Page 27

But things were different out here. The Hinterlands, with its many islands and deep forests, was rife with wolves.

I tried to keep up with Thaas while still keeping my head down. He didn’t make it easy, veering towards the crowds where he could jostle up against other men, laughing and exchanging words back and forth.

In truth, I was intimidated by all the hunters. I told myself that it was silly, yet it grew worse by the day. At first, I just skirted around them and avoided their looks. I kept my hair behind the hood of my cloak, hoping to remain unrecognized and kicked myself—first, for having cut my hair and set myself apart so obviously, then, for giving them the power to make me regret my choice. I should have been flaunting my hair with pride—wished that I would—but I was afraid. How bold I could be in my own hut, alone, with a knife in my hand. And how feeble I became in the face of others.

We reached the big door of the meeting house and Thaas hefted it open, sinking into the dark with me on his heels. When my vision adjusted on the other side, I didn’t know where he’d gone in the throng of men.

My heart hammered away in my chest, and I cursed myself, wending through the gathering to get to my father-in-law at the front. Skirtingand looking at the floor was no longer enough. I felt small, yet somehow, I stood out. Heads turned, eyes lingered, and brows arched.

I could hear their thoughts like they were my own.

This is the girl? Roan’s wife? Poor guy.

How strange. Doesn’t even talk. Won’t consummate her marriage, either, from the sounds of it.

Doesn’t belong here. Roan could have had much better.

It was all I heard. My mind was throbbing with the words, all of them and more. I wove around two more men and found myself standing before Baer. I lifted my gaze to meet his face and did not feel that same boldness I’d felt two years ago, when I’d cut my long locks for the first time and then paraded right past him on purpose. Before he’d been made elder, before I’d realized there was a chance they’d send me back to Runehall’s. That Fenli was gone, missing from my person entirely. Instead, I was very much the Fenli who’d watched her own father hit her mother, then cried in the dark.

More shame flooded my cheeks.

I stood quietly. It took the big man a moment to notice me. If not for the hush that went through the lodge, he may not have. He’d been leaning in to hear what another man had been saying but straightened when his eyes met mine. As if he hadn’t been tall enough already. I had to look up to meet his stare.

He folded his arms across his chest, careful not to cover the silver broach that marked his status in our clan.

“Fenli.” It was all he said. He watched me in silence, his grey brows drawn together, his jaw working back and forth. I was like a particularly annoying puzzle, a problem to be fixed. Maybe he wanted me to say something in return, I realized. But he couldn’t expect that, not in frontof all these men. I hadn’t thought he’d put me to the test in front of so many. Did he mean to embarrass us both? He would have to be a fool.

Finally, he relented.

“I trust my son showed you the hut, and it was to your satisfaction?”

He worded it like a question, but didn’t give me pause to answer, not that I would have.

“I haven’t gotten to see it myself, but I gave him clear instructions for it.”

I nodded, at a loss for anything else. I’d expected a scolding. Public humiliation. Banishment, perhaps.

He pressed on.

“We’ll need to find a more appropriate job for you now. You’re a woman, or soon will be. Tending the birds ought to be passed on to one of the children.”

It took me too long to understand his meaning. When it came to me that becoming a woman meant consummating my marriage, I flushed. My eyes swept the faces of the men in front of me, and I found them all staring back. Behind me, there would be many more, all of them watching.

Baer said, “Is there a task you’d like? Something you have in mind for yourself?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it.

“Kitchens, perhaps, with your mother? Textiles? Caring for children? It would be good experience.”

Hunting, I thought dumbly. Esska came to mind, and her words repeated in my ear.In the goddesses clans, the women have choices. It’s time the gods extend the same freedoms to their women. She’d been right, andshe’d realized what was coming when I’d only been concerning myself with what was.

Again, I opened my mouth to speak, and, again, I closed it.

“Think about it,” he said, disappointed. Then he waved for me to leave.

In this, I didn’t hesitate. I spun on my heels and retreated into the sea of men that stretched between me and the door. Halfway there, I heard it. It was barely a whisper.

“Fire blood.”