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We ate and stayed up late into the night, talking of Fenli, Tovin’s family back with Toke’s clan, and—finally—of why Tovin had left all those years ago.

The reason was nothing I had expected.

“Not my brother,” he corrected me when I spoke of who I’d known of as Aeric. “My sister. Her name is Helva.”

Then he’d told me their story, Helva’s confession to her family and to the elders, their nonacceptance of who she told them she was. A girl, not a boy. They’d told her to forget the notion or leave.

The notion.

Tovin had spat out the words.

All those years, and I had never learned the truth of why they’d left. All those years, and it had been kept a secret.

Of the four tribes, only Elsynbr and Rynwin’s people made space for their members who felt differently about their genders than what others had first supposed. I’d heard whispers of it, but nothing more. And I’d not thought much about it, not thought that there would be people in Toke’s clan who’d needed that same space offered to them.

And who hadn’t gotten it.

Helva had been forced out, and Tovin had gone with her.

The North Clan was full of members with similar stories, people from the four different clans who found a new clan for themselves here. Most of them still worshiped the deity to whom they’d been born.Our problem was never with Toke, Tovin said, and his words struck me—too late, but finally, at last. There it was, and I saw things with new eyes.

What was our clan doing? Clinging to the old ways at the expense of real people, and for no reason save our ignorance and our fear.

Fenli would be accepted here, I realized, and my chest ached at the thought.

If we find her.

“I’m glad you two found a clan worthy of you,” I said, and Tovin smiled.

He offered us lodging for as long as we needed, but Ess and I turned him down quickly. We had rested and replenished enough.

We had to find Fenli.

We prepared, thanked everyone who came to send us off, and hugged Tovin and Hevla.

"We'll be praying to Toke for Fenli's safe return to you," Helva said to me, and I hugged her again.

Then we left.

I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the worst. “We’ll find her,” Ess kept saying, but I saw the tears that washed her cheeks, and I knew she was just as torn up as I was.

We searched, and we called, and we cut new paths, but in the end, we showed up to the village without Fenli. She’d not turned up while we were gone.

So began the miserable days of unknowing and searching in vain that stretched into weeks.

Esska had put her animosity towards me aside. She never mentioned my betrayal, and she gave up her grievances with me. We were dealing with something bigger now, and we threw everything we had into finding Fenli. We both gave up hunting and went searching every day. When one of the old wolf hunters tried to collect me for training, I refused, the two of us trading harsh words until he threw up his hands and stormed off. Fenli’s strange request echoed in my mind.I couldn’t bear it—you, hunting the wolves. I wanted to ask her what the hell it meant. I kept searching, making a list in my head of all the questions I had and all the things I wanted to say. Soon Jory joined us, the three of us refusing to stop until we found her. Or found what was left of her.

Every night, I lost myself in mead.

“One moon cycle,” Baer said one night, me already well into my cups. We were in the meeting house, and I could feel the eyes on us. “If she’snot back by the full moon, then she’s not coming back. Your marriage was never consummated, anyway. It will be null.”

I looked over my rim at him, my blood heating to a simmer. I’d been growing more and more heated in the past few weeks, and it was bitterly that I’d realized I’d waited until Fenli was gone to join her in this unbound anger. She’d fought against what I had blindly accepted. And how many people had my clan violated and denied? How many Fenlis? Esskas and Helvas? How many Jorys, undervalued and treated like jokes?

I was done playing the role I’d blindly filled for them.

“This isn’t about our stupid marriage,” I said. “This is about finding Fen. Making sure she’s okay.”

“You might never get that closure,” and it would have made me angry if it hadn’t been for the way his voice had softened when he said it.