Sometime, still before everyone else was awake, Rose came and sat outside with me.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” he said. “About Soren. I don’t know why he did what he did, but leaving you high and dry like that … asshole could’ve wrote a note or something.”

I hmmed in response. Soren wasn’t really a note type of person; then again, he also never struck me as the type to leave in the middle of a crisis either. He was good, but he had his faults. So did I. But I thought that our ability to openly speak with each other had changed for the better in the last year. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.

But none of that speculation would do us any good now. We had an enemy, we had to kill it, our odds were low but they weren’t zero. Whatever Soren’s motives were, they didn’t matter. He was gone and lingering on whys and other questions wouldn’t ever make me feel any better. Despite the pain in my chest, I needed to get on with this.

“How’s Diaval?” I asked after a moment of quiet.

Rose shook his head. “The trick with the maggot saved her life, probably. It ate all the necrotic tissue and left the healthy parts alone, so we were able to remove it. The wound doesn’t have much pus in it anymore, but it’s still really red and angry inside and on the skin around it.” He sighed. “Maybe it’s the best thing Lydian’s ever done for us.”

“I don’t like thinking of ‘Lydian’ and ‘best’ in the same sentence. He’s here for his own survival. He was willing to unbalance the entire Permafrost and assaulted and disfigured innocent people.” A bad taste formed in my mouth. “I try not to judge as much as I used to, but some things you can’t forgive. But you’re right. It’s odd to say, but I’m grateful Lydian knew what to do.”

“At least he’s not an incoherent mess anymore,” Rosamund said.

I snorted. “Small miracles.”

“Diaval isn’t waking up, though,” he said, tone switching to become more serious. “She’s not dead, but … she’s not asleep in the regular way. I can’t rouse her. I don’t know how long she’ll be that way or what we can do.”

“She has to wake up. Even if she can’t fight. She’s the strongest out of all of us and the only thing keeping us together,” I said. “Never mind the Erlking and the stag and Lydian as a liminal being, if we didn’t have Diaval smash our heads together every time we argued, we’d be dead already.”

Rose’s lips quirked up. “You’re not wrong about that.”