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That night, he told the clan that he was throwing his support in with the growing effort to end the wolf hunt.

“I’ve looked them in the eyes,” he said, as a chill ran up my back, “and I saw Toke looking back at me.”

Chapter Forty-Five

Fenli

They nullified our marriage, and Roan moved out of the hut he’d built himself. I tried to protest, saying it should be me to move out, but they wouldn’t have it—not in the condition I was in and all the healing I had yet to do. Roan gathered his things to take with him to the bunkhouse and Esska moved in, pushing through the door with her bag just as Roan was stepping out.

Thank the gods for Esska.

I needed space from the marriage I’d been given into, but I didn’t want to be alone. I was struggling with my fears, some founded and reasonable, others laced with paranoia. The trouble was, I couldn’t always tell the two apart. In the moments when I struggled, usually late in the night, I needed Ess there by my side. I needed her to tell me what was real and what wasn’t. I needed her assurance that I was safe.

Bleak days stretched into a bleak season. But as the air grew crisp and the winds colder, some of the heaviness started to lift. It came slowly. One good day here, a night of sleep there. My outlook started changing, and some parts of me I’d forgotten about crept back in. I grew curious about things again. The feeling shocked me as sofamiliar and yet not something I’d felt in a very long time. I took pleasure in a verbal spar with Ess one morning. A few days later, my legs itched to walk in the woods. Once there, Ess foraging for mushrooms beside me, my mind turned to mapping once more.

It was no perfect healing, not by any measure. But it was mine.

I saw Roan here and there, but he seemed careful to keep his distance. Esska said he asked about me every damn day, but I knew it was important to him that I have my space as well. I looked for him every time I left my hut. While walking in between buildings, grabbing food in the kitchens, at a naming ceremony for the newest (and loudest) clan member. We’d catch each other’s eyes, then linger. And it was like we shared the same space somehow, the same moment, even as everyone else moved around us, no matter how stretched the distance between. A corner of my mouth would lift. He’d wink.

Come mid fall, Esska had the opportunity to join in on the Eastern hunt, a trip that took hunters from home to fell deer and elk for the long winter. She’d be six days gone, at least, and it would be a chance for her to get her first big kill.

“I shouldn’t go,” she said one night. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You’re going.” I didn’t even bother to look up from the lines I was drawing.

She sighed.

“Then Indi can come and stay with you.”

I shook my head. Putting my charcoal down, I looked up and smiled at her.

“I’m ready for this, Ess. I want to do it.”

She chewed her lip, but, in the end, she agreed.

Indi came over every morning to have breakfast with me, and every evening I went to her and Iver’s hut for dinner. When I grew tired of walks to the busy coast and found myself craving the forest, I had the thought to seek out Runa. We went into the woods together on a few afternoons, and we talked back and forth. I knew it would make Ess proud to see me not being such a hermit, and the thought made me smile a little. We talked about Ess and how she may be fairing on the hunt. Runa confessed she was more than a little nervous to be as deep into the forest as we were, but she’d been wanting to face the fear for a long time.

“To be honest,” she said, “I’ve always been jealous of you.” I was so shocked by her words, I stopped dead on my feet. “You’re brave and independent and have been heading out into the wilderness since we were kids. I’d watch you go and wish I had half the nerve.”

“Really?”

She nodded.

“I’ve always been jealous of you,” I confessed. Now it was her turn to stop. “You’re so good with people, and everyone smiles when they’re around you, and you have great hair.”

She laughed. And I vowed never to be jealous of another woman again.

After a week’s time, the hunters returned with game and Esska returned with smiles and stories. She’d gotten her first deer, and she talked long into the night, alive in a way I’d seldom seen her before. This was what happened when we were ourselves in the world. We came alive.

“You look good,” she told me, her smile wide across her face.

Gods, she was a sap.

“I feel good. I feel at home in my bones.”

“And in the clan,” she added.

“And in the clan,” I agreed.