“Micah questioned why he shouldn’t be allowed to marry you,” Averill reminded her. “He said he planned to continue to court you.”

“Kiss me,” Raisa said. “He said he liked kissing me and planned to keep it up.”

“What about you?” Elena asked. “Do you plan to keep it up?”

Raisa was suddenly tired of the interrogation, tired of being made to feel foolish when she was doing the best she could. Tired.

“I don’t know,” she said, yawning. “I might.”

As she fell asleep, her last recollection was Averill, Elena, and Amon Byrne, their heads together, whispering. No doubt planning a conspiracy of their own.

C H A P T E R  E I G H T E E N

ON THE
BORDERLAND

It wasn’t like Han expected to be the center of attention at Marisa Pines. But he wasn’t used to being overlooked entirely, and that was the way it seemed. The renaming ceremony was bearing down on them—it was only a week away now. Bird spent long hours of every day in seclusion in the women’s temple, meditating on her future. Han tried sneaking in for a visit once, figuring she would welcome the distraction, since she already knew what she wanted to be, after all. He’d had hopes they’d get back to kissing. And move on from there.

He got rudely evicted for his pains.

Even when Bird wasn’t meditating, she was consumed in plans for her name day. She had no time for hunting, for fish-ing, for swimming in the Dyrnnewater or Old Woman Creek. She didn’t want to hike up Hanalea to camp by the lake or take in the view from the top.

Like anything forbidden, she became fascinating to Han. When she walked through the camp in her summer skirts, he couldn’t help noticing the sway of her hips, her rare brilliant smile against her dusky skin. Even often overlooked parts, like elbows and knees, seemed appealing.

But he was relegated to watching from a distance.

Dancer was different, but worse, in a way. He’d always been slender and fine-boned, but now he looked hollow-cheeked, almost cadaverous. Was he ill? Or was the anger he carried around burning away his flesh?

Whatever grievance lay between him and his mother seemed to have deepened. Han was staying with Willo and Dancer in the Matriarch Lodge. They scarcely spoke to each other in public, and within the lodge the tension was oppressive. Sometimes they welcomed his presence, as if it was an excuse not to deal with each other. Other times he would walk in on conversations that collapsed into stony silence. Sometimes he slept elsewhere just to avoid feeling like an interloper.

Willo also spent hours in meetings with the elders of the clan. A delegation came from Demonai, on the eastern slopes, and all of the elders closed themselves up in the temple for hours.