Page 94 of In Her Own Rite

I pull out the book, and my inner wolf recoils at the scent of mildew and old paper. But as I open it and flip through the first few pages, I see it’s what I want. Maps, island history. There’s stuff about the southern isles in here, too.

Perfect.

I bring it with me up to Heimig’s counter.

“This too, thanks.”

He nods, scanning the book and the collection of poems. “Didn’t take you for much of a reader.”

I shake my head. “I’m not, really. Just… trying to learn.”

“I heard from Wim you’re also looking into council records?” he says, packing the books into a paper bag.

“Yeah. Doing my best to live up to my new role, I guess. Especially while Seb’s gone. Someone’s gotta hold down the fort.”

“Good for you,jenge.That’ll be ?101.49króna.”

“Ahundred?”

“It’s an old book,” he says, shrugging apologetically. I sigh and get out my bank card, tapping it against his machine. Serves me right for trying to read.

The next weekmoves slow as tree sap. I spend my mornings at the gym and my afternoons at the workshop, working on the wedding arch. In the evenings, I try to reach Em. I call every night, but she always seems to have a reason not to talk to me, or to get off the phone as soon as possible.

I miss her. My stupid wolf doesn’t understand why we’re not talking, and he hounds me every night, wanting to get nearer to her. For the lack of her presence, I spend my evenings reading the poems—a small window to her world, or her mother’s, at least. I want to start with ‘The Rhodora,’ but I wait, working my way through the book from front to back, even if I’m not sure that’s how you’re supposed to read a poetry collection. Hopefully, by the time I finally get to her mom’s favorite, I’ll have enough of an understanding of the language to appreciate it.

If the poetry is tough to adjust to, the council records and history book are way harder. This stuff is so much more complicated than I’d realized. The details in the asylum petitions are brutal; it’s worse than I ever thought on the southern isles, and sometimes I find myself sympathizing with Thalia—or, at least, the person she might have been if the violence there hadn’t made her what she is. But even though it feels important, trying to read the meeting minutes and the old history book—inFakarino less—is practically beyond me. This is stuff for Seb, or Gabe: people who have always been interested in pack code and island politics. Still, they’re not here, and I am, so I push through. When it gets to be too much, I go to the gym or the workshop to turn my brain off.

We’re getting close to the deadline to ship the arch out, but none of my redesigns are doing the thing I want, so I start building the one from my first design as a back-up. As I work on it, shaving away wood to form the doves, the grapes, the pomegranates, I imagine the couple who will get married under this arch. I mutter a prayer to theagaayitfor them: for a happy marriage and a lifelong union. And almost always, as I do, I think of Em.

Em who still won’t pick up the phone. Em who still won’t talk to me.

My prayers for the couple slowly become prayers for her. For her courage and her forgiveness. For me, maybe. To be able to love her the way she wants.

The days get lonelier. I’m sleeping mostly at my own apartment now, instead of thefikarig. Not because she’s gone, although it does feel less like home without her. But because whenever I’m there, I end up arguing with thefikaelders about Thalia and the Remnant. If we have to argue, I’d rather save it for the council meetings, which are about nothing else lately. Even so, despite all our bickering—and Sigur and Ivo’s continued pressure on the rebels to share more information—we learn and decide nothing. Every council meeting defers a decision to the next, leaving me more and more frustrated.

As the days pass by, I start to wonder if maybe the others are right. Slowly, the anxiety of the attacks is lowering, and after another week passes without incident, I begin to wonder if maybe I was wrong, and somehow wedidcatch the whole pack when they tore through town. Which is why it’s such a shock, one Wednesday morning, to hear commotion outside and smell smoke.

I pull on my shirt and sweats and run outside, trying to see what’s going on. In the distance, I can see thick plumes of black smoke rise into the sky from somewhere along our eastern shore.

I weave through the gathering crowd towards the marshal’s office. There’s an air of nervousness on the street; I can hear the chatter of neighbors trying to figure out what’s safe. I see Saga gesturing towards the crowds to go inside and shut their windows.

Once I get to the marshal’s office, I see Sigur and Ivo standing outside, and hear the sound of sirens growing nasal, changing pitch as they drive into the distance. Our volunteer fire squad must have just left.

“Hey, Ivo,” I say, approaching him. “What’s going on?”

“Two houses caught fire this morning, near the west harbor.”

“Do you think it’s—”

“I haven’t gone myself yet, but the owner says it smells like petroleum. We think it’s intentional.”

I feel my inner wolf sit up, all attention. I fucking knew it. Heishere.

“You’re going to investigate?”

He nods. “We’re leaving in just a few minutes.”

“Take me with you. I know this is crazy, but I have a feeling.”

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