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“And I love you, Selma. Forever.”

“Always,” I breathed. “Always and forever.”

I moved my hips in rhythm with hers. I was close to climaxing just from watching her, from feeling her drip down my hand. She reached back and pressed her hand between my legs on the outside of my pants, rubbing gently. That was all it took, and I came, pressing my sleeve against my mouth. Lilja bent down and moved faster as she kissed me, and I swallowed her cry when she tightened around my fingers.

I held her tightly to me as she caught her breath with her forehead on my shoulder.

“This wasn’t the last time,” I said with a kiss on her temple. “There’ll be many more.”

She pushed herself up so she could look at me. “You truly believe that?”

“I do. Don’t you?”

She regarded me, and I pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “Yes,” she said. “I think I do.”

“Good.”

We carried the folded blankets and furs down to the yard. The children of the farmer had come out and a girl of maybe twelve, the oldest of the bunch as far as I could tell, watched me hitch the horses to the sleigh. “Where are you going?” she asked.

I nodded up toward the peak of the mountain. “That way.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh no, you should never go up there.”

“Why not?”

“Elves live there. They steal children. They’ll pull you down underground with them.”

All my life I had thought those sort of stories were meant to keep children from falling into rivers and getting lost in deep woods. How foolish I had been.

“We’ll go around it, then,” I said. I didn’t like to lie, but I couldn’t put the idea into the girl’s head that maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as she had been told. Alfrun was a monster.

Helena and Alma returned, Helena with two loaves of bread and Alma with a pitcher of beer and four cups. We drank the beer, and I paid a boy of about ten two öre to take the empty pitcher and cups back to its owner, and then we were ready to go.

Lilja and I sat on the bench with Helena and Alma in the back as we left the village behind. The track—because it could hardly be called a road anymore—sloped upward and soon we were on the mountain. Alfrun’s mountain.

“It feels eerie, doesn’t it?” Helena said.

“It’s so quiet,” Alma agreed.

They were both right. Despite the low trees and gnarled bushes that dotted the mountainside, there were no birds here. The snow bore no signs of paw prints either.

“The animals sense the evil,” Alma said.

The vegetation grew sparser as we ascended. The track had turned to nothing, and I led us around dark outcrops of rock. The stone of the mountain was nearly black. The horses were working hard, their breath like clouds in the cold air.

“There’s an animal,” Alma said and pointed ahead at a crow perched on a boulder. It was watching us with its bead of an eye.

“That’s no animal,” Lilja said. “It’s Vemund. He’s been watching us for days.”

“He’s a shape-shifter?” Helena asked.

“Yes. He prefers to fly, and crows are so common you hardly notice them watching you.”

A chill ran up my spine as I studied the bird. There was something un-beast-like about the way it tilted its head, in the glint of that little black eye. The crow took flight, disappearing upward toward the peak.

Next to me, Lilja shivered. “He’s on his way to report to Alfrun. She’ll find us soon.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Helena said. “To talk to that elf hag.” Her tone was dry, and none of us could keep from laughing, not even Lilja.