After eighteen straight hours in the Jeep, the ancient city by the sea came into view. From working in the archives, I’d learned of the claims that it was one of the oldest establishments in North America, dating back to the 1500s, and the stone walls and looming towers showed their age enough that it was believable.
It was dark when we got back to Merellä, so I didn’t get to see the citadel in its full glory—although the smell of the metropolis was definitely out in full force. The heady aroma of salty sea air, elk dung, fresh hay, rotting fruit, and flowers in bloom.
Security guards at the gates stopped us, doing a quick scan of our IDs and our papers, and then it was the winding dirt roads through the quaint village, all stone and tiny Tudor houses, practically built on top of each other. And finally we rounded the corner and I could see the carriage house and the staircase to the apartment above it.
The light at the top of the stairs had been left on for me, and I felt rather touched that Dagny had thought to do that.
Even before we got there, I could hear Brueger barking. As soon as we parked, Dagny opened the door, and the dog bolted down the stairs and practically leapt into Pan’s arms.
Pan laughed as Brueger slobbered and jumped all over him. “I wasn’t gone that long, buddy. But I missed you too.”
“If you’re expecting me to run down the stairs and greet you like that, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” Dagny said dryly, and she leaned on the railing of the landing at the top of the stairs.
“Aw, shucks,” I joked, and I unloaded my bags.
“How was your drive?” she asked.
“Long,” I said, and Pan immediately added, “Very long.”
“Are you coming up, Pan?” Dagny asked. “Or are you heading home?”
“I’m just so excited to get home and sleep in my own bed,” he said.
“Suit yourself. I made some lemon tea for Ulla and me to relax,” she said.
“Dang, Dags, you really are the best roommate.”
She rolled her eyes. “Hurry up. The neighbors are probably trying to sleep.”
Pan said his goodbyes—my arms were full with my bags, so I didn’t have to worry about navigating any possible hugs goodbye—and then he headed home, and I jogged up the stairs to my apartment.
Dagny poured me the aforementioned tea, and I sank into the lumpy couch. To help set a relaxing mood, she lit a few candles and a stick of incense. Her silver archery arrow hanging on the wall glinted in the candlelight.
She asked me about my trip, and I filled her in on the highlights—what we found out, Indu Mattison, the Kiruna Airport, meeting Queen Bodil, a little about Rikky, more about Bekk, and I even mentioned Drake.
The only thing I avoided telling her was anything within the realm of my flirtation with Pan. I didn’t even tell her that Rikky was his ex-girlfriend. I figured that if Dagny cared to know about it, she would ask.
“I never understood how their king died in a bar fight,” Dagny said after I finished telling her about my visit to the Ugly Vulture.
“He really did!” I insisted. “They’re even proud of it.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
I nodded emphatically. “They even had the ‘weapon’ that killed him on display. It was a big broken wine bottle.”
“Did he die saving a life or defending the kingdom’s honor or some such thing?” Dagny asked.
“No, they were fighting over dragons.”
She’d been taking a drink, and she nearly choked on it, stifling her laughter. “Dragons? Were they children too young to know that dragons aren’t real?”
“No, they were fully grown adults—I think—who probably drank way too much eldvatten,” I said, and she nodded in understanding at that.
“Well, I’m glad you made it back safe and sound.” Dagny smiled and held up her cup of tea, almost like she was toasting me. “With you and Hanna and Eliana gone, it’s been way too quiet around here. Even the dog was much cleaner and more civilized than you three.”
“How have things been here?” I propped my elbow on the back of the couch, leaning on it as I looked at her.
“Not that exciting, honestly. Elof has been focused on analyzing Eliana’s sample, but the whole thing has him baffled.”
“Has Elof ever seen any Älvolk blood samples?” I asked. “In real life or case studies?”
She shook her head. “No, he’s never found any concrete evidence of the Älvolk. The blood he’s taken from those who claim to be Älvolk only comes back regular troll mixtures—mostly Trylle and Omte, for some reason. But that could be because they were lying or because Älvolk blood is no different than troll blood or because the Älvolk don’t really exist.”
“I think they exist … I mean, right?” I asked. “But there isn’t real evidence…”
“That doesn’t mean anything either,” Dagny said. “Humans have been studying blood and DNA for decades. Trolls have only recently decided to really delve into troglecology and all that that entails. We’ve been able to piggyback on the humans’ research in a lot of areas, but since they don’t even believe we exist, they haven’t exactly been studying us or recording pertinent data.
“So,” she continued, “the reason we don’t know more about the Älvolk or their biology is because they’re good at hiding and we haven’t been looking for very long.”
“Basically, we don’t know anything because we don’t know anything?” I said.
She snapped her fingers. “Exactly.” She attempted an optimistic smile, but it looked strange and unnatural. “But thanks to folks like you, we will know more soon.”
“Glad to be of service.” I gave her a faux-salute. “Anyway, have you talked to Hanna lately?”
“She emails me approximately twelve times a day, even though I have repeatedly told her that I will only reply to one email per day, maximum.” Dagny sounded so offended and bewildered by it that I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “The most confounding thing is that she keeps sending me passages from these books she’s reading for me to analyze, as if I’m some type of literary scholar.”
“Really?” I asked in surprise. “She mostly talks to me about Eliana, and it’s a set of demands, with a few complaints about her horrible summer.”
“She does ask me about Eliana, and she frequently complains that her younger siblings are making her life more difficult,” Dagny said. “But then it quickly devolves into important quotes from the ‘research’ she’s doing to find Eliana.”
“What research?” I sat up straighter. “She hasn’t told me anything about that at all.”
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t. It sounds like she’s reading old fables that used to belong to her dad.”
“What?” I shook my head. “They had a lot of kids’ books there, but I didn’t see any ‘old’ fables there. And Finn definitely isn’t the type to be overly sentimental or into fairy tales.”
“I don’t know.” Dagny shrugged. “She said they were her dad’s, and they were mostly about Adlrivellir.”
And then it hit me—Hanna wasn’t talking about Finn; she meant her birth father, Nikolas. It’d been in her grandfather’s study, before Hanna had stowed away with me on my way to Merellä, that I had first learned of Jem-Kruk and Adlrivellir when I saw the book on the shelf.
That could explain why Hanna didn’t say anything to me about it. She had spent so much time trying to convince me that she didn’t care about Nikolas at all. And now she was digging through his belongings, trying to connect his past with the events of her present.
“Why does she think Adlrivellir is somehow connected to Eliana?” I asked.
“Something that Eliana told her once.” Dagny furrowed her brow as she tried to remember. “She was looking at the sky one afternoon, and Eliana asked why we only had one star in the sky. Hanna figured out she was talking about the sun, and that Eliana thought there should be three.
“It wasn’t until she got back home that she remembered reading about a land with three suns,” she went on. “Adlrivellir is a place from the old children’s fables, and now Hanna believes that that’s where Eliana is from.”
“Could she be right?” I asked.
Dagny shrugged. “Anything is possible. But I still don’t know where Adlrivellir is or how to get there. If it has three suns in the sky, I imagine it has to be quite far away.”