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Chapter Twenty-Six

Roan

T he day was long and miserable. I hadn’t caught a glimpse of Fenli since leaving the hut that morning, and I wasn’t sure where she was hiding.

If she was anything like Esska, she was avoiding me.

I’d seen my sister twice, and each time she’d glowered at me before turning and putting as much distance between us as she could. I could take a hint.

By lunch, word had gotten out and rumors were spreading. Fenli’s maps, Esska’s hunting. It was news, and it was catching like wildfire. At first it had been only whispers; by the last meal, many had moved on to outrage.

It was then that Esska, defiant as ever, made her trek through the village with two rabbits slung over her shoulder. She brought them to the kitchens, ignoring the looks and the words spoken behind hands, same as every other hunter offering his day’s work.

A small crowd gathered. I pushed my way through towards the front just as a kitchen matriarch came out, blood on her apron and a rag thrown over her shoulder.

She blocked the doorway, not allowing Esska to enter.

“We don’t want your rabbits,” she said. “Your meat won’t be coming into my kitchens.”

“It’s good meat,” Ess said .

“We won’t have it.”

I’d seen enough.

“Her catch is just as valuable as the next hunter’s,” I said, but Ess didn’t let me get another word out. She turned and thrust her rabbits into my hands.

“You’ve helped enough,” she said quietly. Then she shouldered through the men that had gathered.

I went to the bunkhouse and gave the rabbits to Jory. He didn’t ask why when I told him to pretend they were his, and I knew the story must have reached his ears.

When I got back to my hut, Fenli still wasn’t there. I made a fire and tried to make sense of the mess I’d made. Goose sat with me, and I ran my fingers through his fur absentmindedly. It wasn’t until the sky had darkened to black that I realized Fen wasn’t coming back.

My heart pounding, I began to search the hut. Her sack was gone, along with the bulk of her possessions. Even the battle sword I’d made her, the one she’d refused to so much as look at, was missing from its spot on the table.

Shit. How could I have missed it all?

And there sat a note, waiting for me. It had been there all along.

I’m leaving the clan.

I’m sorry.

Tell my ma and Ess.

I’m sorry.

The words were a blow, leveling me until I found myself sitting in the chair, my head in my hands.

She’d packed, and she’d left. Maybe I should have known to expect it, but I was a fool .

Goose came and pressed his head into the crook of my arm.

“She left you, too.”

He thumped his tail pathetically.

“I knew she didn’t want me, but you? Why would she leave you behind?”

It didn’t make sense. The Godless would have had him, and surely that was where she had gone. Yet here the beast was, tucked away in the hut, the only thing she’d left me.

Would she make it there safely on her own? After everything we’d gone through with the bear, and she was still slipping through the forest by herself, no one at her back.

It was more than I could handle. Shaking myself out of my stupor, I packed my sack and set off to get Ess. The two of us would head to the camp where the Godless lived, and we would find her. She would be fine.

Esska needed no prodding. She took one look at my face, glanced at the note, and was pulling her boots on before I could even finish asking her if she’d go with me.

“We’re bringing her back,” she said, no question in her voice. “She belongs here. Damn it . Damn this clan for making her feel otherwise.”

We told no one that we were going. We left in the dark, went for a few hours, then made camp. The next morning, we were up with the sun and cutting our path through the forest without a word. As the sun set again, we came upon the camp of the Godless.

A small group came out to meet us, and I found Tovin’s face among them. Even after all these years, even with how much he had changed, I still looked him in the face and recognized my friend, like all the time between us meant nothing.

“Roan,” he said stepping forward, his voice punctuating his surprise .

We clasped hands and knocked shoulders. I wasted no time asking about Fenli.

But she wasn’t there.

It was a bad sign.

If she hadn’t made it to the camp, then the only explanation was that she’d run into trouble along the way. The thought hollowed me out.

Tovin took us to his hut, and it wasn’t long before food and drink arrived from the kitchens, the small table between us filled with hot bread, a crock of stew, and more mead than we needed.

“The Godless are generous,” I said, but my mind was on Fenli.

Tovin grunted a laugh. “The Godless still, huh? I’d forgotten they called us that.”

I looked up. “That’s not what you call yourselves?”

He shook his head, and I should have known. It had just never dawned on me.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re fine,” he said, ladling the steaming stew into a bowl and handing it to Esska. “Anyway, we refer to our clan as the North Clan or the Star of the North.”

And it made sense because they’d come here to the Hinterlands long before the rest of us.

We ate and stayed up late into the night, talking of Fenli, Tovin’s family back with Toke’s clan, and—finally—of why Tovin had left all those years ago.

The reason was nothing I had expected.

“Not my brother,” he corrected me when I spoke of who I’d known of as Aeric. “My sister. Her name is Helva. ”

Then he’d told me their story, Helva’s confession to her family and to the elders, their nonacceptance of who she told them she was. A girl, not a boy. They’d told her to forget the notion or leave.

The notion.

Tovin had spat out the words.

All those years, and I had never learned the truth of why they’d left. All those years, and it had been kept a secret.

Of the four tribes, only Elsynbr and Rynwin’s people made space for their members who felt differently about their genders than what others had first supposed.

I’d heard whispers of it, but nothing more.

And I’d not thought much about it, not thought that there would be people in Toke’s clan who’d needed that same space offered to them.

And who hadn’t gotten it.

Helva had been forced out, and Tovin had gone with her.

The North Clan was full of members with similar stories, people from the four different clans who found a new clan for themselves here.

Most of them still worshiped the deity to whom they’d been born.

Our problem was never with Toke , Tovin said, and his words struck me—too late, but finally, at last. There it was, and I saw things with new eyes.

What was our clan doing? Clinging to the old ways at the expense of real people, and for no reason save our ignorance and our fear.

Fenli would be accepted here, I realized, and my chest ached at the thought.

If we find her.

“I’m glad you two found a clan worthy of you,” I said, and Tovin smiled.

He offered us lodging for as long as we needed, but Ess and I turned him down quickly. We had rested and replenished enough .

We had to find Fenli.

We prepared, thanked everyone who came to send us off, and hugged Tovin and Hevla.

"We'll be praying to Toke for Fenli's safe return to you," Helva said to me, and I hugged her again.

Then we left.

I couldn’t stop myself from imagining the worst. “We’ll find her,” Ess kept saying, but I saw the tears that washed her cheeks, and I knew she was just as torn up as I was.

We searched, and we called, and we cut new paths, but in the end, we showed up to the village without Fenli. She’d not turned up while we were gone.

So began the miserable days of unknowing and searching in vain that stretched into weeks.

Esska had put her animosity towards me aside.

She never mentioned my betrayal, and she gave up her grievances with me.

We were dealing with something bigger now, and we threw everything we had into finding Fenli.

We both gave up hunting and went searching every day.

When one of the old wolf hunters tried to collect me for training, I refused, the two of us trading harsh words until he threw up his hands and stormed off.

Fenli’s strange request echoed in my mind.

I couldn’t bear it—you, hunting the wolves .

I wanted to ask her what the hell it meant.

I kept searching, making a list in my head of all the questions I had and all the things I wanted to say.

Soon Jory joined us, the three of us refusing to stop until we found her. Or found what was left of her.

Every night, I lost myself in mead.

“One moon cycle,” Baer said one night, me already well into my cups. We were in the meeting house, and I could feel the eyes on us. “If she’s not back by the full moon, then she’s not coming back. Your marriage was never consummated, anyway. It will be null.”

I looked over my rim at him, my blood heating to a simmer.

I’d been growing more and more heated in the past few weeks, and it was bitterly that I’d realized I’d waited until Fenli was gone to join her in this unbound anger.

She’d fought against what I had blindly accepted.

And how many people had my clan violated and denied?

How many Fenlis? Esskas and Helvas? How many Jorys, undervalued and treated like jokes?

I was done playing the role I’d blindly filled for them.

“This isn’t about our stupid marriage,” I said. “This is about finding Fen. Making sure she’s okay.”

“You might never get that closure,” and it would have made me angry if it hadn’t been for the way his voice had softened when he said it.

I met his gaze and held it for many beats.

“I know,” I finally said.

He nodded. He took one glance around the hall, straightened, and left the way he’d come.

And I knew—as unlikely as it had seemed—that I’d seen grief in his eyes as well.