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I will miss you the most.

She was a beautiful whirlwind, as always, so busy preparing for the move that she didn’t notice my goodbye for what it was. Not yet.

It was for the better.

From there, I should have played along and made like I was getting ready to leave like the rest of them, and I did, in part. When it came to my job caring for the birds, I was a model clan member. I was quick to make a plan with one of the kitchen matrons and some man they sent over who was in charge of cargo. We decided how many birds of each kind would make the voyage north, and I slaughtered the rest in one afternoon, slitting their necks and hanging them to bleed out before bringing them to the kitchens for processing. I also double checked their crates were in good condition and they’d have plenty of food and water for the trip. On the home front, however, I was less obliging. One look at my husband carrying sacks into my hut, and my rebellion surge. He announced it was time to pack the place up, and I suddenly knew what I wouldnotbe doing that evening.

I dug in my heels; he enlisted his sister.

“Fenni,” Esska said sweetly. Too sweetly. Roan stood by the window, absolutely brooding, his arms crossed over his chest. “We have to pack your things. I’ll help you. It will be fun, I promise.”

I smiled at her. “Kiss my ass.”

She rolled her eyes and dropped the act, which I appreciated.

“Well, you can’t stay here,” Roan said. “We’re all leaving in two days’ time. You’d be all alone.”

Esska instantly crumbled in on herself. “For Toke’s sake, Roan. Do you have any idea how unhelpful a thing that was to say?” He only frowned, so she continued. “Being all alone is your wife’s dream come true. Pay attention.”

“Is it also her dream to go insane, because that’s what happens to people who live hidden away from others.” He turned his focus to me. “You’d wake up one day ten years from now and realize you’d lost touch with reality. You’d also find yourself overrun by dogs because the two you started with had multiplied into a hundred. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” I said quickly, then turned my attention to Esska. “Yes, that.”

“You know,” she said, looking serious, “whenever you did up and die, all those dogs would eat your body down to the bones.”

I took a moment to think. “Worth it,” I decided.

She nodded slowly, seeming to come to terms with it as well.

“Never mind,” Roan said. “You two have clearly already lost it.”

Esska turned to him. “Brother, will you go and steal us something sweet from the kitchen? I’d like to talk with this one on my own for a bit.”

He looked unimpressed but headed for the door. “I’m not stealing you sweets,” he told her.

“Honey rolls are preferable!” she added, leaning forward to watch as the door closed behind him. When she was sure he was gone, she slapped her palms down on her lap and smiled at me.

“Oh no,” I said.

“You’ll never guess my plan.”

Fear and dread coursed through me at those all too familiar words. Esska was nothing if not a troublemaker disguised as the sweetest of all Toke’s children.

“Well, count—count me out.”

“That’s fine.” She leaned in and whispered, even though we were the only ones. “You’ll be missing out on all the fun, though. I’ve decided to start hunting. Same as the men.”

Well, piss and shite.

I glanced at the window, suddenly afraid she’d spoken too loudly.

“Just like Rynwin’s clan,” she continued. “Their women have always hunted, and I want to as well.”

She’d brought up the Rynwin’s huntresses multiple times over the past years, but I’d never thought those comments would somehow lead us here.

Rynwin was the goddess of land and forest, and her clan was unlike Toke’s. The clans expected a great deal of diversity between themselves. Just as people differed from one another, as were the gods. We were all Caed, but we’d been set apart for different deities, split into four when we used to be one. We were tolerant of the other clans and their ways because the gods themselves had made them so. But inside the clans, unity was expected and enforced.

That Esska was considering something so unlike our own clan was a dangerous thing. We were to be people of the sky, Toke’s children. What she was proposing: it reeked of the earth.