My lips parted, but no sound came. The forest seemed to lean in, holding its breath with me.
I wanted to laughâto scoff at the absurdity, to dismiss it as nothing more than mockery or threat. But I couldnât. The wound was too precise, the placement too careful, the sheer effort of it undeniable.
If this was a betrothal offering, then I was no longer merely a trespasser in his woods. I was being asked, in the only way a Fenrathi could ask, to choose him.
My mind would not still. The words of old reports surfaced one after another, the careful notes of scouts who had spied from tree lines, the bitter scrawls of scholars who had branded the practice savage.
If the female accepted, she would take the kill into her hands. She would skin it, butcher it, cook it and lay the best cuts before the male that offered it. Her efforts and skills mirrored to his, multiplying his offering into a meal, the way women turn a house into a home. To prepare the kill beautifully was to say yes, was to offer in kind, I take yours and give you mine.
If she did not accept⦠she would ruin the meat. Hack at it carelessly, burn it, waste it. Or she would ignore the carcass altogether, leave it for the scavengers. That was refusal, as final as turning her back.
I stood with my arms wrapped around myself, staring down at the immense beast as though it might open its eyes at any moment. The reports had always been fascinating curiosities when read by firelight, when safe behind stone walls. But here, in my camp, with the weight of antlers stretching like branches over my head and the dark pool of blood soaking into my soil, it was no longer theory.
It was my choice.
My hands flexed uselessly at my sides. What madness was this? I had spent my life told women were to be chosen, not the other way around. A girl was a prize, not a judge. My dowry lay in my fatherâs hands, my fate in a manâs will. That was the way of things.
But the Fenrathiâ¦
My throat tightened. If I prepared this meat, I spoke yes. If I turned away, I spoke no. And either way, I knew he would see.
My heart beat so loud I could hear it in my ears.
The accounts had always trailed off after the kill, but I remembered enough. If the female acceptedâif she prepared the meal with careâthe male would eat. And if he ate, and then pulled her to his side, that was it. No priests, no scribes, no parchment or seal. No gods invoked, no dowry exchanged. Just the kill, the fire, the meal.
And then the two of them were one.
The humans scoffed at it, wrote of it with curled lips and ink dripping disdain. A pagan rite, barbaric, crude. How could a people unite lives without divine witness, without the solemnity of temples and words carved in record? How could a hunt and a plate of meat equal the weight of a marriage bond?
But the Fenrathi saw no need for more. The hunt proved his strength, his will, his desire. The meal proved her acceptance, her care, her choice. When he pulled her to him after eating, he was pulling her into his keeping, his protection, his claim. Nothing more was needed.
My stomach twisted.
If I accepted this kill⦠I would be his.
My knife was already in my hand. I hadnât remembered drawing it, only felt the cool hilt pressed into my palm as though it had leapt there of its own will.
I stood over the beast and almostâalmostâturned away. I could leave it for the carrion birds, pretend I had never seen it, pretend I had not understood what it meant. One step back, one spin on my heel, and I could bury this whole thing beneath silence.
But memory seized me of a different kind
My fatherâs voice, hard and final, declaring me betrothed. Lucenâs smile, sharp as glass, cutting away every scrap of hope I had built for myself. My life, my work, my worthâall bartered away in a breath, in the stroke of a quill I had not been asked to hold. I had run from it, run from them both, but still the weight of it clung to me like chains.
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This beast, this offering of the Fenrathi, was not chains.
This was choice.
I knelt. I set my hand to the beastâs hide, felt the heavy stillness of its flesh, the cooling warmth beneath the fur. The knife trembled, just once. Then I pressed it to the hide, and with a steady pull, made the first cut.
The sound was soft, wet, and final.
The hide parted beneath my blade, and I set to work. The motions were familiarâI had dressed kills beforeâbut never with my heart hammering like this, never with the weight of choice in every stroke.
I worked carefully, steadily, separating muscle from sinew, lifting each cut with precision. The air filled with the copper tang of blood and the earthy musk of the beast. My hands moved with practiced skill, but my mind never stilled.
At any moment, I could stop.
I could ruin the meat, scatter ash across the choicest cuts, consign the whole of it to fire and smoke and walk away from the mess. That would be my refusal, plain as words, and I knewâI knewâthe flame-haired Fenrathi would accept it. If I refused, he would not drag me from my camp screaming, would not punish me for the insult.
He would leave. The great elk-beast would rot and my life would remain my own.
The thought steadied me a little.
But I did not stop.
My knife slid cleanly through another line of flesh, my hands working with care as I laid the choicest portions aside, flank and heart and liver. The fire crackled low and steady, waiting for my answer.
My breath was light as I laid the first strip of meat across the stones, the fat sizzling as it met the heat. Smoke curled upward, sharp and sweet. With it went my doubt, curling skyward in pale ribbons.
Every motion was a choice. Every cut, every turn of my wrist, every piece set to the fire.
And I chose to go on.
As I turned the meat my thoughts turned over as well.
How different this Fenrathi was from all the men I had ever known.
To tie myself to him would not be like tying myself to Lucen, or any human suitor who might have come sniffing after me had my father willed it. Those men had always carried their authority like cudgels, ready to strike at the smallest offense. They would demand obedience, and demand gratitude for the privilege of being noticed.
This Fenrathi⦠he could not be more opposite.
Yes, he was a beast, and his anger had been terrible. But it had been measured, patient. Even when I had poked at him, mocked him, tested him with my silence and my little tricks, I had not feared a blow. Not really. Some part of me had known he would not hurt me for my insolence.
I chuckled under my breath, shaking my head. Kept his temper in check, I thought, and nearly laughed aloud at the absurdity of it. He had raged. He had ruined. But he had not destroyed me.
If I had pulled such pranks on a human manâany of the courtâs bristling lords, or worse, LucenâI would surely have been beaten. A whip of words at best, a lash of hand or fist at worst. Insolence was not endured among them.
But with him⦠I had been safe enough to dare. Safe enough to laugh.
My smile faded as I turned the meat again, the juices searing and spitting in the firelight.
Safe enough to choose.
All my life I had been told to be quiet, to be still, to vanish in the shadows of the court. Bastard daughter, unwanted childâignored was the best I could hope for, because to be unseen was to be safe. To be forgotten was to be tolerated.
But this Fenrathi had not ignored me; he had hunted me, taunted me, dragged me into the open, forced me to bare my teeth and snarl at him. He had demanded my words and thrashed the world at my silence.
I swallowed hard, turning the meat, my face hot not from the fire but from the memory.
For the first time in my life, someone had wanted all of meâthe wild, the fierce, the untamable. And instead of turning from it, he had answered with his own.
By the time the last cut of meat hissed in the fire, my hands ached and my body sagged with the weight of what I had done. I had dressed the choicest pieces of meat with as much care as I knew how, though I was no cook. My cuts were neat enough, my fire steady, but I could not coax flavor from spice or broth. The meat was plain, a little scorched in places, the juices spitting angrily where I had pressed it too close to the flame.
StillâI had tried.
And as I sat back on my heels, smoke stinging my eyes, I hoped he did not think the weight of my answer hinged on the flavor of the meat. If so he would surely think this was my refusal of him.
My chest trembled with a long breath. I wiped my soot-streaked fingers against my thighs, lifted the plate I had cobbled together from bark and flat stone, and laid the meal at the edge of my clearing, where I knew he would come if he did at all. Night stretched long, the day having passed during my butchering and cutting and preparing.
The meat looked small upon the stone platter, pitiful compared to the grandeur of the beast it had once been part of. I winced, biting the inside of my cheek, a half-smile of nerves tugging at my lips. I returned to the fire and folded my legs beneath me, the warmth licking at my shins. The night pressed in close, thick with silence.
And there I waited.
My answer lay cooling at the border of my camp, a simple meal with the weight of bond and future heavy upon it. All that remained was for him to come.