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I squirmed. “I don’t want to think about my mortality.”

“Near immortality,” he corrected.

That was exactly what I didn’t want to call it. If I couldn’t die, I couldn’t continue on to the next life with Drak. My hand absently slipped into my pocket and tightened around Drak’s soul. Once he came back, he’d be human, mortal, and I wouldn’t die with him. “Let me ask you this, and then I’d like to try foresight again. Odin aged like the other gods, right?”

He nodded. “And so will you. You’re still in a human body, after all, but your role keeps you alive.”

That at least gave me some measure of comfort. Drak wouldn’t grow old without me. “And we’re sure I can’t die?” It was silly to ask, knowing I’d assumed Odin’s role, including the prophecies that lay before him. “Why do I still feel so much pain?”

“You can die at the World’s End.”

“You know what I mean.”

He sucked air through his teeth. Tendrils of peppered hair with a shock of salty-white fell into his eyes. “You’re bound to the prophecy and the power of a god, but you still have the body of a human and, as Soren will tell you, likely still a human soul.”

Soren.

A thief and a Valkyrie’s son.

Hel, I didn’t know what that meant, but if I tried to understand him, I could reach him. When I used the foresight on Stasia, I used the memories I had of her combined with the details of her personality. Like her innocent face that’d fool anyone into thinking she hadn’t offered herself up to be a servant in a vampire’s court and then planned to steal the throne before I came and ruined everything. Before I saw through her eyes into what lay ahead, I observed and collected countless tiny aspects of Stasia's identity, like building a mental archive of her very being.

And this came naturally with my mother, since I was connected to her through blood and memory, having once been in her womb. It seemed only natural that I didn’t have to try very hard to use foresight with her.

But Soren was a mystery, and someone I’d never even seen, much less met. A thief and a Valkyrie’s son, and what else?

“What does Soren love?” I asked.

“Stealing,” Axel laughed without joy.

“What about another person? Was he ever in love? What does he want?”

He shrugged, which looked awkward on Axel. Too casual. “He craved adventure and cared for little other than getting into trouble. He never found much interest in others unless they, too, enjoyed breaking laws.”

“I’m not sure I can focus on something as vague as adventure.”

“He does like to paint,” he said. “Or he did. Seeing his paintings in one of the old servants’ tunnels might help you. He does lavish murals of dying flowers.”

“Paintings?” I’d seen them, the roses, but I didn’t remember the details because the tunnel was too dim and I’d rarely used it. “Describe them to me.”

Axel spoke as he offered me the blindfold. I quickly tied it around my eyes, plunging myself into darkness, and listened to his descriptions until he finally fell silent, letting me focus.

I pushed into the foresight, but all I saw was the blurry, red backs of my eyelids. My head ached and muscles tensed tighter, yanking me out of focus each time I registered a dull pulse between my temples or the twinge at the clench of my jaw. The harder I tried, the further from focus I became.

Nothing came to my foresight for Soren. This wasn’t going to work.

And with my mother’s rapid breaths breaking my concentration and the thought of her sickly skin, I only wanted it to work more. She’d survive the journey to the shore, but for how much longer now? I didn’t dare look into her future. That way lay death, and I wasn’t ready to grieve. What I'd seen through Stasia's eyes and by using my foresight, I witnessed my mother descending closer to death once we arrived in Vylheim. If our navigation proved accurate, that was just half a day away.

I only had half a day ‌to master this foresight because as soon as we disembarked, I intended to rush to Mara’s Keep. I let this plan melt away and sharpened my mind on everything Axel had shared about Soren, adding the very little Drak had told me about him.

The moment I pinned my thoughts on Soren and what Drak knew of him, the crystal burned in my pocket. Drak was trying to tell me something, but this only further distracted me.

Without taking my blindfold off, I called for Axel. “Tell me more about Soren.”

He shared his most treasured memories with his son, personality quirks, and how Soren loved art and painting, but even with these extra details, nothing about my foresight’s connection with him changed. Nothing came of the attempts because I was still too new at this to connect with a stranger.

I told myself this because I had to believe it. If I allowed myself to consider this a failure, my nerves would thin, and ‌anxious thoughts would betray any focus I had managed. I couldn’t fall into the loop, so I pulled Drak’s soul from my pocket and hunched over it in my lap, curling around it and begging Drak to calm me. But this was only a piece of him, and with my mother’s ragged breathing, I couldn’t rein in my nerves.

What if I’m never strong enough to reach Soren? What if I can’t get to the castle’s healers or find the next shard of Drak’s soul? Thoughts spiraled, dragging me under with a fervor even Drukna did not rival. Disturbing words echoed in my head, and I was too tired to stave them off.