“Tomorrow, then,” I said, as I buried my head into Soren’s chest, hoping for sleep to come.

It did, agitated and broken, but it did come, and I woke up last that morning with Soren handing me a bowl of pemmican. I had to hold back a sigh. The pastelike combo of seeds, plants, and berries always stuck to the roof of my mouth. The taste was terrible—bitter and chalky—and lingered in my mouth all day long, no matter how much I tried to rid myself of it.

But it was travel food because none of us would be able to hunt or gather in Niflheim, and other than pemmican and strips of sun-dried meat and assorted types of salted jerky, we had no food. It wasn’t very appealing as a meal, but it would keep us going and give us energy through the day.

That didn’t mean I didn’t have a grossed-out face when trying to stomach the first spoonful, though. I shook my head and winced. “Bleh, that’s terrible.” I barely stopped myself from wiping my tongue on my sleeve to get rid of the flavor. Someone tried to put more fruit in the mixture to counteract the bitterness, but instead, it tasted bitter with a sickly sweet aftertaste.

Soren smirked at me, his remaining eye shining with fondness. “I can’t get over how cute that is,” he said. “Over a hundred years and you still make the exact same face.”

I was still trying to get the taste out of my mouth and unstick my tongue from the roof of it. “I don’t understand how you can get that to move from your mouth to your throat, much less swallow it completely. It has to be some goblin thing,” I said when I got my tongue free.

“Technically,” Rose butted in, “it’s a human creation that we’ve adopted for situations, well, not like this but similar.”

I rolled my eyes. “And I hated it back when I lived in my home village too. I’d even take raw meat over this.”

There was a snicker from the corner. Diaval, who somehow supernaturally had almost finished her bowl, said, “I’ve seen your attempts at raw meat, Janneke. You’re good for many things, but not for that.”

“It looks like trying to feed a small, alive cat to a fussy yearling,” Seppo said, “and believe me, I have experience with this. Half of my siblings are younger than me and I have to help feed them.”

“It is pretty funny,” Rose said.

“She once cried when I fed her balut,” Soren said, lips twitching. “Which was probably my fault because you can’t throw balut at someone who’s only been in the Permafrost for a few months.”