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But she’d spent days poring over those assignments. She thought it would help, that they’d all appreciate the lighter schedules. All she had managed to do was upset everyone.

Bile surged up her throat and she fought to swallow it down. Took breath after shaky breath to will her heart to slow and her vision to settle. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t suited for this. If she wasn’t enough to be Third. She had to figure it out. And until then, she’d hide her fear. Pretend she didn’t feel overwhelmingly unworthy.

Uncle Dinhal was quiet for a moment, slowly stroking his beard. “There are parts I can incorporate… and if we’re stretched thin again, everyone would appreciate something like this to fall back on.”

It didn’t cheer her up in the slightest, but Iryana nodded.

“Will we be ready to leave soon?” she asked, changing the topic to something safer. It would only be her and her uncle traveling for the summit.

“I had each team pull me on a brief trip this morning, and it was rocky but better than the start of most seasons. They’ll be ready in time.”

“That’s good.” She wrung her gloved hands, the meeting with the clans and the brigades seeming to loom heavier.

So much hinged on that meeting. They needed to move past just barely surviving and start building something stronger. She knew they could do it if everyone would just work together, but if it went as well as getting the Kleesolds and the 18th’s soldiers together… they would have problems.

“I plan on bringing Sanora and Edvar in a couple of days to work with them.”

Iryana nodded, planning on letting her uncle handle all the watch schedules and other assignments going forward. She would just mess them up again.

Her uncle had been a rock in her life for years. Quiet, serious, and one of the hardest working in the family. Uncle Dinhal was the only one she’d been able to handle being around in her years at the cottage, the only one she really felt comfortable with other than maybe Hadima at this point. He would be the only other Kleesold joining her at the meeting, and she was deeply relieved by that.

She almost didn’t say anything, but an idea occurred to her that she couldn’t get out of her mind.

“The dogs might cheer Velimik up,” she mused. Velimik had been quiet, a shell of himself, since his father, the late Second, had died the summer before. He was only six now, but it had aged him.

Though they couldn’t bring the dogs to Velimik, but they could bring him to them…

“I’ll bring him along.”

There, one small win. Iryana felt the corner of her lip tug back for a moment, before twisting back down into a frown. It didn’t change the mistake she’d made.

She lingered for longer than she really needed to, watching the herders checking on the sheep and filling the various three-sided shelters with more hay. Watching her uncle working with the dogs and hooking them up to the sled again. Absorbing the sunlight.

The panic and nerves washed over her in waves, and it took everything she had to weather them. They wouldn’t control her. Wouldn’t make her run.

Iryana just had to remind herself to take things one day at a time.

The fire burning in the fireplace cast a warm glow across the room as Iryana sat alone in the hall a few days later. She held a bowl of leftover stew, swirling her spoon around the chunks of fish and potato. The rest of the clan was in their rooms for the night, and the house was unusually quiet.

Despite the fire, it was chilly. Iryana wore a woolen nightgown over her leggings, and had a leaf-patterned shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

She watched the light of the flames dancing on the floor. When it was this quiet, this still, her mind filled the silence.

The cousins were still annoyed with her, even though Uncle Dinhal had restored the old schedules and rotations of assignments.

She hadn’t brought it up to the First, hadn’t wanted to complain, and she was sure her grandmother would just say she had to get used to upsetting all of them. But how could she be okay with pushing her family away, with making them mad at her, when she was just really getting to rebuild her relationships with them?

A creaking door and padding footsteps had Iryana turning to find her older sister navigating the mess of tables, benches, and chairs. Hadima plopped down across from her, the golden braids that usually wrapped around her head like a crown were undone. Golden hair waved down her back over the green woolen shawl and pale nightgown.

“Hey,” Iryana said with forced cheeriness.

“You’re up late.” Hadima’s voice was soft and gentle. She sat a bowl of dried leaves on the table, formed her water-forged mortar and pestle, and began to grind the leaves.

“Not tired yet. And I was hungry.” Iryana tapped her bowl with her spoon.

“You missed dinner.”

“I had a lot of work to do.” As if she hadn’t intentionally skipped dinner to avoid her annoyed cousins.