Page 24

I straightened and turned to the side, tight-jawed.

Esska misread my pause.

“No, I mean it,” she said. “You can’t tell. Baer would feed her to the wolves if he knew, and she doesn’t deserve that.”

I nodded, unable to do anything else. I had to agree with Esska, though I hated to do it. Fenli had never asked to be stuck with me. If she’d found someone she truly cared for, how could I blame her?

I swallowed and tried to gather myself.

“I know,” I said, my voice too rough. I tried to soften it, to act casual. “I know, Esska. It’s fine. You have my word.”

The door opened then, and Fenli all but tumbled in. When she saw us standing there, our attention fully turned to her, she froze. Her eyes flicked back and forth between us—her cheeks flushed pink and her hair a wind-blown tangle—and I looked down at the floor. It hurt to see her like that, wild and entirely too beautiful. She’d hate me for thinking it. I hated me for thinking it, too.

That pain was back in my chest, and I just caught Ess gesturing her in. Fenli resumed her entry and closed the door behind her, none too quick to turn back and face us.

She’d been caught, and she seemed to know it.

I should have kept my mouth shut, but I was too much of an idiot for that.

“Who is he?” I asked. “Or she?” I’d long wondered if Fenli was even attracted to men, since we’d both been too young to know when we’d been married. “I won’t tell. I just—I need to know who it is.”

When I brought my eyes back up to meet hers, I caught the moment her brows furrowed. She looked at Esska and asked a silent question.

I felt left out of their loop. They seemed to have devised a language constructed of eyebrows and lips and shoulders. I glanced at my sister to see her communicating some mystery reply.

“Roan,” Esska said, hesitant. “Do you,” a note of humor entered her voice, “do you think Fenli is having an affair?”

Fenli’s cheeks bloomed with a deeper blush than even the wind had left, and Esska gave a laugh.

“Oh, Toke,” she said. “Fenli, we have to tell him.”

“No.”

“He knows something’s up. For Toke’s sake, put him out of his misery. He thinks you’re having an affair!”

Fenli looked back at me for a beat, and I didn’t miss the concern in her eyes.“No,” she said again. “I… I can’t.”

Ess encouraged her. “It will be okay. He won’t tell.”

Fenli was stiff with resistance. Everything about her was tight, from her shoulders to the set of her jaw, and she clutched the strap across her torso with brittle fingers. Finally, her posture softened. She looked miserable, like she may be sick. After a moment, she walked to the table, pulling the pack from her back and swinging it to rest in front of her.

“Fine,” she said on an exhale, and I realized that one of her secrets was about to come out in the open.

Fenli and her secrets. I braced myself to hear the truth. Instead, she showed me. From her pack, she pulled a large sheet of parchment. She unrolled it and laid it out on the table, her hands smoothing out the creases as the inked lines came into view.

It was a map.

My eyes landed on the village, huts shown in hatches, and followed a winding trail north. There was a river flowing west, which the trail eventually crossed, and past that was the coast, the suggestions of islands just starting to form. I tried to catch up.

“It’s a map.”

Fenli said nothing, didn’t even seem to draw a breath, but Esska piped up.

“Fenli makes maps. Has been for five years, and she’s good at it.”

“Ess stole your knife,” Fenli spat. My sister gasped. “She’s going to hunt like the men.”

The two eyed each other down in a standoff, and I tried to wrap my head around—ah, shite.