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We held up our silence throughout the meal. When we’d finished, I collected the dishes.

“Where can I wash these?”

At the words, she spun towards me. “What did you think? Of the wolves, I mean?”

“Oh.” What didn’t I think, more like. “I…I thought a lot of things.”

She nodded, a nervous energy drawing her brows in. She licked her lips and gathered her courage.

“What are you… going to do?” This came quieter. Now she was looking me right in my eyes, and it wasn’t difficult to see the fear in hers.

“Fen,” I said quietly. I wanted to drop the dishes and pull her into my arms right there, but I held back. “I thought you were going to get us killed. Then I thought you were mad. Then I thought—I think you see the world more clearly than the rest of us. You’re braver. You were able to sit with wolves when I would have been carried away with my fear. Fear that would have led to bloodshed. I’d have called it self-preservation. Defending myself and my clan. But I can’t say that anymore.” I frowned. “I don’t know. They were supposed to be aggressive. I don’t know what it means that they weren’t.” I waited until she met my eyes again. “I don’t know what it means that you’re as wild as those wolves out there.”

She hesitated, her gaze flicking to the side and back.

“You won’t tell?”

What a question. I was supposed to be a wolf hunter in Toke’s clan. Yet I heard myself saying, “Your secret is safe with me.”

At that, her shoulders seemed to lighten. She nodded, then gestured north.

“I’ll t-take you to the river,” she said.

I followed her down the path I could see she’d laid from her shelter to the water’s edge, watching the way she moved over the terrain. She would have slugged me in the arm if she had seen me openly staring, but she was focused ahead and I was shameless.

When we reached the side of an impressive stretch of rushing water, we paused to look out over it.

“I erased it from the maps.”

I looked over at her. “What?”

She didn’t answer right away. She kept her eyes trained on the current, and I watched her profile, her hair blowing in the wind, chin up.

“I took it off all the maps.” She turned towards me. “In Gaert’s hut. I took this island off each one.”

“You…tampered with the maps?”

She nodded and looked back out at the current. Defiant. Not a shred of guilt. And it was everything I’d told myself she’d be likely to do, right before I’d laughed the thought off as ridiculous.

“Damn.”

“I wanted to make it invisible. At least for a little while.”

I turned back as well.

“Makes sense,” I said. “It would take the clan a long time to make it all the way out here again. Our attentions have been mostly inland, only a few of the southern islands.”

She nodded once more. “Especially if they think it’s all water.”

And she wasn’t wrong. In truth, it could take decades.

I chuckled, a smile spreading wide across my face.

“What?” When I didn’t answer right away, she bumped her shoulder with mine. “What?”

“Everyone underestimates you, Fenli Wyn Faasval. And they pay for it in the end.”

She didn’t try to deny it.