Yeah, a whole seventeen years—but I keep that to myself. Aoife tsks, sounding as unimpressed as I feel, and loops her arm over Morgan’s shoulders in a loving, protective gesture I’ve never received from my own older sibling.

“Hurry up then,” I snap.

Toivo gives me a withering glance before he kneels in front of the tonttukivi and lifts his hands. Slowly he removes one glove and then the other. The stones glow a little brighter when he raises his bare fingers, wiggling them through the light.

He frowns.

“What’s wrong?”

“The energy is so weak. I thought there’d be more power out here. Everything feels so depleted,” Toivo says, and a tiny bell rings in my mind, reminding me of Emmi’s lecture in Thaumaturgy.

Toivo closes his eyes as he lays his hands on the tonttukivi.

Red threads wind up his fingers like throbbing veins and disappear under the sleeves of his jacket. For a moment, he becomes a supernova before the light washes out of him and back into the stones. He exhales and hunches over.

Again, the wind whips snow into a furious flurry and I shield my eyes from the stinging ice. Toivo breathes heavily as thin streams of blood trickle out of his nose.

“You okay?” I ask, surprised—and maybe a little disappointed—he hasn’t keeled over.

“I’m fine.” He staggers to his feet and wipes the blood away with the back of his hand. There doesn’t appear to be any more.

“Whoa,” Morgan says, and I look up expecting to find another archway leading into a summer forest.

An archway appears, but it’s made of white marble laced with silver. This time, there’s no summer and no inviting woodland. There’s only a windswept steppe crusted in snow and punctuated by twisted trees.

“Taika—” Toivo starts, but I don’t let him finish.

“No way, we’re all going. Morgan and I got this far on our own. We’re going too.”

“Whatever, I don’t have the energy to argue with you.” He admits defeat.

Aoife takes the first step across the threshold, her feet kicking up the snow like sand. We follow in single file with Toivo bringing up the rear.

It’s much colder on the other side of the archway. Above us, the sky doesn’t offer any familiar constellations or pretty displays of northern lights, and there’s no moon to help light our way.

There isn’t even a path, only tufts of grass marking some sort of track leading through the fields of white. We follow our feet, the plain gradually giving way to scraggly woodland and, finally, clustered forest.

“Oh damn, that’s hard-core.” Morgan’s footsteps crunch to a stop behind me.

I swivel my head to follow his gaze and my breath locks up inside my chest.