“The worst memories I have aren’t from your home,” I said. “And even afterward, after all I’d been through, nothing overtly traumatic happened to me under your protection.”

“Yeah,” Soren said, a glint in his eye. “You were a thrall for a hundred years before I finally had the stones to tell you the truth of everything.”

It took me a moment before I realized he was actually being sarcastic. Soren’s sarcasm came in fits and starts; he had a rather shaky grasp of the matter, but then there were times like this when he really hit the nail on the head.

“Well, yeah,” I acknowledged, “you did kind of mess up there. But we’re both past it now. Everything about us, our relationship, it’s different.”

He nodded before slipping one more small knife into his other boot. Adding the axe that hung from his hip, he had nine blades in total on him. Normally, I’d say that was overkill, even for a goblin, but he was right. We didn’t exactly know what to expect, and it was better to be prepared.

“Still, sometimes I look at my past and get so embarrassed, I want to stay in a hot spring until my skin melts to cleanse myself of the shame.” His voice was dead serious.

“I’m no perfect princess either. Even with my life outside the Permafrost combined, I’d want to join you,” I said.

“Our only saving grace is there’s no hot springs here, not like farther north.” A wistful look passed over his face.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “Once I expressed a similar sentiment to Diaval, and she politely informed me that she can mimic the pain you feel during certain deaths without it actually killing you. I think she was trying to be helpful.”

“Diaval terrifies me,” Soren said, no hint of a joke in his voice.

“Diaval terrifies everyone who isn’t Diaval,” I responded.

“You look tense. Need some help with that before we go?” he offered. I sighed. I didn’t really want to get up. Soren had the same reluctant look on his face.

“What?” I said. “I’m not—”

Soren’s fingers curled into my neck and upward toward my head with the force of his thumbs. Pain blazed down from my neck to my spine. Ready to yell at him for whatever he did, instead, I found the blood flow increasing in my head and releasing the headache I had had for days.

He did the same thing with my shoulders. Pressing on knots of muscle, not too gently, causing me to cuss a few times when he did so, but the knot disappeared, with only smooth muscles left behind.