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After we washed our dishes in the river, we meandered back.

Everything felt different. We were separated from the clan and relieved of the expectations of others that had weighed us both down. Now—alone in the wilderness, just us and the wolves—things cameeasier. There was a lightness that hadn’t been there before, an ease of being, and the very comfort of her presence surprised me. I thought I could have gone on living like that forever.

I wasn’t sure what had come over me, but that evening, eating fish and grains around the fire in the hearth, I started telling stories.

I told her about the forest all around us. The rainfall. How the salt water met the fresh water, and the oddities I’d seen in those stretches of waterway.

There were rumors of a humpback whale as white as a cloud. A moose in the mist who was one hundred years old and could only grow one antler. She found my tales ridiculous and wholly captivating, and I enjoyed her attention.

Then I saw her marriage ribbons. I was going on about the witch who lived in the cliffs north of here when I stopped mid-sentence, my mouth fallen open in shock. She followed my eyes to where she’d strewn them up to hang laundry over. At that particular moment, her underwear was plain to see.

I closed my mouth, pointed, and asked her, “Your ribbons are now a clothesline?”

“For what it’s worth,” she said carefully, “the under things are clean.”

We laughed together. When I’d settled into a smile, I looked down at my own forearms, still wrapped as they had been for the last ten years.

“I’ve had them on for so long,” I said. “Was it strange taking them off?”

She hesitated just a moment, but she was telling her secrets now, so what was one more?

“I put them back on three times.”

My smile deepened at that. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I was falling apart as it was. Unwinding them felt like it was letting even more of me spill out, all over this floor.”

I nodded. I almost started unwinding mine right there, but something stopped me. It felt like a big gesture, and I wasn’t sure I was ready. The moment ended, and we finished eating. Sometimes we were quiet; sometimes we talked. She told me a few stories of her own. We spoke of Ess and everything that had happened since I’d betrayed her secret, of what could be, if only the clan would be willing to change.

And the time slipped by.

She had been remade out here. Or maybe it was that she could finally be herself. Whatever the case was, the Fen I watched now felt true.

She moved with comfortable ease. I’d seen her smile more in the past day than I’d seen in all our weeks before. Most confusing of all, she wasn’t pushing me away. She held my gaze, brushed up against me without flinching, and spoke to me without suspicion in her eyes. I loved seeing the sword I’d made her at her hip. She reached for it often, her hand resting on the pommel, and I pretended not to notice, but of course I did. When it started raining, she started humming Toke’s song. She’d left his clan but not him, I thought to myself. Turning away, I stoked the small fire she had made in the old stone hearth and fed it into an almighty blaze. She wrapped up in her blanket and sat beside it, just like in our hut. When the wolf song started, she left her place behind and padded to the open door. I watched her lean against the frame as she listened. Then she tipped her head back and howled, and I felt the sound of it in my core. She turned back to look at me then, the smile across her face unhindered, her cheeks flush with heat, and I felt my eyes prick painfully,felt the lightning that tore through my chest. She turned her focus back to the night when the wolves answered her, and I watched, dumbstruck.

She was a wild thing. I’d known it all along, but now I knew it to my bones. She belonged to herself. The clan could never take that from her.

More than ever, I wanted to belong to her as well.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Fenli

We spent our mornings with the wolves. I let myself forget that Roan was meant to be a wolf hunter now. With our backs against the big cedar, our shoulders touching, we’d watch in comfortable silence. When the wolves had tucked themselves away for a long sleep and our stomachs were gnawing in hunger, we’d rise and make our way back to the hut. Once there, I’d gather the wood and start in on the day’s fire. Roan would prepare the meal, and we’d eat while talking about the pups, the forest, anything other than our past or our future. Roan had a flair for stories. He’d speak of forest spirits, the king of the salmon, and a haunted island that muddies your mind the moment you step foot onto its shores, causing you to hallucinate.

I half wondered if we were there.

I had become some base version of myself. Where there had been thought and reason before, there were now only feelings and longings. My entire body took part in it, conspiring against my better judgment and filling me instead with the need, need, need of desire. His touch, his heat—it was all I could think about. How could his skin feel so perfect against mine? I only knew that I wanted it. No amount felt adequate. Iwanted more, and I wanted it all, and I wasn’t sure if even that would be enough.

Long fingers, eyelashes, the knot at his throat that bobbed up and down. His shoulders—so wide—, ridiculously long legs, and that way his brows knit together when he thought. The twin peaks of his lips. The way his eyes slid to me, sharpened, then reluctantly slid away.

I was obsessed. With all of it. With all ofhim. Like this absurd part of me had awoken and refused to be put back to rest.

Get a hold of yourself, Fenli, I told myself in the mornings when I kept sneaking glances of him as he pulled on his socks and boots.

What the hell is wrong with you?I thought while walking the deer trail, sure I could feel the heat coming off of him as he followed behind me.

This is exactly what you don’t want!I reminded myself when he flashed me a quick smile during one of the wolves’ songs and my insides caught fire without my permission.