Although he didn’t move, the meadow seemed to contract around him, growing smaller. From where we stood, I could see the bottomless wells of grief and knowledge in his deep, deep brown eyes, and I understood that although he was older than history, older than the written word, he still mourned for the least of his subjects.

Across the meadow, the Oak King raised one hand in salute, sunlight streaming between his spread fingers.

I raised mine in acknowledgment.

And then the clouds closed, obscuring the sun. The bright shaft of golden autumn light vanished, and the Oak King vanished with it, fading back into the pine shadows without a single motion.

I let out a long, shuddering breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Beside me, Sinclair did the same.

“I don’t think Jojo’s coming back, Daisy,” he whispered. “Not ever.”

I reached out to slide my hand into his, entwining our fingers, and squeezed. “Yeah. I know.”

Some things come to an end.

And some things begin, too.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned Hel. Well, that’s deliberate, because I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about what happened the night that she summoned me to Little Niflheim in the aftermath of the Halloween affair.

It’s . . . complicated. As usual.

I don’t mean the visit to Little Niflheim. Although I was a bit apprehensive, far from satisfied with how I’d handled the whole crisis, that part went fine. I should have known it would. It may have come down to the wire, but I’d upheld Hel’s rule of order, which was all that mattered. Whatever mistakes I’d made along the way were forgiven and forgotten in light of the fact that I’d produced the desired results. If Hel were a CEO rather than the Norse goddess of the dead, I’d say she was outcome-oriented. She even let me keep the spirit lantern as a bonus. Well, more of a precaution, but still.

It was on the way out of Little Niflheim that the first disconcerting thing happened. As Mikill and I approached the sacred well beneath the canopy of Yggdrasil II’s massive root system, one of the Norns stepped forward and held up a hand to halt the dune buggy.

I clambered out of the buggy for a little soothsaying. At a distance, the Norns don’t look terribly intimidating. At close range, it’s another matter. It was the youngest of them who beckoned to me now, fingernails like long silver talons, her eyes as colorless as mist.

“Young Daisy,” she said to me, her voice echoing as though it came from the depths of the well that lay beneath the roots of the world tree. “Embrace your mistakes. Learn from them. When the time comes, the fate of the world may hinge on the choices you make.”

Oh, great.