Over breakfast, Dagny had told me all about it, but she thought it was for the best. It gave her and Elof plenty of time to work on recovering their memories.

“Did you remember anything when the Ögonen tried the aural healing on you?” I had asked her, as I sipped lemon tea.

She shook her head. “Just flashes of the cell they held us in. Nothing more.”

“And you haven’t heard anything from Eliana?” I asked.

She arched her eyebrow—the one still healing—and winced slightly. “Have you?”

“No. I was just hoping.”

“I’m worried about her too,” Dagny said finally. “But she’s resilient.”

Dagny was Elof’s lab assistant, and they had gone back to working on the genealogical testing of the Inhemsk Project. While they had been gone, another docent and a Mästare had taken over testing the blood and comparing DNA.

“Are you ready for this?” Dagny asked as she laid her blood-drawing kit out on the counter beside me.

“Yeah, yeah.” I was sitting on the stool, trying to pretend that I wasn’t scared by the sight of the monstrous needle. Honestly, I would’ve classified it as a small metal tube. Needles were thin, petite, less aggressive.

Bryn was watching me with an amused gaze. When Dagny put on her gloves, snapping the latex against her wrist, I flinched, and Bryn laughed.

“I didn’t know you were afraid of needles,” she said.

I bristled. “I’m not afraid of them. I just don’t like them.”

Dagny continued the process—tying a tourniquet around my arm, and then probing with her fingers, looking for a good vein. Her brow furrowed as she searched, touching all down my inner arm.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“Not exactly.” She frowned. “Your skin feels . . . thicker. I think you have some type of scar tissue building up. They must’ve taken a lot of blood from you.”

“Is it safe to take more?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. You’ll be fine.” Dagny must’ve found a vein she liked, because she wiped down my skin with a cold alcohol swab. “Just look at Bryn, and if you faint, she’ll catch you.”

I took a deep breath and looked over at Bryn. She stood with her arms folded across her chest, and gave me a thin, encouraging smile.

“If you need a distraction, you should try singing that song that you’ve been going on about,” Bryn suggested.

“It’s finally out of my head, and now you wanna bring it back?” I cringed.

She shrugged. “It distracts you.”

“What song are you talking about?” Elof perked up. He sat across the island from me, resting his arms on the dark marble.

“She’s had this song in another language stuck in her head for a few days, but it stops when she’s in troll cities, so we think the cloaking magic interferes with it,” Bryn answered for me.