“Why didn’t you say something?” My mind turned directly to Diaval’s situation. One of the few things I could do as the stag was heal. Now I didn’t have that power. But if a scratch was causing her to show physical pain—something both humans, goblins, and probably all humanoid creatures tried to hide—then I wasn’t completely sold on Diaval being “fine.”

“I didn’t want to be a bother,” she said. “It’ll heal. It’s not like Hraesvelg is venomous or has poison on his talons or anything.”

“Well, it’s obviously not healing right now,” I said.

“I’ll go easy on it,” Diaval said, barely containing an eye roll. “Just for you, I promise.”

With nothing and everything left to say, I turned to Lydian. “Should we head out?”

“We can probably make it by tonight if we’re fast enough, and we’ll be able to move faster now.” I caught the unsaid words in that sentence. Now that Soren isn’t here, we have less of a burden holding us down. No one else caught the meaning unspoken, or if they did, they were pretending not to. Gods, Soren was already swirling with pain when I could feel his own emotions. He’d lost an eye for gods’ sake. But with this type of commentary and unsaid words … I’d been used to people joking about my disfigurement. Not Soren, of course, but all the others around me had been merciless. Those who were in thralldom didn’t, and Soren gave very angry looks and possibly more to goblins in his manor who said anything but … everyone else in the Permafrost? The mocking and whispers dredged up the pain inside of me every time I meant to soothe it, and being the victim of a brutal assault didn’t make it any better. Few had any pity for that type of thing here.

I’d had years to get used to it, but Soren only had a few stress-filled days where events over and over proved to him—no matter how shaky or situational the proof was—that he was weak, useless, and other words that reminded him that suddenly he was different and not in a way his culture believed to be good.

A sharp bead of pain ran through my chest. Could I have helped him more? Found the right things to say? Or was I always fighting a battle on the losing side? I pictured thousands of years with Soren when I became the stag, but as the lines on the ground had told me, there were a million different fates for even the smallest thing and even the tiniest nudge in one direction would throw you onto another path.

“Yeah,” I said. “We should go.” I picked up Soren’s bow and quiver and tied the quiver to my belt next to the other one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t sling the bow across my back.