Bryte Frejj stood in the burn ring behind their cottage and watched the khaos witch knot her hands together to keep them still. Her palms were raw again. His were blistered. They had been trying for a year to braid his fire into her khaos, and every test had left one of them on the ground. He wanted a god out of it. Something big enough to stand over the children they had not yet had and keep the world off them. She said fire was alive. He said fire was fuel. They had stopped arguing about it months ago, which was worse than arguing. Tonight she asked him to try once more before spring. He nodded because he could not say what he was actually thinking, which was that the last time her khaos tore through her ribs he had counted her breaths until dawn. He lit the ring. She opened the khaos. The fire went up orange and ordinary, and her khaos came in sideways the way it always did, pink and green and wrong-angled. He felt the pull start in his wrists. He did not fight it this time. He let his fire go toward her instead of holding it back, and she let her khaos come toward him instead of bracing. The two things met in the air between them and stopped fighting. They braided. A knot hung there, burning in colors he had no names for, the strands looping through each other in a slow, calm pattern. It did not lash out. It did not tear. It hummed, low and steady, like something breathing in its sleep. She started crying without making any noise. He reached for her hand and found it already reaching for his. They married in the burn ring that spring under an arch of vines and dark stone she grew up out of the scorched ground in one night. A white ferret nobody had invited sat on the arch the whole ceremony and watched them like it already knew how the story ended. They went to the coast for a week after. He learned that she slept better with the sound of water. She learned that he hummed when he cooked. Their first child was born the following winter, and the midwife stepped back from the bed and would not touch the baby because the baby was already warm in a way babies should not be. Three more followed in three more years. People started calling them gods before they could walk. Bryte did not correct anyone. He built a tall spire of stained glass and climbing vine on the bluff above the cottage to house the oldest one, who had outgrown a crib by six months. The braided knot from the wedding night still hung in the burn ring, burning without fuel, and he checked it every morning before the children woke. It had not gone out. It had also not told him yet what it wanted in return.