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It was all he asked.

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. My body sang with energy and emotion. My heart pounded. Reckless, I grabbed the pitcher of water and tromped over to the hearth. I poured it out over their stupid fire and watched it all go up in a hiss of black smoke.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Roan

Fenli had made her stand, and I knew there would be hell to pay.

We waited for the storm. I wanted to go out and face it, but there was no way I was going to leave her by herself, not even for a minute. Her uncle could come back, or others could be along to give her grief.

So, we waited for the sky to crack.

We waited for the reckoning to come.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Fenli

Saying those things to Axl had felt like such a victory, but it ended up being my undoing. I’d started a swell of unrest I couldn’t control, and it quickly spiraled into something none of us could.

Not even Baer.

“Could you not have deescalated the situation?” he was asking Roan.

We were in our hut. The guests from Runehall’s clan had left not long before, and the first thing Baer had seen fit to do was march over here and pound on our door. Goose had raised unholy hell at that, and it’d sent us into chaos, leaping from our beds, me getting Goose under control, Roan getting to the door and unbolting the lock.

First the big man had ranted about the dog, then about my mattress on the floor and had we still not moved past this? Then, finally, about what had happened with the men.

“Do you really think I didn’t try?” Roan shot back. “It was a tense situation, and her uncle was an asshole.”

He hadn’t fed me to the wolves. That was nice.

“And what about her?” Baer said, turning to me. “Those men told me what you said, word for word. You won’t speak when you should, and then you go and say all that at the worst moment possible?”

And just like that, it didn’t matter that Roan had tried to play down my part, because, of course, the other two men had not. I clenched my jaw.

“She was only sticking up for herself,” said Roan.

Baer laughed, though it wasn’t a nice laugh. “Is that what you call that?” he asked. “I heard she disrespected the elders, called her own flesh and blood a ‘piece of shit’—” I winced, “—and told those men they could go to hell while they stood here and tried to honor her with a fire in her hearth. I think she did a little more than stick up for herself. In another time, that would have started a war!”

Roan lowered his voice. “No one is going to war.”

“You’re damn straight we aren’t,” Baer said. “Not while I’m alive, and not over the likes ofher.” He looked at me then. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

I lifted my chin in response.

“Marriage was your salvation from Runehall, and yet you fight it. We sought to help you, and you threw it back in our faces. We ask you to lie low, and instead you pick a fight.” His fist came down on the table, and I flinched, the pottery shaking.

My anger rose, and I grabbed hold of it. “I won’t be tread upon,” I said, voice shaking. “That man—that man was a-aw—”

“Awful? Like your father, no doubt! Why do you think we took your mother and you back? Your father was a violent drunk, and that is exactly why we tried so hard to give you a future here without picking up our metal. Is that what you want? A war fought for you?”

I shook my head—of course I didn’t—but he wasn’t letting up.

“Because I can tell you right now, it will not happen. I have done everything I’m willing to do to save your ungrateful hide. I gave you my son, for Toke’s sake!” He took a step closer, Roan still between us, and lowered his voice. “If it comes to bloodshed, we stand down.” He shook his head. “They can have you.”

Roan put his hands on Baer’s chest and pushed him back.