Page 103 of In Her Own Rite

He nods. “When I walked into the ring, it was me, your mother and a large gray wolf. At first, I thought she was Móra, and he was just some animal. But then he attacked her, and I think… I think she showed me your memories.”

I blink, feeling a patter of anxiety in my chest. He nods, putting a hand on my leg.

“We don’t have to talk about it. But it felt wrong for you not to know what I’d seen. And as the ancestors were showing me your memories, the wolf was still there, prowling the outside of the ring.”

I nod, thinking. “But it was still thekiyyulit?”

“It didn’t feel like thekiyyulit. It felt like a real beast. After the last memory, he attacked me, and we each drew blood. The wolf I saw in your memories was like a mist when I tried to touch him. This one felt real.”

I shake my head. “But thekiyyulitdo take a physical form for you to fight. If that wasn’t the case and it was always a mirage, nobody would leave the ring with injuries.”

“I guess,” he says, shaking his head. “But I asked your mom if he was really here, and she said yes.”

“Here like, in the ring with you? Or here as in, on the island?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just said ‘here.’ And she said…” he swallows, like he’s still not sure how much he can say. “She said I can’t save you. That I can’t prevent you from your destiny, and that he’ll find you.”

I nod, thinking.

“Can you describe the wolf to me?”

“He was big and gray, maybe as big as my wolf. His fur was matted. He looked hungry, but strong. Angry.”

I nod. “And his face?” I ask.

Kieran shrugs. “Just… I don’t know. A wolf. Why?”

“No scarring?” I ask, and he shakes his head.

“That’s my dad from my memories,” I say resolutely. “Not the real him.”

“What? How do you know?”

I clear my throat. Even with the training I’ve been doing with Seb, I find this stuff hard to talk about. But I do my best.

“The night my mom and I moved out, a few months before she died, they had a really bad fight,” I say. “I mean, they were always bad, but it seemed like they were getting worse over time. We lived in a pretty remote place, and we didn’t have a lot of nearby neighbors. But that night, a trader came home late from the harbor, and he heard. He called the marshals.”

I see him nod, watching me.

“They came and had to separate them. It was horrible. There was so much blood. My mom was sick already, from the illness that eventually got her. But after the marshals came, Viggo and Dagmar came to pick us up so we could stay with them for a while until my mom found a new place. And when Viggo saw what my dad had done, he just lost it.”

“What happened?”

“He attacked my dad. Dagmar had taken me and Mom away already, but Viggo stayed, and apparently they had a massive fight. Viggo tore into him so badly that had all this new scarring, also on his face. And apparently—I didn’t know this, at the time—but because Saga and my mom were friends, she couldn’t bring herself to heal him. Helen, the other healer, was still living on one of the other islands. And Saga was so angry at my dad that she couldn’t get her healing magic to work. So he scarred over.”

“Em,” Kier says softly, stroking my hand.

“Anyway. I never knew that. I used to see my dad around the islands, sometimes. Like a ghost, but I always worried he was real. Finally, around the time you left for Keist, I told Aunt Dagmar. She told me the story, and after that, it helped separate the wolf in my mind from the real thing. Whenever I thought I saw him, I would tell myself that it couldn’t be real, because my real father had scarring that the wolf in my memories didn’t. So,” I say, smiling softly at him. “You didn’t fight my father. You fought the father from my memories.”

He nods slowly. “But then what about what your mom said?”

“Hewasreally there, wasn’t he?” I ask. “To you, he was there in the ring. And she was right that he would find me. Because next week, I’ll be climbing up to the ring to fight him, too.”

I see him swallow, thinking.

“This has to be it, Kier,” I say, coming close again. “She said you couldn’t save me from my destiny, and she was right. You wanted to protect me from going into the ring, but whatIhad to do for myself was finally face my fears and fight for myself.”

He nods, finally, looking up at me.

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