“Because it’s a family trait, but it doesn’t show up in everyone. It didn’t show up in Lydian. He was jealous of your father and his father and went into the svartelf caverns demanding the gift of the sight. Donnar was there. Lydian insulted him, and Donnar cursed him. He cursed him with knowing everything and never being able to fully tell others. Every breath of every creature, the life of every blade of grass, drop of water, every person who was or ever had been. It drove him mad. Or, well, madder. He wasn’t exactly the picture of stability in the first place.”

Soren’s face darkened and he stood, his hand yanking from mine. I tried not to feel hurt at the action. It was only going to get worse, I knew it. “What are you saying, Janneke?”

“I’m saying he was right. He was a mad son of a bitch who tortured both of us and would’ve killed us and possibly doomed the entire Permafrost. But he was right. We were always going to destroy the world.”

And with those words, my own world came crashing down.

6

THE CATALYSTS

SOREN STARED AT me, mouth slightly open before his face morphed into a deep frown. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s because you’re directly related to the first Erlking on your mother’s side,” I said. “That, mixed with the blood of the stag, woke up the world serpent, and he began to gnaw at the roots of the world tree instead of his tail.” My heart was beating a mile a minute.

“And that causes the end of the world, according to Lydian? Did you ever think he may be lying? Hel, was this what you were doing with Diaval? Does she know?”

I was silent, guilt written plainly on my face as the flashes of Seppo, Rose, and Diaval came through our link. He growled then, a loud sound that made me step backward.

“So, everyone else knew about this but me? That you were seeing Lydian’s ghost, what he was saying, and now you’re saying he was right?” Soren turned away from me on his heel and punched the wall. I winced as bits of marble crumbled to the ground. “I’m not going to end the world. You’re not going to end the world. He was lying.”

“He wasn’t. I saw it. I saw the world tree and the serpent and the end of the world in my visions. And as the stag, I know it, I feel it in my bones. The world is going to end unless we do something to stop it,” I pleaded.