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Chapter Eleven

Fenli

I woke to rain on the slates above. It was still dark, pitch black in the hut, but I’d never needed the light.

I heaved myself up from my bedroll, and then I was making my way to the door.

Fresh air greeted me on the other side, rain-scented and rich with the fragrance of earth and sky, Rynwin and Toke both at work.

I filled my lungs with it. Then I stepped out from under the eve and let the rains have me, same as everyone born of Toke.

This was how we worshipped, and I could never tire of the act. Stepping into his downpours felt like as much as a receiving as it did a giving, and it woke something in me each time. That bit of the god that had been planted inside me upon my birth, if the stories were to be believed.

I said the words I’d been taught as a child, the words my mother had whispered to me, even when I’d been tiny, and we’d lived as Runehall’s.

“ The skies have spoken. This, an ancient tongue. Storm awoken. Let this witness come .”

And the rains cooled my eyes, licked my cheeks, ran rivers down my skin.

The god of storm and sky met me there, or so they said, and I tried to feel his presence.

I thought maybe I did. I could never be sure.

I wanted to believe it, like I had as a child.

Still, there was a voice in my head that said I was being stupid, that he was myth and story.

That, if he was real, he wouldn’t care about me.

I tried to quiet that voice.

When I was good and soaked, I sat myself down on the wet earth to witness what Toke was doing.

What was more fitting for a worshiper than to take notice of the acts of their god?

I started to hum. The sounds I made were as old as our clan itself, six notes passed down through the generations.

The song was a haunting thing, as deep and foreboding as thunder, and I loved it, loved venturing out under the wet skies to feel its vibration in my throat.

I may have been a person of few words, but I’d never been without this—not even when I doubted.

There were no rules to how long the worshiper stilled. It could be for a few moments, or it could last for as long as the storm did. I was already soaked down to my underthings, and the rain was warm enough. I stayed. I felt a peace there, and peace was something I desperately needed.

When the winds picked up, chilling me and pulling goose bumps from my skin, I decided it was time to go inside. Once through the door, I ran smack into Roan.

“Shit,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “What are you doing?”

I stepped away from him, pulling my elbow from his hand.

“I—I’m…”

Wasn’t it obvious? I wrapped my arms around my waist and moved past him. He had lit a lamp, and I could see that Goose had woken up enough to claim my spot and my pillow. Gods, I was cold. I needed fresh clothes.

I turned back to Roan. He stood there, stretching his back long and rumpling his hair .

“Do you mind?”

He stopped his lazy preening and looked at me like an idiot, his eyebrows high.

“What?”

“Don’t you think you should worship?”

The words tumbled out. I’d rather not have said anything at all, stayed quiet instead, but arguing with Roan was proving irresistible.

He stood there blinking, then said, “Is that what you were doing? In the middle of the night?”

I stared at him. He was a clan favorite.

Old women slipped him extra honey rolls and men reach out to slap his shoulders as he passed.

This ass who couldn’t even deign to worship outside of normal waking hours.

That made me hot. And here I was struggling to feel like a part of Toke’s clan, despite my devotion. What bullshit it all was.

“I have to dress,” I said through gritted teeth.

He took in air to argue with, then stopped short, looking at my wet hair and clothes once more. Then he just floundered. His jaw was unhinged. His face looked conflicted or maybe dazed; I couldn’t tell.

“Hello?”

He narrowed his eyes on mine. “Fine,” he said. Then he stalked out the door and into the rain.

I didn’t know how long he was planning to give me, and I didn’t want to be caught with my drawers down, so I hurried.

I peeled off my wet pants and my shirt and wiggled into a new set as quickly as I could.

It wasn’t easy. My skin was still wet, and the linen wanted to stick and not slide. I swore as I stumbled.

Roan rapped on the door .

“Don’t you dare,” I growled, fighting to get my arms into my sleeves. When the shirt was over my head, I breathed a sigh of relief before heading over to let him in.

What I really wanted was to pull the lock and climb into bed with Roan stuck out in the storm. It would serve him right. I turned the handle instead, let the door swing open a bit, and headed back to the fire.

He came in behind me.

“We have a problem.”

I turned back. He stood with his hands at his side, all of him soaking wet. The storm had picked up.

Shit .

“I’ll just—” go outside, I was going to say. But then I’d get wet again. And it hit me. One of us was going to have to change in this hut while the other sat close by.

My cheeks burned.

“Do it in your loft,” I said. “I’m hide—hiding in my bedroll.”

He smiled at that. I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see, but—dammit—so did I.

Roan must have ratted out my maps, because I’d been found tending to the birds and was told to make for the meeting house to see Baer.

My heart dropped. I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to go. Like a lamb to slaughter, I followed the hunter they’d sent to fetch me back through the village .

He cleared his throat. “Roan’s a good friend of mine. I think of him as a brother.”

He said it casually, like he hoped to pick up a conversation with me. He must have known I wasn’t mute, but that didn’t change the fact that I had nothing to say. I gave him a sidelong glance. He was studying me intently.

“We started hunting at the same time. Now we’re both being considered for positions as wolf hunters. I’m Thaas.”

Wolf hunters? The news shocked me, though I supposed it shouldn’t have. Of course they would consider Roan for a position as wolf hunter. Of course they would .

“Fenli,” I said quietly.

He smiled at that. “I know who you are, Fenli.”

Embarrassed, I looked away, but he seemed unbothered by my awkwardness. He carried on, leading me to the place where I’d surely be made to pay for my transgressions, and I thought about what he’d said.

If he and Roan were chosen as wolf hunters, they’d be set apart from the others and lauded.

It was a high honor for the men in Toke’s clan, who had a kind of hierarchy amongst themselves.

Those who stayed with the women to tend to the animals and the crops were either the average sods, or they were older, having already had their glory in the woods.

The hunters were the ideal, and to be elevated to wolf hunter—they were the best of the best. The only greater honor was to become an elder, and most of them had been wolf hunters first. I should have been proud to be the wife of someone achieving so much.

I was not.

Toke’s children versus the wolves had been our story for ages.

First our men had been warriors, defending all four Caed clans from the raiders who had tried to take our coastal lands.

When our enemies had been beaten back, Toke’s warriors had turned to hunting—and to eradicating the wolves.

I’d grown up on tales of the beasts, same as everyone else, but I’d never seen one.

Just pelts hung on walls and ears strung on cords.

They’d been close to wiped out near the southern village when I was just a babe.

Once, during my fifteenth winter, I’d heard one howling deep into the night, but never again.

The wolf hunters had done their job thoroughly.

But things were different out here. The Hinterlands, with its many islands and deep forests, was rife with wolves.

I tried to keep up with Thaas while still keeping my head down. He didn’t make it easy, veering towards the crowds where he could jostle up against other men, laughing and exchanging words back and forth.

In truth, I was intimidated by all the hunters.

I told myself that it was silly, yet it grew worse by the day.

At first, I just skirted around them and avoided their looks.

I kept my hair behind the hood of my cloak, hoping to remain unrecognized and kicked myself—first, for having cut my hair and set myself apart so obviously, then, for giving them the power to make me regret my choice.

I should have been flaunting my hair with pride—wished that I would—but I was afraid.

How bold I could be in my own hut, alone, with a knife in my hand.

And how feeble I became in the face of others.

We reached the big door of the meeting house and Thaas hefted it open, sinking into the dark with me on his heels. When my vision adjusted on the other side, I didn’t know where he’d gone in the throng of men.

My heart hammered away in my chest, and I cursed myself, wending through the gathering to get to my father-in-law at the front. Skirting and looking at the floor was no longer enough. I felt small, yet somehow, I stood out. Heads turned, eyes lingered, and brows arched.

I could hear their thoughts like they were my own.

This is the girl? Roan’s wife? Poor guy.

How strange. Doesn’t even talk. Won’t consummate her marriage, either, from the sounds of it.

Doesn’t belong here. Roan could have had much better.

It was all I heard. My mind was throbbing with the words, all of them and more.

I wove around two more men and found myself standing before Baer.

I lifted my gaze to meet his face and did not feel that same boldness I’d felt two years ago, when I’d cut my long locks for the first time and then paraded right past him on purpose.

Before he’d been made elder, before I’d realized there was a chance they’d send me back to Runehall’s.

That Fenli was gone, missing from my person entirely.

Instead, I was very much the Fenli who’d watched her own father hit her mother, then cried in the dark.

More shame flooded my cheeks.

I stood quietly. It took the big man a moment to notice me.

If not for the hush that went through the lodge, he may not have.

He’d been leaning in to hear what another man had been saying but straightened when his eyes met mine.

As if he hadn’t been tall enough already. I had to look up to meet his stare.

He folded his arms across his chest, careful not to cover the silver broach that marked his status in our clan.

“Fenli.” It was all he said. He watched me in silence, his grey brows drawn together, his jaw working back and forth.

I was like a particularly annoying puzzle, a problem to be fixed.

Maybe he wanted me to say something in return, I realized.

But he couldn’t expect that, not in front of all these men.

I hadn’t thought he’d put me to the test in front of so many.

Did he mean to embarrass us both? He would have to be a fool.

Finally, he relented.

“I trust my son showed you the hut, and it was to your satisfaction?”

He worded it like a question, but didn’t give me pause to answer, not that I would have.

“I haven’t gotten to see it myself, but I gave him clear instructions for it.”

I nodded, at a loss for anything else. I’d expected a scolding. Public humiliation. Banishment, perhaps.

He pressed on.

“We’ll need to find a more appropriate job for you now. You’re a woman, or soon will be. Tending the birds ought to be passed on to one of the children.”

It took me too long to understand his meaning. When it came to me that becoming a woman meant consummating my marriage, I flushed. My eyes swept the faces of the men in front of me, and I found them all staring back. Behind me, there would be many more, all of them watching.

Baer said, “Is there a task you’d like? Something you have in mind for yourself?”

I opened my mouth, then shut it.

“Kitchens, perhaps, with your mother? Textiles? Caring for children? It would be good experience.”

Hunting , I thought dumbly. Esska came to mind, and her words repeated in my ear. In the goddesses clans, the women have choices. It’s time the gods extend the same freedoms to their women . She’d been right, and she’d realized what was coming when I’d only been concerning myself with what was.

Again, I opened my mouth to speak, and, again, I closed it.

“Think about it,” he said, disappointed. Then he waved for me to leave.

In this, I didn’t hesitate. I spun on my heels and retreated into the sea of men that stretched between me and the door. Halfway there, I heard it. It was barely a whisper.

“ Fire blood .”

I tripped over my own feet and fell onto my hands. My palms smarted when they hit the wood boards, and one of my wrists gave a pang. Someone took my arm in his hand.

“Are you okay?”

It was another hunter, the odd one the girls laughed at behind their hands, and I pulled my arm away from him.

I scrambled to get up on my own. I couldn’t get out quick enough.

When the door opened and Roan appeared in the door frame looking surprised to see me, I didn’t slow.

I pushed through him, our shoulders hitting so that he had to step back, pivoting on his foot.

“Fenli?”

I hurried out into the dark night.

Fire blood .

I’d heard those words before. Would I never be rid of them?

I wore them around my neck the way the men wore the animal ears. They pulled on me, weighing me down. I stumbled under the weight of them.

When I reached Roan’s hut, I saw myself in, sure to close the door tight behind me. There was nothing to be done, so I headed back to the hearth and built a fire. I felt the heat on my face, watched it consume whole logs, and I let the tears I cried wash my cheeks.

My father’s clan, the clan of fire and forge. Burning away all that was corrupt and leaving only the pure behind. Merciless. Passionate. Flames licking. Ash and smoke.

Oh, how I craved the rain. How I needed the forgiving water to run down my skin and put out the fire inside.

Whoever had whispered those words thought I deserved fire. Maybe they all did.

But what did I deserve?

Storm and sky, rain and wind.

I wanted it to be true.

But I didn’t think it was.