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Chapter Forty-Two

Roan

T he hut had been nearly engulfed by the time I’d reached it.

Only the backside had a wall that wasn’t a wall of flames, but I knew it was only a matter of time before it was taken too.

One door on fire, no windows. Sides made of logs, as thick as a man.

A stone foundation that rose to my waist where the hill sloped down, rocks so tightly stacked my fingers could find no weak spots.

I’d never felt so hopeless in all my life, so worthless. A light rain started up. It did nothing to soothe the angry flames. Everything stretched before me, and it felt unreal. She could not be in there; I could not be losing her.

I’d shouted, circling the hut in vain, looking for a way in that wasn’t there.

Nothing. I couldn’t see a way to get her out. She couldn’t be in there . The roof was engulfed. It would all come down soon.

I could not be losing her .

I kept shouting her name. There was nothing else.

Then I heard the howls. Howls? I blinked against the slanting rain in my eyes, then heard another. They were coming from the crawl space.

I followed them to the back of the structure, where the fire had not yet consumed everything and the foundation was at its highest, the ground sloping away.

Someone got me a maul. Then I’d taken it to the side of that foundation again and again and again, until my arms and shoulders burned with the effort, until I’d gotten through, until I was on my knees in the mud prying away stones, until I was reaching in, finding her and pulling her out.

She stumbled over the stones and into my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her, my face in her smoky hair. I pulled her away from the blaze and sank to the ground with her. She was coughing, and I ran my hands over her back.

“You’re out,” I kept saying. “You’re out.”

Slowly, the fresh air worked its way inside her, and the coughing lessened.

She could get a decent breath, and her coughs no longer wracked her so forcefully.

Her head came up, eyes blinking, and she met my gaze.

Her face looked dazed, like she was struggling to believe she’d made it out. She’d be okay.

I put my hands on either side of her soot-streaked face and nodded.

Her shoulders sagged and she let out a sputter of air, sinking until her forehead was pressed into my shoulder. I ran my hands up and down her back.

“You’re hurt,” I said, having seen the skin of her arm. “Tell me what hurts.”

She didn’t tell me, but she leaned away, and both of us tracked her body. The burns on her leg and arms, a hand she cradled to her chest.

“I’ll take you to Yeshi.”

I stood and bent to pick her up, lifting her gently to her feet.

But when I tried to scoop her into my arms, she squeezed my shoulder, stalling me.

A glance at her face showed she wasn’t focused on me anymore.

She was looking at the people gathered around us, and there was something new in her eyes.

She looked like she was preparing to do something.

“No,” she said, one word spinning circles in my head.

“No?”

Her gaze was sharp. The soot that streaked her cheeks took on a fierce look, and she squared her shoulders.

“Fen, you’re hurt.”

But she turned away from me. When she spoke, it was to those gathered around us, Toke’s and Runehall’s alike.

Baer was shouldering his way through the crowd, one of Runehall’s elders trailing him, and there was horror in his eyes.

He looked at Fen, burned and streaked with soot and rain, and his mouth fell open.

“Axl did this,” she said, her voice small and jagged, and I went cold. “He—he…” she struggled for the words, struggled to be heard with so raw a throat, “wanted me to—”

But then she broke off in a fit of coughing.

“Let’s get you to Yeshi first,” I said, coming beside her, my hand encircling her ribs. “We’ll find Axl.”

And kill him .

But she shook her head. There was that look again, wild and angry.

“He tried to give me b-back to R-R-Runehall,” she said, louder now, “but I won’t let R-Runehall have me.”

A murmur went through the crowd. I had wanted to scoop her up and carry her from this burning hut and these gathered people, but I saw what she was doing. She was standing up for herself. She was coming head-to-head with the people who had tried to dictate her path, and she was telling them no .

She was speaking out.

“I will not be—be yours to command,” she said quietly. She found Baer and Runehall’s elder when she said, “Stop your meeting. Forget your arguments. I am my own, and…and I will—will have myself.”

Her voice was hoarse with smoke, and she tripped over her words like she often did, but she was loud and clear and sure. Anyone who thought she was mute learned the truth of the matter. And anyone who’d been debating about her in the hall earlier lowered their head in shame now.

She lifted her face to the rain and said, quieter, “And Toke will have me, too.”

The rain on her cheeks shone like his blessing, and I remembered Indi’s story, of Fenil’s birth miles from the village and how it rained as she walked back with her newborn child in her arms.

Toke’s blessing, even then, even so close to Runehall’s clan. She’d always been his.

“As for the wolves,” she continued. “We were wrong about them. They are not our com—competition or our enemies. The rumors are true. I’ve been living w-with them, like I’ve lived…

with all of you. In that time, I’ve come to understand…

that we are not so different, the Caed and the wolves.

Devoted to our clans. To each other, those we love. ”

The words lingered. She coughed again. “That’s how the wolves live,” she finally said.

“I don’t care what any—any of you think. I call an end to all of this, here and now. Toke will have me,” she said louder, and she looked up at the rain to make her point. “Maybe you don’t like that, but I won’t be moved.

“And I’d like to see you try to feed me to the wolves.”