Jem moved, taking his arm from my shoulder, so he could face me more fully. His knee pressed against mine, and he took my hands in his. “You’re going through something, and no doubt the journey is treacherous at times. But you must remember that you are not alone, and you still get to decide where this journey ends.”

“But what if I don’t know where I want it to end?” I asked.

He smiled. “You’ll find the way as you go.”

A knock at the front door interrupted the moment, and Eliana bounced up from the couch and announced, “I’ll get it!”

I let go of Jem’s hand and moved toward the railing. “Eliana, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“But maybe it’s Elof or Hanna,” Eliana argued cheerily, and she never slowed as she threw open the front door.

“Holy shit, you’re back,” Pan said. I couldn’t see him yet, but he sounded shocked.

Eliana made a delighted noise before grabbing him and pulling him into a hug. As she embraced him, he looked over her shoulder, and when he spied me, sitting up in my bedroom with Jem, his expression faltered.

“What’s going on, Ulla?” he asked.

39

Risks

Pan leaned back against the counter, his hands beside him, his palms resting on the butcher-block with his fingers drumming along the edge. All the while that I’d been telling him about how Jem, Sumi, and Eliana came to be here—with Jem expounding occasionally and Eliana interjecting whenever she felt like it—Pan’s expression had only contracted: his eyebrows pinching and his full lips pressing into an anxious frown.

He’d come over to check on me and invite me to brunch, since we hadn’t seen each other since we’d gotten back to Merellä. Instead he was getting everything dumped on him, so I understood his growing unease.

Jem and I stood across from him in the small kitchen. Eliana was in the living room, practicing an exercise dance that Sumi had taught her.

“Sumi is an Älvolk, right?” Pan asked when we’d gotten to the end, and he looked to Jem for confirmation, who nodded. “Does she know why they stole so much of Ulla’s blood?”

“We don’t know exactly what they’re doing with it, but we think that her unique parentage makes her tolerate it well, so they took as much as they could,” Jem said.

“Unique parentage?” Pan echoed, and looked at me in surprise. “You know who your parents are?”

“Yeah, it all just came together,” I said sheepishly. “Thor Elak and Senka.”

“Thor?” His eyes widened. “The Omte King?”

I nodded. “Elof did a familial match with Furston.”

“Wait,” Eliana said, and stopped her dance exercise. “Did you say Senka is your mother? But isn’t she my mother?”