“Well then, I’m assuming you’ll tell me you have the solution?” My voice betrayed no emotion, and I tried to focus on keeping my breath and heart rate down and steady.

“I think so,” he said.

“You think?” I let the acid dip from my words.

“Before Ragnarök can begin in truth, Fimbulwinter must start.” I nodded along. Fimbulwinter. The winter that lasted three years. When I was a child, my father used to scare me with stories of Fimbulwinter. Three years of ice and cold where the sun never shown. All the animals and crops would die, which would make every creature from the smallest mouse to the largest draugr weak with hunger and exhausted and perfect for when Ragnarök and the soldiers of the dead did arrive three years later. Back as a child, I thought they were stories. But I’d lived in the Permafrost, spoken to gods, killed draugrs, and became a liminal being. I was far past believing anything was a children’s story. “For Fimbulwinter to start, Fjalar must cry three times. His voice will pierce the chains that keep the Naglafar from setting sail with the hosts of the dead.”

The names were older than legends to me, but somehow so familiar. Fjalar, the giant bird whose cry was loud enough that it broke the chains on the dreaded Naglafar, the nail ship, built from the undead’s uncut finger and toenails, carrying the unholy, those not put to rest, those who did not earn a good afterlife, to be soldiers in the army of the dead.

He wasn’t saying the plan outright, but I managed to follow along fine.

“If we kill Fjalar before he can break the chains on the Naglafar, we can thwart Ragnarök,” I said, “and with any luck, the serpent will go back to sleep.”

A smile danced on the edge of Lydian’s lips. Somehow it made him look even more sinister than when he was raving. “Smart girl, yes.” I bristled at the term girl, but not enough for him to stop speaking. “The one problem is, Fjalar is a liminal being. You can’t hunt and track something that’s there but not there.”

“Not unless you’re led by something else there but not there,” I finished for him.

The hints of a smile on Lydian’s face turned into an outright grin. I was the stag and forced a neutral expression.

“You’re taking this rather well,” he said, curious eyes flitting toward my face.