Page 21

Chapter Twenty

Roan

S he’d never looked at me with so much honest surprise on her face before. Her mouth opened like she was going to say something, but then she closed it again. Her brows furrowed. Finally, she just sighed, her shoulders falling.

“You really think so?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer.

“Fenli, baby!”

Indi’s cries drove a wedge through the moment we were having as she came through our door, her hands soon wrapping around Fen, pulling her into her chest.

“Oh, my girl! Just look at you!”

Fenli tried pushing her away, but the woman was strong.

“Ma, a little air. Please.”

“A bear, Toke above! Yeshi told me you’d been torn to pieces! Let me see your hand.”

“Ouch!”

“Stitches! And look, you’re bleeding through your bandage. We need to change this.”

“It’s a speck of blood. We’re not changing anything.”

“And you broke your wrist. ”

“I sprained my wrist.”

“Are those bruises under your eyes?”

Fen lost it there. “Those are my dark circles. They’re always there. Stop fussing over me, I’m fine .”

“ Fine ,” Indi echoed, unbelief lacing her voice. “Fine? A bear attacked you. A bear . This isn’t just you coming home with a scrapped knee from playing with Esska.”

At that, Indi turned to me.

“Hi, son,” she said, reaching out to pat my shoulder. “Can you believe my girl? Ripped to pieces by a bear and still not letting her own mother fuss over her? I swear, I knew I’d given birth to a wonder when I first laid eyes on her.”

“Alright, Ma, that’s enough—”

“I was all by myself, two miles out from Runehall’s village, when she decided to make her grand entrance. By myself! Two miles out! Did you know that, Roan?”

“No,” I said. “What happened?”

It was only after I’d uttered the words that I caught Fenli’s face—alarmed, shaking her head like our lives depended on it—but it was too late. After the question was out, my wife crumpled, glowering at me like I was the biggest ass she’d ever had the agony of meeting.

I had made a serious mistake.

Indi started in. “I’d been having contractions for days, but they were so light that I’d never even realized what they were.

She’s my only baby, after all. I didn’t know what the hell was what.

” She waved her hand, dismissing the ignorance of her past. “When the real stuff hit, holy gods, I was crawling into the ditch and praying for death. If you ever hear some old lady talking about how she was tilling up earth, paused to push out her baby, then wrapped it to herself and went back to tilling, don’t believe the ol’ hag.

That’s nothing but bullshit, and she’s just too damn old to remember the truth. ”

Fenli sighed and said, “Here we go,” but I thought she was overreacting. Indi’s account wasn’t that bad.

“Labor is like having your body ripped in half.”

I grimaced.

“Anyway, when she finally came, it was like meeting a little elf covered in blood. She was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen, and I loved her from the very beginning.”

She turned back to her “elf” and ran her fingers through her curls.

Fenli, for her part, encouraged none of it.

She also fought none of it. She sat there, passive, and let Indi gush.

I suspected there was no point in resisting.

Caed women didn’t take well to their children fighting them, and it seemed even my wild beast of a wife had had that instilled in her.

“I held her in my arms and cried, deliriously happy to have given birth to this wild beauty.”

Wild beast, wild beauty . When it came to Fenli, they were damn near the same thing.

“I got up to walk home, but then the placenta started coming, and it was everything all over again. What a bloody mess that was.”

“The pla-what?” I sputtered.

“Good gods, Ma.”

She ignored us both. “It’s like giving birth to a whole other child, but this one’s a sack of meat. It hurts like hell and stinks like blood. No one prepared me for that, so considered yourselves warned.”

Well, shit . That couldn’t be true, could it?

“Eventually I got the cord cut myself, got up, and got going with her. I’d made it about a mile before clouds rolled in out of nowhere and started a down pour. We walked a mile in the rain. Can you believe that?”

It wasn’t until Fenli glanced at me that I realized the face I was making. Eyes wide, mouth hanging. I blinked and tried to act natural, nod thoughtfully, not look like such a boy, but I knew I’d already failed.

“You’re a lucky one, Roan,” she said, giving my cheek a pinch. “She’s as tough as they come. Been roughing it since she was a sopping wet babe in a poor girl’s arms.”

“Thanks for the story, Ma, but you better get going before, you know, you freak out Roan any more than you have.”

“And she’s clever. And beautiful. Some people think you’re no good with words, but no one can put a bear in its place like my girl.”

She pinched Fenli’s cheek then and took a step back, towards the door.

“Love you, baby. You look tired, so I’ll let you sleep. But I’ll be back first thing in the morning. Yeshi’s not as vigilant as she once was. I’ll make sure you’re cared for properly.”

“Love you too,” she said, sighing.

“Bye, Son.”

I waved and said, “Bye, Ma.”

The words earned a terrible glare from Fenli, but I only smiled and shrugged. It was what I’d been counting on. But her expression was gone too quickly, replaced by something like worry and regret.

“What is it?”

She shook free of the look and rose from her seat.

“I’m just tired,” she said. “We should go to bed. ”

The whole ordeal must have made me bold because I found myself saying, “I don’t know, Fen. When we were out there, you said you’d kill me in my sleep. How do I know I can trust you?”

I’d hoped for a smile, maybe a shake of her head, or an eye roll. A wink would have been amazing, and for a split second I imagined her fingers hooking mine and drawing me onto her mattress with her—

Idiot .

Instead, I got what I deserved. With a straight face and plenty of bite to her words, she said, “You can’t. And it’s Fenli .”

Then she climbed into her bed and under her covers.

With her dog.

We woke up late the next day. I made us both a cup of tea and delivered Fenli hers where she sat, still on her mattress, petting the dog in her lap. She lifted it from my hands wordlessly, taking a sip and finding it to her liking. She smiled, and it was better than a thanks.

As we went about our lazy morning, we were quiet in that comfortable way people can get when they know one another. I never wanted to see that she-bear again in my life, but if the encounter had brought me and Fenli closer—I supposed I was glad we’d run into her.

I didn’t rush away to take care of my usual jobs, knowing no one would come to retrieve me when I didn’t show up. It was a day off from responsibility, and I wasn’t going to give that up .

I caught Fenli in a grimace and asked her about her hand.

It was aching where she’d gotten the gash and stitches, so I made her another tea, this one with herbs Yeshi had given her for the pain.

Then I tried to distract her, unrolling a map and asking questions about the forms she’d sketched out and the things she’d seen.

She joined me at the table, eager, it seemed, for the topic.

The more she shared with me, the more I learned just how good at mapping she was, how much she loved it.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, looking at the rolled-out parchment between us.

A lot of what I saw was like the maps I’d been using for years, the ones Gaert made and distributed to groups of hunters.

But Fenli’s map was also different. She’d based a portion of her style on that of the Saik traders who’d first gotten her into the trade.

It was more artistic, but also more helpful.

A detailed boarder offered visual appeal while simultaneously containing information on scale, elevation, and a guide to understanding some symbols used in the map itself.

Likewise, various styles of script were used to differentiate between different places, allowing the viewer to quickly determine what was what.

It was more intuitive and more readily understood.

My fingers itched to take it out, to retrace her steps and try to see the world the way she saw it. “You have a real talent.”

There was a knock at the door. Before I could think to act, Fenli had the map off the table, rolling it up and stashing it under her blanket while I headed across the room to see who it was. I was surprised to find Baer on the other side.

“I just wanted you to hear the news from me first,” he said in the doorway, turning me down when I invited him in.

“The Elders met this morning and came to a decision. You’re to be made wolf hunter, same as Thaas.

You boys have,” he hesitated, uneasy with his words, “well, you’ve served your clan well. You deserve it. ”

High praise, and from Baer no less. I stood stock-still. Unsure of what to say, or how to proceed. Baer had never expressed pride in me before, not a single time. Now here he was, on my doorstep because he wanted to be the first to let me know that I’d done well.

“Thank you,” I managed.

He reached out a hand and clasped me on the shoulder. His eyes met mine, and he nodded. Then he turned and left.

I’d made him proud. That impossible, stubborn cuss of a man.

I closed the door as a smile tugged at my mouth. I turned back to Fenli.

“They’re making me a wolf hunter,” I said, unable to keep the surprise and the joy from my voice. “Baer is—he’s happy with me for the first time in forever.” I laughed.

But Fenli turned away.

She wasn’t the same after that. Whatever space we’d traversed in our relationship was lost to us now. She closed herself off to me once more. When I tried to understand, to ask her what was wrong, she denied a change. When I asked her if she was okay, she claimed tiredness or a headache.

But I knew they were lies. She was pushing me out again, regretting the few hours we’d had when she’d let me in closer. No bear could fix this, I thought bleakly.

Fenli was determined to keep me at arm’s length.

And I didn’t know how to change her mind.