Thora feels it as one, like he’s seen through her affectations to the incoherence at her core.

The cathedral bells toll. It’s two in the morning. Thora feels a waver of decision, the only evidence she has that Santi is wrong: she did have the choice to climb up here, and she has the choice now to climb back down. “I should go,” she says.

Santi grins at her. “I knew you were going to say that.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Fine. Just to prove you and God wrong, I’ll stay.”

“Okay. Enjoy yourself. I’m going,” he says, and disappears through the hole in the floor.

Thora meant to stay, to steal some time alone with the stars. But sooner than she expected, she starts to feel lonely. As she lowers herself onto the stairs, she makes the mistake of looking down. The tower drops into darkness, shot with shards of light like Santi’s childish idea of heaven. Except what’s beyond is solid ground, and Thora doesn’t believe she’s going anywhere else if she falls to her death tonight. Her palms sweat. Wedging her foot into a dent in the brickwork, she feels for the next foothold as her hands start to slip. Lunging wildly, she grabs for a protruding brick and pulls herself into the wall.

She hangs, staring through a gap in the bricks. She knows what she should see: the starry sky above the city. Instead, she sees herself, endlessly refracted. An infinity of Thoras stare back at her with fear in their eyes.

She almost loses her grip. Squeezing her eyes shut, she swings herself to the safety of the steps and collapses.

“Thora?” Santi climbs back up to her. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“Nothing. I just—I thought I saw—” She trails off. She knows exactly what she saw. Her nightmares come to life: endless versions of herself spiraling out from every decision she makes, all but one of them lost forever.

“What?”

She meets Santi’s worried gaze. “God,” she says mockingly.

Santi shakes his head, smiling. “I guess we are pretty high up.”

By the time Thora reaches the ground, her limbs are shaking. “I can’t believe we just did that.”

Santi is grinning. “I can.”

“As we’ve established, you’ll believe anything.” Something’s missing. Thora’s hands go to her neck. “Fuck! I left my scarf up there.”

Santi is already stepping back through the gap. “I’ll get it.”