“I’m so sorry, Soren. I managed to nearly completely heal your face, but you have three scars now. And I couldn’t save your eye. I’m so sorry, I swear I tried, I—”

“You did excellent work for someone with your skill set,” another voice broke into the conversation.

“Leave us alone, Lydian, we’re having a moment,” I snarled in the nastiest way I could manage.

“I’m not dead or bleeding out,” Soren said. “So while I hate to say this on principle, my uncle is right. I’ll get on, Janneke. It’ll take me a while to adjust, that’s all.” A lesser skilled person couldn’t properly make out the bravado in his voice and the fear and anxiety that leaked from under it. But I was his second half, and in that moment, his pain and despair crashed down on the both of us like waves.

I kissed him softly on the forehead and then looked in his remaining lilac eye. “I understand, Soren.” I hoped he understood the message in my voice. Soren wasn’t the first one in this group to lose a body part. I had made an oath to Tanya that I would keep him safe and was already failing.

“You look terrible,” Lydian said, staring at Soren’s face. “The luck you’ve had with ladies is completely gone now.”

“Good thing I have my lady already, then,” Soren coughed out in a dry, scratchy voice.

“Shut up, Lydian.” I grabbed the bigger goblin and shoved him hard enough for him to fall back five feet. “Does anyone have a cloth we can use?”

Seppo dug in his packed knapsack and came out with a long cloth bandage and threw it over to me. “This is not because your eye is terrible to look at,” I said firmly to Soren. “It’s because the socket still needs more healing, and we don’t want to get any infections in it. You understand?”

Soren gritted his teeth but nodded as I tied the bandage around his eye.

An uneasiness hung in the air after that. No one knew exactly what to do or say, but we couldn’t keep ourselves here. Sooner or later, Hel would be after us for stealing Lydian from her kingdom, and staying too long in one place in the mists of Niflheim without a purpose would make the mist affect us even more.

“Where exactly did you take us, Diaval?” I said to the still-panting she-goblin. Blue sparks shot from her fingertips, and her body was drawn in together like the cold particularly affected her.

She turned her head to look at me and I was shocked by the electric blue that colored streaks in her otherwise dark irises. “Niflheim, we’re in Niflheim.”