Guided by Ars Conjunctionis, I quickly spotted my rescuees and swooped down to hover at Zoe's shoulder level. As soon as she glimpsed me out of the corner of her eye, Ynez pressed her lips into a grim line, quite pointedly turned her back, and forged onward. (Said forging might have impressed me more if it hadn't been quite so slow. Even Sy's best tortoise impersonation moved faster.)

Ignoring her just as emphatically, I asked her companion, "Want a ride?"

Before Zoe could even open her mouth, Ynez tossed back defiantly over her shoulder, "No. We're doing just fine." Right then, the peacock manifested between her legs, with the predictably lamentable effect on her grandeur.

Folding my arms across my chest, I coolly watched them flail about in a tangle of woolen skirts and turquoise feathers and then tumble into a snowbank. "You're going the wrong way, sister dear," I observed after a miniature avalanche finally silenced the squawking.

"Marina!" Zoe scolded. "That is not the way to show sisterly love!" Ever the heroine of the hour, she waded through the snow, grabbed Ynez around the waist, and heaved. Out popped my sister, followed by an extremely indignant, frosty-white peacock.

I glowered right back at all three of them. "Are you coming or not?"

That was as far as I got before the peacock attacked.

"No!" Ynez shouted over its screeching. "I told you we're doing just fine!"

Waving my arms and swiping at the bird as it pecked savagely at my eyes, I yelled back, "You are so not doing just fine! You are so incredibly lost!"

In the end, Zoe had to lay a restraining hand on Ynez's shoulder. "Forbearance is a virtue," she soothed. "We must forgive those who trespass against us." Personally, I didn't think the Church had sibling spats in mind when it formulated that particular doctrine, but I was too busy fending off Pride Run Amok to object. Zoe's next sentence proved that she was on my side anyway. "Soror Ynez," she pointed out gently, "the sun is already setting. I think we should accept Marina's offer."

In an abrupt whirl, the peacock darted back to Ynez, perched on her left arm (the one holding the spear), and glared at me venomously with its beady little eyes. Unimpressed, I scowled fiercely back down at it.

Torn between pride on the one hand (literally) and Zoe on the other, Ynez dithered and wasted more precious daylight. Finally she said, "You should ride back with her, Soror Zoe. I'm in the mood for a walk."

Alone and lost in the woods in the snow in the middle of winter in Norway?

"Don't be ridi- " I started to scold, but Zoe hastily cut me off. "Soror Ynez, if you wish to walk, then I will accompany you. The temperature will continue to drop as night falls, though." As if to underscore her argument, a gust of wind threw open her crimson cloak, and she shivered dramatically before she could wrap the edges around herself again.

"Oh, fine!" For the sake of her church sister, Ynez surrendered with very poor grace.

Turning her head so only I could see, Zoe gave me the tiniest wink.

Scowling ferociously, Ynez grabbed fistfuls of cloak and skirts, yanked them away from her ankles, and pushed through the snow to the wind disk. In a slight concession to practicality, I lowered it by a foot so Zoe could boost her up. As if to prove that windchill didn't bother her at all, Ynez defiantly planted herself right at the front with her legs dangling off the edge, her spear across her knees, and one arm draped over her peacock. With a mental shrug, I sat down directly behind her as the wind disk zoomed off. If she wanted to be a windbreak, she could be a windbreak. I wasn't going to complain.

"What made you come for us?" Zoe asked curiously, huddling down beside me.

Without looking at her, I admitted, "I scried on you. I knew how long the return trip should take."

Gratitude warred with consternation on Zoe's face. "Marina, confessions are supposed to be private — "

"You honestly think I have time to eavesdrop on your sob stories?"

Rather than squabble with her pagan savior, Zoe grudgingly composed herself in the name of Christian forbearance. "I appreciate your concern," she proclaimed stiffly. "I was beginning to fear that Soror Ynez would catch her death of a cold."

Speaking of disease — "So what was the report from Sweden?" I blurted out, curiosity overwhelming pride.

Zoe's eyes widened, as if she couldn't believe that Ynez hadn't apprised me of such weighty matters. Well, that made two of us. "Uh," she floundered, dropping the stern demeanor and looking our age for a moment. "Perhaps...that is for your Prima to say."

"I assume that if she knows, and you know, and everyone who lives in the entire southern half of Sweden knows, then it can't exactly be classified. So just tell me!"

Still Zoe hesitated, obviously wondering if Ynez had withheld the information for a reason. "Well," she hedged, "it was a letter from the Domus Magna in Normandy. They'd received reports that Persephone and the Plague had breached the Æsir's defenses."

"Then why didn't we go immediately? Why aren't we on our way now?"

"The Primus Magnus believed that Odin and his cabal had things well in hand. Soror Ynez elected to monitor the situation for the time being."

Hurt swept through me. There was nothing sensitive in that report, nothing that merited such secrecy. "So why didn't she tell me?" I pressed.

All of a sudden, a derelict barn below us acquired magnetic attraction for Zoe. "Did we pass that on the way to church?" she inquired, pretending to wrack her memory. "I'm not sure I remember it…."

I refused to let her dodge my question so easily. "No, you don't remember it because you didn't come this way."

A twist of Zoe's mouth accused, Creepy voyeur.

Creepy, lifesaving voyeur. "So what was so secret about that report?" I reiterated.

"Oh, well, you know, we thought — that is, Soror Ynez thought — "

No longer bothering to hide her eavesdropping, Ynez yelled back over her shoulder, "I thought that if you knew, it would ruin your visit with Thoren's family!"

That broke my concentration.

With a lurch, the wind disk plummeted towards the treetops. Ynez shrieked and clutched the edge — and Zoe shrieked and clutched Ynez — before I could wrestle the Effect back under control. Once we were gliding along again, I squeaked, "You didn't tell me because you didn't want to ruin my vacation?"

Without turning, she squared her shoulders. "Yes."

And here I'd been questioning her faith in me! All that came to mind was a small "Oh."

"Yes," Zoe said. "Quite."

And that basically summed everything up.

Several minutes later, I mumbled, "That was — sweet of you." Then, in an even lower voice — "I'm sorry about losing my temper in the bookstore."

Equally discomfited, Ynez admitted to the air in front of her, "You were right. As Secunda, you had the right to know." A chagrined silence, and then her true confession: "I — I guess I was mad about Thoren."

"Mmm." Almost not wanting to know the answer, I asked tentatively, "Do you still hate him that much?"

A flutter of her cloak suggested a shrug (or possibly just an extra-strong gust of wind). "No, not really, I guess. He did what he had to do. And goodness knows we've accrued our share of collateral damage these past few years. But it's hard when it's personal, you know?"

Yes, I did know. Eight years ago, I'd been playing in the orphanage yard when Ghallim and Avaris carried in a tiny, skeletal girl, too weak even to cry, and I'd never forgotten the haunted look in her eyes. "I'm sorry," I repeated sincerely. "I never planned to get involved with Thoren. In any way." In fact, on her behalf I'd shunned him for years. "It just — sort of happened. And — and — he really is a good man, Ynez."

The wind carried her sigh to my ears. "I know," she muttered in such a low voice that I barely heard it. "I know." Meeting my eyes for the first time in days, she proffered a rueful half-smile. "Give me a bit more time, Marina. Or what is it he always calls you? 'Hjartað mitt.' Is that a nickname or something? Should I call you that too?"

It meant "my heart," and he'd first used it that as he lay dying deep in the caves of the Hearth. "Umm, no. You really shouldn't call me that." Giddy with relief, I snickered, "Unless you want people to accuse us of incest."

"Oh!" Ynez turned as scarlet as Zoe's cloak before bursting into laughter. "Oh, no, that really wouldn't be appropriate!"

At soon as she scooted back to sit beside me, the wind blasted into my face and practically ripped my hood off. "To be honest, I'm not sure I like Thoren much anymore either!" I joked, raising my voice over the howl. "What madman invites people to visit Norway in the middle of winter?"

Clutching at her own hood, Ynez shouted back more practically, "Can you bend up the front of the wind disk? So the wind doesn't hit us head-on?"

"I can do better!" With stiff, clumsy fingers, I carved a fireplace so I could raise a bubble of warm air around the three of us.

Except —

Except I botched.

A perfect sphere of warm air enveloped the wind disk and thawed the three of us — and then exploded outward. Before I had time to react, its impact battered the trees on all sides, whipped their trunks back and forth, and then hurtled on and on across the countryside. As far as the eye could see, packed snow softened and snow banks collapsed. Little pattering noises surrounded us as water poured off branches to pool on the ground, which rapidly turned into slush.

"Oh no," I wailed, hurling the carving away from me. (It landed with a loud splat.) "Oh no, oh no, oh no! Ynez, help! What do I do now?"

"I — I don't know," she said blankly. "Use Ars Essentiae to cool down the air again? No, no, that wouldn't fix the snow…."

Before we could make everything even worse, Zoe yelled at us, "It's a Paradox backlash! The first lesson we learn in House Quaesitor is that using magic on a Paradox backlash only makes it worse! The best thing — the only thing — we can do now is wait it out."

Much as I hated to admit it, she was absolutely correct. I hated backlashes precisely because of how helpless they made me feel. "Maybe — maybe it won't get too much worse?" I pleaded, not believing it for an instant. "Maybe it's just this patch of forest? Who cares if there's snow or water in the middle of a forest, right? Maybe no one else will even notice?"

Neither Ynez nor Zoe responded.

As the wind disk carried us to the edge of town, we saw that the hot air had beaten us home, and the snow on all the rooftops was dissolving into rivulets that cascaded off the eaves. Townspeople had rushed from their houses to gape around them, completely confused by the arrival of springtime in December. As we sailed by overhead, they pointed and shouted.

Forget Persephone and the Plague. Thoren was going to kill me.

"Don't worry, I won't let him kill you," Ynez said firmly, and I realized that I'd spoken aloud. "Anyway, he's used to your backlashes by now."

You could anticipate something without necessarily liking it, though. Before I even identified Signy's roof, I spotted Thoren standing in the middle of the front yard, arms folded across his chest, scowling ferociously up at us. "Marina!" he bellowed. "Come down here right this instant!"

A craven urge to just keep flying until we reached Athens struck me, but Ynez nodded grimly at me, and I swallowed hard and reluctantly lowered the disk to waist height (Ynez's waist height) to let the others off first. Then I took my time unraveling the Effect before I turned to face him.

"What have you done?" Thoren roared, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. "And don't even try to tell me that you had nothing to do with it. This just reeks of your Resonance!"

Now that he mentioned it, the snow wasn't melting uniformly but in patches reminiscent of ink splotches.

"I — I — " I stammered. "It was cold and windy and — and — I just wanted to warm us — "

"With magic? How many times must I tell you, Marina, that magic is serious! It's not something you toy with for party tricks!"

Bravely, Ynez stepped up beside me and started to declare, "Magister, Zoe and I got lost coming back from church. Marina came to rescue us — "

"No," he cut her off flatly. "Ynez, there is a time and place for you to pull rank, but this is not it. This is not House Tytalus business. If you and Zoe will excuse me, I am having a private discussion with my girlfriend."

As private a discussion as anyone could have while screaming his head off in front of half the village! Personally, I thought that rescuing cabalmates, including my Prima, counted as official business, not to mention a perfectly reasonable use of Ars Essentiae. Ynez looked as if she were about to make just that argument, but Zoe seized her arm and marched her up the steps and into the house.

"Marina," Thoren said, straining to control his anger, "when we arrived, I made one request of you. One. Which was to refrain from abusing magic. You knew this town is full of Sleepers. And yet you flew through it with no regard for how many people saw you!"

I couldn't resist muttering, "Yeah, like all fifty of them."

"One Sleeper witness is enough to cost extra Paradox," he said tightly. "Or did that reckless Criamoni who called herself your mother never teach you that?"

"Of course she did!" I defended Astera hotly. It was I who had chosen to follow in her footsteps and ignore the price.

"Then you have no excuse for your selfish disregard for everyone around you! Just look what you've done!" he shouted, losing his temper entirely and gesturing at the water raining from the eaves and gushing down the sides of the street. "Marina, you know how I feel about unnecessary magic! Yet you've been abusing Artes Essentiae, Vis, Fati, and Conjunctionis ever since we arrived." He ticked them off without hesitation. "No, don't try to deny it. I know every Effect you've done. I know how much Paradox you've been accumulating. And yet you kept going until you triggered a backlash right in the middle of my hometown! Are you happy now?"

By now we'd attracted a small audience of neighbors. Silently they congregated just outside the fence, staring at us with a mixture of censure and awe.

I didn't even know what to say. It was Loki's idea, crossed my mind, but I resolutely bit it back. After all, the trickster only planted the suggestion in my head. It was I who had chosen to implement it. "I — I — "

At last, Karina flew out the front door and sloshed across the yard to us. Grabbing Thoren's arm, she hissed urgently, "Not in public, Thoren! If you want to yell at your — at Marina, do it in private."

"Oh, I'm finished here," he replied coldly, yanking his arm free of her grasp. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find the chieftain to report this." Without looking at me, he stalked off down the street, the crowd parting like the Red Sea to let him pass.

Frantically, I whipped my head back and forth between his stiff back and Karina's grim face, wondering if I should run after him to beg for forgiveness, or stay and justify myself to his sister, who already deemed me too young and too reckless. In the end, faced with an unbearable choice, I took the third option.

If Paradox wanted to plunge us into spring months early, it should at least do the requisite spring cleaning. Odd's Books remained just as dusty, cobwebby, and dark as I'd left it. Clambering onto a low bookcase by the front window, I peeked out miserably at the glistening street. Yes, my backlash had melted all the snow, but as soon as the heat bubble passed, the ambient temperature plummeted again — and now all that water was freezing into ice. Cries of alarm pierced the window as townspeople desperately skidded their way about their errands.

"When do you think it will snow again?" "It would take a really strong storm to blanket all this ice — " "Look out!"

A thud, a shriek, and a heartrending wail. "My arm!"

"Get a healer! I can see the bone — "

Another scream and thump as a woman instinctively turned to run, lost her balance on the glassy street, and toppled over.

"Her leg — " "Careful, don't jostle it!" "Get the healer! Go carefully!"

And more shouts, blending into one loud roar in my ears. It was my fault. All of this was my fault. And it was — oh gods — Karina and the children had mentioned Yule, hadn't they? The Northerners' great midwinter festival, during which all feasted and made merry? The one I'd just ruined for everyone in this swathe of Norway? It would be so much easier if, as I'd facetiously suggested, one of the gods had really cursed the land! Then I could perform a ritual to shunt the ice elsewhere or even summon a blizzard, but right now I couldn't — shouldn't — do a single thing. Detesting every second of my useless existence, I wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my face in my skirt, beseeching all the gods I no longer believed in to erase this backlash.

Not until the last, cobalt glow had faded from the sky did I remember that enhancing my dark vision would exemplify the foolhardiness that had caused all this trouble in the first place. Working purely by touch, I scoured the cabinets for a lamp, a candle, anything. As a spirit, Loki dispensed with such prosaic concerns, so the only light source available was a half-used candle, probably discarded by the previous owner. Lighting the precious stub via entirely mundane means took an eternity, but I persisted until a tiny flame flickered to life.

Cupping it in my hands, I paced restlessly through the maze of bookcases and, as a testament to my agitation, practically crashed into Loki's magical stone. In the wavering candlelight, the tangled loops galloped around the border, the flower-decked woman shot smoke from her fingertips, the tall man lifted his hand towards a hammer that arched through the sky like a comet — wait a minute.

The scene had changed again.

Sinking to my knees in front of the stone, I stared at it intently, counting off the seconds. "One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand…."

A hundred twenty "thousands" later, the figures moved. The smoke — which could only be the Plague — blasted dozens of tentacles straight at Thor, while an elderly, one-eyed man cocked back his spear to hurl at Persephone. Then they all froze again.

Almost certainly the stone showed snapshots of the battle in southern Sweden. If only I dared risk an Ars Vis scan to confirm it! (Although, if I dared risk any magic, I could cut out Loki-the-middleman and scry on the battlefield myself.)

Two more minutes passed with agonizing slowness. Then stone grated and contorted, and a familiar man materialized on the battlefield. In one hand he gripped a spear that looked exactly like Ynez's, and by his side a humongous triple-headed hound bayed from all three throats. That man — it couldn't be — Thanos? No, no, absolutely not. For all the respect Ynez showed the Dowager King of Hades, she'd never loan him her regalia.

Loki, then, "fixing" things?

The stone shifted again. Cloak flaring dramatically behind him, the trickster stood poised between the Æsir and Persephone and held out a hand to Thanos' erstwhile lover.

Another interminable wait.

Persephone's hand rose to clasp Loki's. About their figures twined the Plague. In the background, Thor and Odin watched warily, hammer and spear at the ready.

"It's impressive, isn't it?"

Ynez's voice came from behind me, making me jump. So engrossed was I that I'd completely missed her footsteps. Sinking down beside me and spreading her skirts decorously over her feet, she set a lantern at the foot of the stone. From behind, a soft, feathery embrace enveloped us, and I jerked around to find Ynez's love, an oversized white swan, warming us with its wings. Looking slightly chagrined by this very open display of affection, my sister feigned utter fascination with the carvings.

Even less inclined than she to soppy scenes of sororal devotion, I mimicked her scrutiny. "Are they true?"

She nodded, rummaging around in her pocket. "Yes, albeit delayed. I suspect that Loki relays the signal through the Umbra, which retards the timing." After four years with Thoren, technical jargon had invaded even Ynez's vocabulary. "The events depicted on the stone happened yesterday." She extended her olive branch — an opened letter, its cracked seal imprinted with the stag of House Tytalus. "Here. This just arrived from the Domus Magna."

Nodding my thanks, I scanned its contents. In his angular, jabbing script, the Primus Magnus had written that right at the climax of the battle, just as Thor swung his hammer towards Persephone's head and she sprayed Plague at him, Thanos burst out of thin air in an explosion that blasted all the gods off their feet. Approaching a dazed Persephone, he helped her up and, according to eyewitnesses, whispered "tenderly" in her ear. Whatever he said worked. Hand in hand, with the Plague darting around them like an excited toddler, they flew (literally) from the battlefield. I supposed that if Loki were willing to transform into a mare to lure off some poor giant's stallion, he wouldn't scruple to impersonate Thanos.

There was only one problem: Astera had stolen Thanos' original avatar and all his powers — and Persephone knew it. "Wait," I objected, frowning. "Wasn't she suspicious when he showed up decked out in full Hadean panoply?"

Ynez shrugged. "Who knows? It's Loki. I'm sure he invented a perfectly plausible story for how Thanos regained control of the underworld from a mere eighteen-year-old girl." She rolled her eyes elaborately, the epitome of an ordinary eighteen-year-old girl. "Anyway, I thought you'd want to know."

The postscript at the end of the letter caught my eye. The trio was last seen flying towards Denmark. "They went south?"

"It appears to be the case." Ynez's lips pursed into a thin line as we processed the implications.

"Great." Leave it to Loki to lead Persephone and the Plague off my doorstep and back towards my home. Still, south meant away from Norway and this icy nightmare of my own creation. "So — we need to go intercept them, right?" I couldn't quite keep the hopefulness out of my voice, and Ynez frowned at me, looking remarkably like Zoe.

"Are you trying to run away?" she asked sternly, sounding like Thoren now.

"Erm, no?" I scrambled for an excuse. "It's just that it's kind of my fault that Persephone escaped Hades in the first place, so I feel a responsibility to, um, mitigate her damage…." I trailed off. Why bother lying to my sister?

"Look," she said more gently, and the swan held us tighter, "obviously I don't have any personal experience with romance — " I snorted — "but I did grow up in a very very large family." Her voice faltered for a moment before she continued determinedly, "Families are complicated, especially when you include the in-laws. Not everyone will get along all the time. Not everyone will even like everyone else. Um. I guess what I'm trying to say is that running away from Thoren's family won't help."

I sighed. I did know that — in theory, anyway — and I refrained from reminding her that I also had a "very very large" (and very very very complicated) family. But she was right that I knew little about in-law relationships. Hesitantly, I asked, "Have you seen Thoren? Is he — is he still angry?"

Thoren himself answered from the door, making both of us jump. (Without wards up, we were too easy to ambush.) "Yes, and no." Holding a bright lantern, he emerged from behind a bookcase and stood for a moment, gazing down at us. As soon as it saw him, Ynez's swan vanished with a pop. "Prima, may I speak to Marina, or am I interrupting House business?" he inquired courteously, with not the slightest hint of sarcasm.

Ynez eyed him suspiciously anyway, parsing his tone and filtering it through her own biases. At length, she was forced to concede that he was sincere. Rising with the aid of her spear, she smoothed out her cloak and nodded at him. "I'll see you back at the house then," she told me.

As she swept grandly past Thoren, I called after her, "Oh — hey, Ynez?" She paused mid-sweep and glanced back at me. "If you leave your cloak in our room, I can hem it tonight."

"Thanks, Marina."

Alone for the first time in days, Thoren and I regarded each other silently for a long moment, he towering over me, me squinting in the glare of his lantern, and neither of us knowing what to say or where to begin.

"The ice — " I croaked. "How — what — "

"Two women and three children have broken bones, half a dozen other townspeople sprained their ankles or wrists, and practically everyone is bruised," he reeled off grimly.

I swallowed hard. "Oh," I said in a tiny voice. "Is there anything I can do? To help?"

Eyes wide with alarm, he whipped his head back and forth. "No!" Then, in a calmer voice — "I already wrote to Karina's husband to request a healer." As the Bjornaer trained in not only Ars Animae but also mundane medicine, they were uniquely equipped to cope with my victims. "House Tytalus will pay for it, of course," he added, entirely unnecessarily.

Feeling too guilty for indignation, I nodded distractedly. "Thoren, I — I really am sorry. I didn't mean to — I know this trip was, I mean, is important to you — "

"Such eloquence," he muttered, but he sat down beside me at last. "Wait a minute — what's that?" Casting aside his own injunctions against magic, he pulled out his wand of seeing — which I'd carved to replace the Focus he lost in the Hearth battle — and performed a methodical Ars Vis scan.

While he frowned over the hopelessly messy Effects, I explained, "We're pretty sure that it's Loki's Wonder for monitoring his tricks."

"Loki?"

"Er, yes. Odd — you know, the new bookseller? — he's really Loki. This is one of his boltholes."

Shaking his head, Thoren sat back and muttered, "Of course he's around. And I suppose all of this — " he pointed out the window at the glistening ice — "was his doing?"

A craven urge to blame the obvious scapegoat surged within me, but I forced it back. "No," I admitted. "He may have tipped the balance, but he wasn't exactly creating my Paradox from scratch."

Thoren smiled suddenly, and only then did I realize he already knew. "You're growing up, Marina," he said, sounding so patronizing that I glared at him. "What? It's true!"

And this was the problem with dating someone who'd known you since you were a gawky child. Still, in the name of reconciliation, I let it slide. "Did Ynez tell you about Sweden?"

"Yes, she did. Just now," he replied curtly. "Marina, while I appreciate the sentiment that led the two of you to keep it from me, in the future I would prefer to be informed. I am entirely capable of assessing such situations — and making difficult choices when necessary."

Of course I knew that. It was why I'd kept it from him in the first place — to shield him from that choice. But I could empathize with his annoyance, and I nodded vigorously. "I promise." Casting about for a lighter conversational topic, I inquired, "So how is the sorting going? Of the trunks?"

When he tensed, I realized too late that he thought I was jealous about the love letters. (Which I was. Just a little. But that wasn't what I'd meant.) Still, he gave me the benefit of a doubt and answered the spoken question. "It's going well, actually. I only have two more trunks to go through." After wavering for a moment, he opted to answer my unspoken question too. "When Inga died, her parents returned everything I'd given her, including all of my letters. At the time, I wasn't in the right frame of mind, so to speak, to deal with any of that, and so I shoved them into trunks along with my other possessions and shipped them home. And then I fled Oslo for Athens."

"And it's taken you until now to be able to face those memories," I interpreted softly.

He looked genuinely startled. "What? No, of course not. I made my peace with all of that years ago. I told you when you found me in Tartarus that Inga and I were just friends. But — " he groped for the proper words, straining to make me understand, as if he were explaining a particularly knotty Ars Vis Effect. "But — wasn't it difficult for you and Ynez when the two of you rebuilt the orphanage and sorted through the belongings that Astera and the godlings left behind? You'd made your peace with their loss, and you knew they'd achieved a centuries'-old goal, but — it still wasn't easy, was it?"

"Oh!" Something about that analogy clicked, and the worries that had plagued me since I first read his diary finally began to fade.

"Anyway, I'm returning all the letters to Inga." Seeing the half-gratified, half-dismayed expression on my face, he hastily reassured me, "Not personally! Ynez will do it."

Try as I might, I couldn't quite suppress a grin.

"Kari was right," he muttered to himself. "You really are very young."

All my relief promptly vanished. How his family felt about me was an even more pressing, more real problem, wasn't it? Gathering my thoughts, I asked coldly, needling his pride as I knew exactly how to, "So what will you do now? Will you let your mother and sister find you a nice, conventional, Sleeper maiden to marry and beget children by? Will you build a nice little farmstead and lead a nice, conventional, sedentary family life?"

Fortunately for both of us, Thoren declined my bait. With emphatic patience, he reminded me, "I'm a grown man, Marina. I can make and have made my own decisions for years. Decades, even. Anyway, my family knows perfectly well that mages are significantly more liberal than the general population. What you and I do is our business, and I don't intend to ask anyone else's opinion, much less permission."

"Not even your mother's?" I asked dubiously. For all her laissez-faire approach towards parenting, Astera had occasionally expressed definite opinions on what we should do (keep our promises) and should not do (lie to her about anything — ever). Woe to any orphan who crossed her then!

"Not even my mother's." His voice was firm.

"But — " I couldn't even begin to imagine scorning Astera's values after she'd sheltered me and clothed me and fed me and taught me for sixteen years. True, she'd betrayed me in the end, but I still couldn't bring myself to repudiate her. In fact, what were Ynez and I doing now but carrying out her final wish — that we fix her mistakes, and do better than she had?

Perhaps reading my mind, Thoren reminded me, "The circumstances of my childhood were different from yours, Marina. I haven't lived under my mother's roof since I was seven, nor been supported by her financially since I was fifteen. I suppose that gave me a certain...independence."

"But — isn't it uncomfortable for you, knowing that your entire family disapproves of — " I faltered, not wanting to say "of us" just in case he agreed.

He only shrugged. "I highly doubt that my brother-in-law or any of the children care. Of course I'd prefer that my mother and sister accept us as we are, but I can live with their disapproval." When I remained silent, fidgeting with the handle of my pocketknife, he reached out and took my hand. "I'm not saying that I oppose the idea of marriage, my heart. It just seems somehow irrelevant after everything we've gone through together. But if it will set your mind at ease, then perhaps — "

"No!" I yelped, yanking my hand from his in shock. "Absolutely not!"

Looking just slightly hurt, he faked a smile. "Well, that seems clear enough then."

I hastened to reassure him. "I'm not saying I never want to get married. It's just that if we do it now, everyone will say that it's because we caved in to social pressure. No, no, no, and no again! If we get married, it will be because we want to!"

"What if we did want to now?" he pointed out quite logically. "Would you delay it just to spite everyone else?"

"But-we-don't-want-to," I responded quickly, tripping over my words in my haste. Then I checked his expression. "Right?"

Thoren didn't answer immediately. "Maybe someday," he hedged. Before I could interrogate him, he abruptly changed the subject. "My heart, I noticed some sheets of parchment in our room. All over it, in fact. They seem to form one extremely long poem about how to beguile the, er, object of your affection into falling in love with you. Do I want to know...?"

"Oh!" In my dash to rescue Ynez and Zoe from the clutches of Norwegian night, I'd completely forgotten to put away the manuscript. Smirking, I explained, "That's for Ynez. So maybe she'll finally figure out what's going on with Zoe and do something about it."

Having spent almost as much time observing Zoe's blushes, Thoren only raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure Ynez rather than Zoe is the proper recipient?"

He made an excellent argument — Zoe did seem blissfully ignorant of her own Church-prohibited proclivities, and genuinely convinced that her relationship with Ynez was a very typical Catholic sisterhood. Certainly she'd benefit from Ovid's instruction. However, I had an even better rebuttal. "Zoe would burn me at the stake!"

"You? A mistress of Ars Essentiae?" he replied drily. "Odin forfend."

Sputtering with laughter, I smacked his arm lightly and inquired innocently, "But I thought you disapproved of magic? Especially in front of crowds?"

He sighed in (mostly) mock exasperation. "Marina…." Then he shook his head ruefully, deliberately sidestepping another squabble. "I suppose I should just be grateful that you didn't make me a copy of the Ars Amatoria as well. I'll take that as a vote of confidence in my relationship skills."

After dropping me smack in the middle of his censorious family and then neglecting me to catalogue old love letters, I wasn't so sure. Still, I didn't want to waste more time fighting, especially not after he'd just sort-of-maybe proposed marriage. Slowly and deliberately moving the lamp onto a bookshelf, deploying seductiveness that Ovid himself would have lauded, I climbed into Thoren's lap and straddled him. "Or maybe you're just so bad at it that I thought you needed a personal tutorial?" I suggested sweetly.

"That is also a distinct possibility," he agreed gravely.

Tangled in each other's arms, the two of us stayed in the bookstore until the hard, unheated floorboards became unbearable. Sighing, I reclaimed my limbs and sat up, running my fingers through my hair. "I suppose we should get back before dinner," I said reluctantly. No need to flaunt Signy's house rules just because I could. Plus the children had raved so much about the Yule banquet that Cly had sworn to abandon me if I missed this opportunity to observe "a tradition that is such an integral part of Norse culture and history."

Less enthused about his cultural heritage, Thoren didn't bother to open his eyes. "Yes, probably. This is the first time we've really talked since we got here, though. It's nice."

"We have the rest of our lives to talk. We do not have the rest of our lives to get to your mother's Yule feast."

Hearing me scramble to my feet and shake out my skirts, Thoren opened one eye and sighed heavily. "Well, if you insist. I suppose you'll want to change before dinner too."

"Change?" I asked, puzzled. "Whatever for?"

"Because your entire back is streaked with dirt and cobwebs?"

"What?" I yelped, craning my head over my shoulder. "Thoren," I wailed, "what should I do? Everyone will know!"

Laughing, he promised, "I'll distract them while you sneak upstairs."

With exaggerated stealth that was completely ruined by my giggling and his sheepish grin, we tiptoed and skidded our way through by-now deserted streets until we could see the back of his mother's house. Hiding behind a neighbor's fence and peering with melodramatic wariness around the corner, Thoren pointed at a small side door and mouthed, "Give me two minutes to enter through the front door, and then use that."

It was just like our missions against the gods, except that we couldn't use Ynez's mind links or my stealth wards. The extra challenge was actually fun.

"Affirmative," I mouthed back, and with a final smirk, he marched intrepidly towards his distraction.

True to his word, in a minute and half, I heard him tramping up the front steps, and, another half-minute later, calling out cheerfully, "I'm home!"

That was my cue. Under cover the commotion from the children, I slipped into the house, dashed past a brightly lit kitchen filled with delicious smells, nearly startled a servant into dropping a stack of plates, and bolted up the back stairs two at a time. Flinging myself into our bedroom, I slammed the door shut and leaned against it, panting and giggling uncontrollably.

A light tap sounded behind me. I whirled and threw the door open. "Thoren, it worked — "

"Indeed, I'm sure my son believes it did." Signy's voice held a hint of amusement. "I suppose he doesn't realize that this house has been in the family for generations and that Eirik — his father — and I used to creep in and out that exact same side door when we were courting?"

"Ooooh." I turned bright red, then sputtered with laughter. "Oh, no. I — maybe we shouldn't tell him?"

Laying a package on the blanket and sitting down on the edge of the bed, Signy gave me a long, measuring look. I steeled myself to hear her say that I was irresponsible with my powers and had brought calamity to a tranquil Sleeper village with my recklessness, and that her son didn't need to associate with people like me.

But she surprised me. Instead of recriminations, what she remarked was this: "My son can be harsh. But I daresay you knew that already."

Unable to form any kind of coherent response, I merely gaped at her.

"I am not a mage, or even a Sleeper scholar of magic. I won't pretend to understand the intricacies of Paradox backlashes. I do, however, understand my son, and I have seen that you bring him happiness."

Happiness! She'd witnessed Thoren running around frantically trying to undo the damage from my actions, and she spoke of his happiness!

Seeing my dubious expression, she reiterated, "Yes, happiness. Marina, what did you think long-term relationships were like? There is love, of course, but there is also inevitably conflict. You just have to find a way to work through it."

"I thought you didn't like me," I blurted out, my tendency to say exactly the wrong thing resurfacing at the worst possible time. "Because I'm so different from Inga."

Exactly as Thoren would have, his mother raised her eyebrows. "And here I was expecting the demigod Secunda of House Tytalus, the daughter of Memory, the sister of the Muses, the cousin to the gods she has devoted her life to fighting, to have a little more confidence in herself. As he has made abundantly clear, you and Thoren are grown adults fully capable of making your own decisions. Why should my approval have anything to do with it?"

"I, I…," I floundered for a bit, struggling to articulate why it was so important that Thoren's family accept me beyond grudging tolerance. "You're right," I answered at last. "We are adults, and capable of making our own decisions...but I know that you and Karina and the children and everyone else in this town are important to him. I wouldn't want to cause him grief by forcing him to choose between us."

"Ah," she said, standing up and reflexively smoothing her dress. "I see." She hesitated for a moment. "We knew Inga for a long time, you see, ever since she and Thoren were children. It is difficult for me to pass judgment on how well suited the two of you are since he has given me no chance to get to know you. But... from what I've seen, you do make him happy — present circumstances excepted — and the fact that you've been together for four years certainly speaks to a certain amount of compatibility. So, for what it's worth, you have my blessing." Regally, she sailed out of the room, but just before she closed the door behind her, she pointed at the window. "Take a look outside, Marina. Things aren't quite as bad you think." Then she was gone, leaving me stunned by how much her manner reminded me of Thoren's.

"Well?" prodded Cly. "Aren't you going to look?"

Nudging aside the curtain, I peered out into the darkness and found golden spheres of light whooshing along the icy roads. What in the world? After a few more minutes, my eyes adjusted fully and I realized that it was the townspeople — on ice skates. With infinite ingenuity, they'd found an entirely mundane way to cope with a magical fiasco.

In a soft, awed voice, Cly murmured, "Sleepers! No matter what mages throw at them, they can handle it."

Staring transfixed at the orbs of lamplight, completely and utterly humbled by human adaptability, I whispered through a lump in my throat, "Yes, yes, they can."

When I finally remembered to open the package Signy had left, I found thick woolen undergarments and socks, as well as a dress in much heavier fabric than anything I owned.