“Not yet,” Dagny said quickly. “It’d be a waste of time trying to convince them of something they might never believe, and if they do, there is the unfortunate likelihood that they would overreact and bomb all the kingdoms.”

Pan sighed. “I want to argue with you but I can’t.”

“Then we should make some calls so we can see Amalie and Ragnall,” Dagny said.

“We should get off the roof, and then figure it out.” I hugged my arms around me, but it wasn’t the cold that drove me off the Mimirin. As I turned and walked toward the spiral staircases, I could still feel the eyes of the Ögonen on me.

Pan used his key to let us into the Inhemsk Project offices downstairs, and we used the landlines to make calls. It took nearly an hour of scrambling and calling around, but Dagny finally managed to get Ragnall’s assistant on the phone.

“Thank you,” she kept repeating as Pan and I expectantly watched her finish up her call. “The good news is that Ragnall’s agreed to a meeting in—” She paused to check her watch. “—in exactly thirty-nine minutes.”

“What’s the bad news?” I asked.

“He’s willing to meet with only Ulla,” she said.

I leaned back. “What? Why?”

“That seems strange, doesn’t it?” Pan stood beside me, his hands on his hips.

“His assistant said he doesn’t want to deal with a whole gaggle of us on a Sunday morning, and that he’d previously met with Ulla.” She shrugged. “Make of it what you will.”

“The important thing is he’s meeting with one of us soon, and I need to make it count,” I said. “What can I do to convince him to take this seriously?”

We spent the next half hour discussing different ways to approach the topic, things to highlight, phrasing to avoid to keep me from sounding like a maniac. All the prep work we did helped little in actually helping me feel prepared, though.

I went to the bathroom to freshen up. My makeup had smudged from all the crying, and when I reapplied my eyeliner, my hands were still shaking. I felt sick to my stomach, and I wasn’t sure I was up for any of this.

But time was running out, and someone had to do something. If that someone had to be me, then so be it. I would get it done.

I went up to Ragnall’s office alone, with Dagny and Pan waiting in the Inhemsk office until I came back down.