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Now dead bones on a mountain.

She’d put all her faith in her training, in the bjerluk that meant the children of the father god had come together. But Rusa and his kin hadn’t been with her, had they? When her blood and muscles had turned to ice. In the poems of creation, that was the world before: a frozen ocean. A flat stretch of nothing, too cold to be of use. And then the Isfolj had risen to the top, pressing their cheeks into the frost to gulp at scraps of air, banged their fists until they got the attention of the gods. And the gods had cracked it open, given them fire and wheat and shields.

Hyld Gondyttr. Dead bones in a Faenish forest.

And who was she now? Heir to nothing. Isfolj thyl, Aleterian slave.

That goat whose throat she slit had a name—Aven, for its white coat and yellow eyes. She’d named it herself when it was born, and then killed it to prove to the gods and her people that she knew what she was called to do: to die with a weapon in her hand.

And it was all a lie.

Eavus crashed through forest, and she followed, that slice under her shoulder stinging with every shift of her shirt. Eavus, who had given up his future so she might have one. Who had risked it again, just now, to save her. Kyrianos was honored in one problem, but now so many other problems were so much worse.

What did the gods will for her now? No paper to prove she was free to Aleteria; no ring to prove her birthright. When she had been in the trader’s cage—when he had made his only stop—there had been an Isfolj woman at his camp. It was the first Isfolj Revni had seen since she’d come to this island, so thin from overwork she looked close to dying. Red braids so unkept they were turning to knotted locks, peppered with dust and pollen. She had been shouted at and slapped, made to fetch water, clean up the refuse from the trader’s meal.

But it was her forehead that had sent ice through Revni’s veins.

She had turned, and looked at Revni, and her face had become permanently burned into Revni’s vision. As permanent as the puckered brand burned into the girl’s forehead.

An Isfolj rune.

And Revni had done nothing. Worse than nothing. She hadn’t fought for her. She hadn’t asked her name, her clan. Promised to get word. Revni had simply shrunk deeper into the shadows of the wagon, and then—And then!

Revni had unplaited her own hair.

And now that long blonde hair, soaked through from the rain, clung to her face and neck, and Revni knew, though she hadn’t wanted to admit it…

She was terrified to re-braid it.

Afraid. To show the world that she was Isfolj.

To fear was to mock the gods.

How could she face her people now?

Because there was no longer any denying the thrum of terror that had taken root within her. It was a second pulse, a thread running through the marrow of her bones. She wanted to cling to the safety of Eavus, latch herself onto his kit pole like a cub on a tree. Just as strongly, she wanted to run screaming into whatever fray she could find, lose her thoughts in the pound of blood in her ears, the throb of aching muscles, the force of an ax against bone. If she killed everyone she could find, would that make the panic stop? The few raids she’d been on before coming to Faen had seemed sport—the gods willing those deaths, her parents and clan proud of what gold or animals she’d stolen, what fear she’d driven home. But she’d never been truly afraid. Yes, there had been fear, fear of being hurt, fear of losing, but there was something about the clan surrounding you, the press of bodies with their blood pumping all together. Even when they had all died, and abandoned her, and it had just been her and Eavus, Revni had known that the gods were with her, that she would come out victorious in the end.

But twice now she’d proved her unworthiness. No bjerluk, no warrior’s shout. Only ice and cowardice. Is that why the gods had turned on her?

She tried to dismiss the thought as soon as she had it, afraid that by even suggesting it the gods would hear. Of course they hadn’t turned on her. But there had never been anything in her life before that she couldn’t outrun, outfight. And if she was too afraid to be Isfolj…

What was she now?

Who would take in such a source of shame?

Her options had narrowed to a thin crack. There was no more hope of life as it was before. There was no more Revni Hyldyttr, wherever this journey took her. She could only succumb to whatever fate the gods had chosen.

She would have to build her own name.

“Whose territory are we in?” she asked.

“Cornari, I think?”

“And after that?”

Eavus continued on, his jaw working. “I don’t know.”

“We can’t go north the way we went south,” she said, even as her mind rebelled against her tongue.