“Are you suggesting we work with him?” Soren asked incredulously, then before he could give me time to answer, he shook his head and shoved past me to the door. “I’m not sure what’s more painful. The idea you want to work with that monster, you believe what he’s telling you, or the fact that despite everything we’ve been through, I was the last person you trusted with this information.”

A burst of rage flared in my chest, and I maneuvered myself between Soren and the door. “You think I’m giddy about this?” My breath hitched, and a pain blossomed in my chest that wasn’t entirely physical. Finally the emotional dam the stag’s powers had made was breaking. It must’ve been breaking because the cold, calculated thoughts were seeping away from me, leaving me with terror blossoming in my stomach. “You know what he did to me. I’ll never forgive or forget that, and this is terrifying. I am the stag. I must do what the powers will.”

Soren crossed his arms in front of his chest, glaring. “That’s unfair. I have a duty to the Permafrost as much as you. Do you know how many creatures have been changing boundaries because of problems cropping up? I fix one and then there’s another. That’s why the svartelves came in today too. Their cave is going dry.”

I winced, realizing what I had implied. “I know you’re doing your job. I’m trying to do mine.”

“Isn’t part of your job to inform me when this type of thing is going on?” he asked. “Not hiding it and telling all your friends instead?’

“It’s more complicated than that!” I shouted. “I was scared. I’m still scared. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to worry about me or know I was scared.” There, the truth was out. The burden tumbled from my shoulders and a weight lifted from my chest. The pain purged from me was better, like a catharsis. I didn’t want Soren to see me scared or weak. Not when I spent so much time proving I was strong. My hands were now shaking at having anything to do with Lydian since I was fully me again, and my stomach twisted and made me want to vomit.

“I thought I could deal with it on my own.”

“Which is why you told our friends, but not me.”

“It’s different!” I said. “They practically figured it out with Diaval’s condition. They weren’t affected by him, tortured by him, not like you and I were. There was some kind of emotional buffer. It wasn’t as raw. I know I should have told you when I first started hearing and seeing him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t.”

Soren still had that unrelenting glare. “Step aside, Janneke.”

“Soren—”