“Around the time you left, after the first fight with Fjalar, it hit me. Suddenly I felt everything. There were no more walls. I think—I think it has to do with you lying on the roots of Yggdrasil, if I’m honest. Because all of a sudden, I knew—I was forcing myself to keep each part of me separate. But there is no separation. There is no Janneke the stag and Janneke the human. There’s Janneke.” I gave him a goofy smile back, blood pumping through my veins fast as I realized I finally did it.

I crawled forward to embrace him, but someone grabbed the back of my hood. “You’re hereby forbidden to move until I give the say so. All of you.” Tanya’s eyes swept over the group and scowled a bit at Lydian’s flickering body. Back in Midgard, him sustaining a corporeal form wasn’t as easy.

After trying to convince Tanya twice of my health but only hearing jumbled words come out, I succumbed to her and her healers.

IT TOOK THREE days of nearly nonstop healing sessions before Tanya declared me fit for the world again, and the moment she said it, I was out of my sickbed like a wildfire and running to Soren, who’d been actually the best off out of all of us if you didn’t count losing an eye, as he gazed at the sleeping figures of our friends. Tanya had moved all of them into one room so she could keep an eye on them all together.

“Janneke,” Soren said happily, and I got the feeling he’d rush over to grab me if it wouldn’t jostle the cot Diaval was sleeping on.

“How are they?” It hurt to see the three of them in such broken states after all they’d done for us. Whether or not they survived, I would never be able to pay them back for the help they gave us, the loyalty they showed. I never thought I’d have actual friends in the Permafrost, but I did, and anxiety churned in my stomach at them lying in front of me, injured and powerless.

“Seppo is mainly fine. Some wounds but he used too much power when fighting Fjalar—the whistle attack you mentioned—and he should be awake in four, maybe five days, but he will spend a month or two needing to build back his ability.” He paused before continuing. “I can’t tell if Satu is proud of him or furious at him, or if it’s some odd mixture of both.”