WE SPENT THE next two days together, Soren and I. Never leaving each other’s sides unless we needed to eat or relieve ourselves. Whenever we slept, we would stare at each other as minutes and hours blended together like spilled paint. My gaze would be half-lidded as he brushed his finger and thumb over the sore spots on my neck and shoulders, and I pressed my head against his chest and listened as his heartbeat—so much slower than a human’s—thumped a lazy rhythm between his ribs. No matter what we did or how close we got, we never could get our fill of each other, I thought, as he pressed his pale blue lips against mine for what was likely the hundredth time. Not that I was complaining. If I had my choice, I’d stay curled in the furs and into his warm body forever. In a world where so often we were unsure of ourselves, the clarity of us together, in peace, shone a bright light into the darkness, and I could feel every inch of me saying that everything would turn out fine.

During this time, there was blessed silence in my head. Lydian had stopped speaking with his snark and taunts and nagging commentary, and I relished my head belonging to me again. Even if it meant that I would have to soon meet him in the flesh. It wasn’t a problem—he couldn’t hurt me and he couldn’t scare me.

Besides, having my mind as my sanctuary once more was sorely missed. It was worth it for that alone.

Despite the peace we found in each other, I could sense through the bond, through his tighter-than-normal muscles, and the frown he was struggling to keep from his face even during bliss, that Soren was grappling with the knowledge we’d all been given, and I could feel him take it and hold it to his heart like glass shards. I kissed him right over the heart and hoped that my feelings of calm and healing could be absorbed by his skin. He grumbled a little—a type of growl he sometimes made when he was content that resonated in his chest.

When he fell asleep before me, I lay there gazing at him, rubbing the lines of his frown on his forehead with my finger until his face relaxed and he sank into deeper, undisrupted sleep. He changed when he was asleep; the worry and stress of being the Erlking melted off him like two large chunks of ice he was forced to carry. As if the weight of the Permafrost weren’t on his shoulders, as if he didn’t need to worry about anything, much less bringing psychotic uncles back from the dead, as if we were back in the Higher North in his own manor and he was sleeping soundly in the room he slept in all his life.