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Chapter Nineteen

Fenli

W e were both banged up and reeling. I had gashes on both my knees that bled all the way to my boots, and the fleshy part of my palm had been sliced open when I’d fallen.

Something was wrong with my wrist, but I had no idea what.

Roan had been lashed across his forehead and cheek by branches, and both bled down his neck.

He’d also gone and messed up his knee, an old injury he could never heal from because he was always re-injuring it.

He said as much as he sat in front of me, gripping his thigh to try and hide the tremor in his hands but failing. My hands were shaking too.

“It’s a miracle I didn’t soil myself,” he proclaimed. “I thought we were dead.”

He had abandoned his seat and laid out on his back with his legs kicked up and his arm over his eyes. I was on my side in the fetal position, staring about the canoe like I could hardly believe where I was.

“Found your knife,” I managed.

“Oh, right. The one I left behind to go chasing after you.”

“And to think, you survived that bear attack just to die in your sleep. ”

“You know,” he said, clearly feeling bold after surviving the she-bear, “it’s too bad you don’t have a knife yourself. Maybe a sword? Could have come in handy today.”

“You’re dead, Faasval.”

When we weren’t panting so badly, and the bear was long behind us, we righted ourselves, nearly having floated into the rocky shore on the other side.

Roan reached for his oar and found his seat, cussing his knee up and down the whole time.

I moved to do the same, only I struggled to hold the oar in my injured hand.

The end of it dug into my palm and my wrist flared in pain when I tried to lever the paddle through the water.

I switched it between my hands, but the results were no better.

I fumbled and hissed through my teeth as I bled on to the wood.

“What is it?” Roan asked from behind me.

Damn.

“I—it’s my—I can’t—”

Oh, for the love of Toke. I was hurt, but I couldn’t spit it out. My face went hot.

Roan got us to the center of the channel, the current pulling our small vessel along, and I heard him put down his oar. When I glanced back, he was crouched low and making his way up to me, a furrow in his brow that betrayed his worry.

“I’m fine,” I choked out, swinging my legs around to face backwards.

“Where does it hurt?”

I gestured to the wretched thing. The cut was obvious, so I said, “The wrist, too.”

He drew in a long breath and then whistled.

“Have you ever had stitches before? ”

I blanched. I was about to answer that, no, I’d never had stitches and never intended to either, when he reached out his hand and brought his fingertips to the back side of mine.

The whisper-soft touch landed like lightning.

He drew so close all I had room for was surprise.

He brought his other hand to the inside of my wrist and gently tugged at the end of my ribbon, working it loose and unwinding it back a small bit.

And I could scarcely breathe.

Roan was oblivious as he ran his fingers over my skin.

He took my hand, mindful of the cut, and lifted it slowly from one side to the other.

He watched my wrist carefully, yet he didn’t see me falling to pieces right in front of him.

When he tried moving my hand up and down, I winced. Finally, he looked at me.

And it was like he couldn’t look away.

I was pink with blush. My breathing was shallow and staggered. I didn’t know what my eyes were like, but I was sure it was nothing good. He saw it all.

His fingertips pressed deeper into my skin, and goose flesh rippled up my arm. His other hand abandoned its place, and he slipped his fingers up into my hair. I shuddered.

All I felt was want.

“Fen.”

He said my name like it was holy, like it meant more than just me. I was unraveling. He was closer than he’d ever been and suddenly not close enough.

Kiss me , I wanted to say.

“Stop,” I said instead .

He hesitated for only a moment, his expression flickering between disappointment and worry. Then he slipped his hands from my skin and into his lap.

He just sat there, looking at me. Some kind of storm was brewing behind his storm-blue eyes, and I could see a riot of thoughts and feelings having their way with him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought—I shouldn’t have done that.”

I swallowed. If there was something to be said, I couldn’t think of it.

He was careful when he wrapped my ribbon back around my wrist and tucked in the end. Then he reached for one of his own, unwinding it into a ball. When his wrist was bare, he took up my hand once more and began wrapping my palm, covering my gash, not saying a word, not looking at my wild eyes.

When he finished, he pulled back his hands.

“Who told you about the Godless?” he asked.

I couldn’t tell him the truth. “It doesn’t matter,” I said, my laugh strained, more nervous than the easy thing I’d meant to give him. My focus landed everywhere but him.

It mattered. He had to see that it mattered. But he didn’t press.

“You can’t row with that,” he said, rising to his feet. “Come sit in the middle of the canoe, and I can get us back just fine.”

Something had happened between the two of us, and I didn’t like it at all. Gods, I was more animal than I’d thought. I’d wanted to press my mouth to his and then some. I blushed just thinking about it.

How could that have been in me? That desire, and for Roan of all people?

It was everything I’d never wanted. I tried to remind myself again and again.

It would have been easier had we not been living together.

“I’ll never sleep again,” he was saying. “I’ll see nothing but those long, yellow fangs each time I close my eyes from now on.”

We’d been back for hours, and he was still sky high, pulsing with energy like it had just happened.

Which it hadn’t. It had taken us hours to get back.

We’d gone with the channel until it’d brought us out to the salty sea.

Roan had pulled us up along the shore and hauled the canoe onto the bank.

We were meant to portage it back, carrying it together on our shoulders, but we scrapped that task on account of our injuries, leaving it behind for some other sap to fetch.

The walk back was awful enough without the extra weight.

My palm throbbed, and I’d taken to holding it up to my chest to try to slow the blood.

That meant that when I’d bled through Roan’s ribbon, I bled right onto my shirt.

By the time I realized it, I looked like the bear had opened my chest and someone should start in on my pyre.

Even Roan had startled when he’d turned back to glance at me.

He’d limped the whole way, a slow and grueling march away from the she-bear.

Most had been at the last meal when we’d finally made it back, and thank Toke for that. I did not want an audience, though Roan looked like he wouldn’t have minded one right about then .

I’d headed for Yeshi’s hut, and Roan had followed. We’d found the healer at home with her wife, and when I unwound the ribbon and showed her my hand, she shook her head and set about boiling water and gathering supplies.

I was a mess. I’d never had anything stitched in my life, and I had so badly not wanted to start.

When it came time to sew the skin back together, I put my hand on the small table like Yeshi had asked and reached for Roan with the other.

He sat with me, the two of us side by side, and when I squeezed him, he squeezed right back.

Yeshi’s wife stood behind me, and she rubbed a hand up and down my back.

I was a sweating, shaking mess. It hurt like hell—bright, hot pain—and when Yeshi announced it was done, I responded by vomiting onto her floor.

Roan had gotten me settled back in our hut with a cup of tea.

When he was satisfied with my state, he’d gone to share our experience and get us food.

I’d been mauled by Esska shortly after he’d left and the moment she’d gotten the news.

She fussed over me like she was a new mother and I was her mewling babe.

My clothes were no good, and she had me out of them.

Then she helped me wash (I did not need help) and saw me into a fresh change.

She put another cup of hot tea in my hands, and when I assured her I was not dying, she only hushed me.

“Just wait until Indi finds out,” she said. “When she’s back from the coast with Iver and hears about this? You’ll think my reaction is mild.”

I groaned because I knew it was true.

Roan told his story far and wide and eventually came back with food from the kitchen. Being attacked by a bear had an upside, it turned out, and that upside came in the form of all the goodies the women in the kitchen sent to try to make up for it.

We ate. I was starving and so was Roan, but there was still too much, even with his monstrous appetite. We pawned food off on Esska, though she’d just eaten as well, and Roan took to telling the story again.

Now Ess was gone, and my belly was full, and I was spent to the point of exhaustion. I sat in the chair by the fire, Goose curled up beside me, and listened to Roan carry on.

My eyes were closed when I heard him say, “You should have come with me, Fen. You deserve the glory they’d bask you in, and then you could tell your side of the story, the one where I almost shat myself.”

“No thanks,” I said dryly. “I don’t talk in groups.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. “Have you noticed how much you talk when it’s to a raging bear?”

I opened my eyes. It gave me pause, and I thought back. The bear had been charging, and I’d been more scared than I’d ever been in my life, and the words had just been pouring out.

We’re sorry. We’re leaving. We mean your baby no harm, I promise. I promise. Don’t you dare kill us, so help me, Toke.

It’d all been easy to say—I hadn’t even been thinking.

But it was like that sometimes. With Indi, with Esska. The wolves. Even with Roan. But that ease came and went. It couldn’t be counted on or expected.

I shrugged. It was easier than trying to explain, and I didn’t want Roan picking up Indi’s tune, that if I just tried harder, practiced more, thought about what I wanted to say more carefully—then I’d be able to speak with ease like everyone else.

That was not the case, and it never had been .

Roan didn’t press it. He went right back to talking about the bear—how big she’d been and how close—and I listened while he wound down. When exhaustion finally caught up with him, we both sat and watched the flames in the hearth.

“I’m happy to be alive,” he said quietly.

“Me too.”

“Also, I’m never stepping foot into the forest again.”

I laughed. “I’m sure they’d have you in the kitchens.”

“They love me,” he said with certainty. “I’ll let Baer know first thing in the morning, and I’ll be making sweet hand-pies with Indi by sundown.”

I snorted before I could stop myself. Because the truth was, Baer would rip him a new one, and we both knew it.

“He’d say…say I was a bad influence on you.”

Roan smiled. “Yeah, he’d be right.”

I rolled my eyes, but he didn’t see it. He’d looked down at his hands, and his face took on a serious quality, brows drawn and gaze focused. He was thinking hard about something. It made me nervous.

“The elders—” he started, still looking at his hands, “—they’re a different generation.

They think differently than us, experience the world differently.

” He looked up, stared right at me, and I couldn’t look away.

“But the elders won’t be around forever, Fen.

We’ll be the elders one day. We’ll be making the decisions. ”

I swallowed. “Maybe you will. Women can’t be elders.”

One side of his mouth slowly rose. “Not yet.”