Page 83 of In Her Own Rite

“Something to help you grow, and continue to overcome the weakness after you leave.”

“Okaaaay,” I say, thinking. “So it’s not about your biggest fear, but your biggest weakness. But you do fight…”

“Right,” Seb says, nodding. “Thekiyyulittake the form of an adversary, to help you uncover the weakness within you. And that maylooklike your greatest fear, but the point is not the fear, but the weakness in you. The fear is a path to uncovering your weaknesses.”

“Sorry, I’m too tired to follow this,” I say, shaking my head.

“Okay. Let’s try it in practice. Some people already have a feeling for what they’re going to face in the ring. Do you?”

I nod. “Yeah. My dad.”

“Okay. So tell me about your dad.”

I sigh. I knew this was coming.

“He was a fisherman,” I say. “We lived near the west shore of the island. Just him, my mom, and me.”

“Was?” he asks.

I give him a look. I know he knows this stuff already. But the point, I guess, is for me to share it, not him to hear.

“Was. I don’t know what he does now. He was banished to the southern islands when my mom died.”

“How did she die?”

“They say it was his fault,” I say, looking down at my hands, lying limply in my lap.

“Was it?”

I swallow. “I guess.Ithink so, but it wasn’t so obvious. He didn’t, like, lash out and kill her one day. He killed her slowly, over years. Eventually it got too bad, and Viggo and Dagmar helped us move out. But then she got sick, and they think he caused it. Like the stuff she suffered had already broken her before we left.”

Seb nods, watching me, saying nothing. I know he wants me to tell him more. I know he thinks it’s best for me if I share details; if I cut myself open for him and let out all the dark and horrible things that wake me up at night, like every therapist Aunt Dagmar made me see as a kid. It doesn’t help—it didn’t then. And if he wants me to talk about it, he’ll have to ask.

I wait, but he doesn’t. We sit there in silence, for five minutes, ten. The quiet begins to prickle at me, unpleasant and uncomfortable.

“Can I ask you something?” I say finally, looking up.

“Sure.”

“What’syourbiggest weakness?”

He lets out a chuckle, and it catches me off-guard.

“You know I can’t tell you what I fought, right?” he asks.

“You told Maren.”

“I told Marensome. And besides, she’s my mate.”

“Fine. But that wasn’t my question. I asked, what’s your biggestweakness?”

“My anger.”

I nod. He’s not wrong, but I wonder how you can fight your own anger in the ring. How it could take so much from you, like Seb’s rite did from him.

“So what was your lesson, then?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “That I can have what other people have, if I let myself accept it.”

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