Hel narrowed her eye, and I held back a flinch at the way the rotting side of her face moved. “Hmm. We could do a trade. Direct blood for direct blood.” She pointed a finger at Rose who stood frozen to the spot when he realized what she meant.

Thank the gods no one here considered it. “No,” I said. “Rose is our friend and we won’t exchange a fully living being for the shade of another. That’s an unfair trade and I’m not willing to kill him so you can technically have his shade. No, you’ll give us a trial like you did Frigga.”

The goddess snorted in amusement. “You couldn’t handle any trial I gave you.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve handled quite a lot of things others expected to break me.”

She narrowed her eyes at me once more. “If you want to free a shade from its fate, then you yourself will have to give your fate up, blindly. I will let you have a trial, but only in time shall you know what I want you to do, only in time will you be able to complete your mission, and until then, your fate should hang in the balance like a fraying thread.”

“What do you want us to do?” Soren asked, but the goddess shook her head.

“Not ‘us,’” she said. “Her.” She pointed one crooked finger at me before beckoning me forward. Unease crawled through me like insects down my spine the closer I got to the roots of the world tree and the goddess of death herself. Looking down, I noticed the ground right below the roots crumbling away and leaving spots of dark nothingness in its pathway.

“Ginnugagap,” I whispered in awe below my breath at the darkness.

“So, you know what this is, then,” Hel said.

“Of course. I was raised on these tales,” I said. “As every human child was.”

“Then you know what it means when I tell you to jump into it,” Hel said, smiling a wicked smile. “Jump into the yawning grave and meet your fate inside of it.”