They felt time slipping through our fingers, responded to it without acknowledging it out loud. Even as Torden and I recycled the same conversation when we were alone—I can’t stay; you can’t go. I want to be together; I want to be with you—he never said a word to Anya or his brothers.

Monday morning, Torden pulled me aside after breakfast, eyes bright. “No training today. Get your”—he glanced around and lowered his voice—“your radio. Meet me at the stables.”

I seized his arm, hands trembling. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

I was going to talk to my godmother.

We rode on separate horses this time, Torden on Gullfaxi, me on Skeithbrimir, racing, racing over five miles of rocky cliffs, beneath five miles of blue sky, toward the mouth of the fjord.

A tower rose in the distance.

It was a massive thing, metallic, like a pen poised to scrawl messages across the sky itself. “You found one,” I breathed.

“Turns out the old forge wasn’t just a forge.” Torden jumped down from Gullfaxi’s back. “I found it reviewing the renovation plans. We’re going to turn it into a second stronghold.”

I climbed out of the saddle and crept to the edge of the cliff. Thousands of wooden planks descended in a curving staircase down to the Lysefjord, the drop as long as the tower was high.

“How close do you think we need to be?” I swallowed hard and turned, my neck bending back to take in the tower’s height. “Do I—have to climb it?”

“No, no, I don’t think so.” Torden guided me underneath the massive structure. “If I’m right, the extension at the top of the tower does just what your antenna does, only it can transmit and receive a signal over much greater distances.”

I unfolded the antenna. Radio in one hand, book in the other, I tilted my head back again, squinting against the sun. Bars and beams segmented the blue sky overhead in geometric patterns as intricate as the veins on a leaf.

I tuned the radio’s frequency carefully to 3.44 and switched it on.

“Godmother?” My voice was hoarse. “Godmother Al—”

“Selah?”

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I hadn’t expected her to respond so quickly.

“Selah, sweet girl, is that you?” My godmother’s voice was bright as the sky above, damp with tears.

I put a hand to my mouth to stifle a sob.

She was there. My godmother was really there, waiting for me, all the way across the world.

Torden wrapped an arm around me until I was in control again.

“Yes, ma’am,” I choked.

“Oh, Selah. Oh, my baby girl. Where are you?”

“I’m in Norge. How are things?” I blurted. “How is he?”

“He—” She hesitated.

“Godmother?”