Page 82 of In Her Own Rite

“How did you do that?” Gabe asks, looking at me. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“I don’t know,” I mumble. “I just… made it up.”

He looks at me, his brow furrowed. “You should call my mom.”

“No. I don’t know. It’s nothing.”

He grabs my hand, his eyes serious. “This isnotnothing. My mom has been a healer since before I was born, and I’ve never seen her do something like this. Hell, I’ve never even seenHelendo something like this.”

I blink. I don’t want to call Saga. I want to call Kieran.

But suddenly the exhaustion hits me like a wave, and the thought of talking to anyone feels like too much. I lean back against the couch.

“Hey. You good?” Gabe asks, dropping my hand.

“Yeah, I’m just tired.” I bring a hand to my head. The world feels fuzzy. At that moment, Seb walks into the room.

“Hey, guys. Woah, Gabe—what happened to your chest?”

“Em happened.”

I look up at Seb, who’s staring in bewilderment at me.

“Uikbaane.”

“I need a little time to rest before we do the mental training,” I say.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I wasn’t going to get us started until two, anyway.”

I nod. “I might take a nap.”

“Okay. Do you want me to wake you up at, like, one thirty?”

“I don’t know. I may just rest here,” I say, and I walk over to the couch opposite Gabe’s and lie down. My exhaustion feels like a blanket, falling over me, weighing me down. Within a minute, Seb and Gabe’s voices fall away. In two, I’m fast asleep.

30

EMERSON

Seb wakes me two hours later, and by two o’clock, I’ve had some coffee and my energy is mostly back to what it was. I’m still poring over what happened in my mind and what it may mean. Seb wants to have this session outside, in the forest, and I can feel my body protesting as we walk through the woods. I’m tired. I need recovery.

I need Kieran.

He leads me to the clearing Quinn took me to yesterday, and we sit on two of the boulders, facing each other.

“So. Tell me what you know about what we face in the ring,” he says.

I force my mind to focus, in spite of my exhaustion. “Your biggest fear,” I say, as if by rote.

Seb shakes his head. “No, you face your biggestweakness.”

“Right. In the form of your biggest fear.”

He moves his head from side to side, likeyeah, sort of. “It’s more complicated than that. The ancestors come to teach you a lesson. Maybe they bring you a message, or they show you something you need to learn.”

I remember what Kieran told me about his rite.I heard something in the ring.

“What kind of lesson?” I ask.

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