Well, that made the sinking feeling in my gut so much better. I grasped Soren’s hand, and he squeezed it tightly in response.

“You look ashen,” he said. “What happened to you during your trials? I mean, I know they tried to make you kill a version of me, but I’m assuming details were left out.”

I shivered despite the fact I wasn’t cold. With my eyes focused to the ground, I said, “I kept hitting different roots of Yggdrasil, and they all showed different lives I could have lived. Or, well, not showed me them, but I lived them. I didn’t remember anything about this life or what was going on above ground.” I motioned around us. “And each life I was shown, I was told there was a way to escape it. I had to escape it to prove I was worthy, but I still didn’t know what I was escaping to or proving I was worthy about. I knew I had to do it.”

“What did you see, if you don’t mind me asking?” Soren said.

My foot kicked a red rock out of the pathway; it’d now turned from muck and dirt to gravely rocks sharp enough to pierce the skin of one’s foot if they weren’t wearing sturdy boots. “They were all designed to challenge my life and desires. All of them were actual lives a different me was living right now.

“The first one was a life where Lydian never had raided my village. Instead, I’d turned eighteen and you took me to the Permafrost.” I paused, trying to collect myself. “My family dressed me in funeral clothing as if they were sending me to my death, and I was so scared of what you would do.”

Concern flickered on Soren’s face. “Did I do anything to you? Anything bad, I mean?”

I shook my head. “I would scream and rage at you, and you would take the anger and continue on until I was too tired to scream and rage anymore. You told me little things about your life, like your least favorite food and your favorite color.”

“Herring and dark green,” Soren answered, despite the fact I already knew.

“I think I would’ve stayed. I was lulled into the rhythm we created as we traveled. But then a voice told me I had to escape. By root, by fang, and by iron, it said.” I shivered at the last one, the look on Soren’s face when I slashed his eye out and the deep cuts bubbling with blood on my wrists coming back so clear, I could be experiencing them again.

Soren put a hand on my shoulder, holding me close. “It’s okay; you’re back now. That’s all that matters.”