Chapter Fourteen

Fourteen

The sound echoed through the trees, distorted. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Sylvia’s hand flew to the saber at her hip. “Stay behind me.”

Lorelei almost resented the implication that she needed protecting. But with that cry ringing out in the deepening night, she didn’t feel much acid behind the insult readied on her tongue. Swallowing it back down, she followed Sylvia into the ash grove. They clambered over the roots and pushed through the curtains of leaves. Lorelei did her best not to shudder at the phantom sensation of tiny hands pulling at her hair and the hem of her coat.

The scream came tearing through the woods again, louder this time.

“It sounds like it’s coming from above us.” Sylvia pointed at a rocky outcropping. A cascade of water tumbled off its lip and into a narrow stream. “Up there.”

A thicket of pine loomed nearly five meters above them. There was no clear path forward; they’d have to climb. With no hesitation, Sylvia hoisted herself up, fitting her boots and hands into small grooves in the rockface. Lorelei kept up as best she could, but the stone was treacherously slick beneath her fingers—and as cold as death. When she looked up, Sylvia had already scaled the cliff. It hardly seemed fair.

Lorelei reached for another handhold, a sharp edge of rock jutting out less than a meter above her. But just as she transferred her weight, it slipped free. It plummeted and clattered to the ground below. Lorelei swore, pressing herself as flat as she could as she struggled to find purchase. Terror had made her woozy, and her fingers ached.

“Lorelei!”

Sylvia’s outstretched hand appeared before her. For a moment, Lorelei was stunned at how easily she reached for her. Shifting her balance, Lorelei clasped her forearm and grunted as Sylvia yanked her bodily onto solid ground.

Sylvia flopped onto her back, one hand draped over the labored rise and fall of her chest. Her face was flushed with effort. “Saints, you’re heavier than you look.”

“I’m carrying a full bag!”

The scream came again, frayed with desperation. Without a word, they shot to their feet and darted into the underbrush. As Lorelei shoved through heavy boughs of pine, she could hear the sound of churning water. She felt imprisoned in that alpdrücke dream: water slipping into her mouth like cold fingers, hands closing around her wrists. She stumbled out into a clearing. Stretched out before them was a shallow pond. At the center, someone thrashed in the water.

No, some thing .

At their approach, the movement stopped suddenly. The figure slowly turned toward them. Its mouth was twisted into a merry, wicked grin. Each tooth gleamed, deadly sharp and as yellowed as a sun-bleached bone. It wore a long, hooded cloak that concealed its body and most of its face from view. The garment was roughly woven from reeds and algae, and it glittered with bright-blue sea glass and smooth river stones. As the creature moved, they clattered together, hypnotizingly musical. It made a little sweeping gesture, as if to say ta-da .

Sylvia groaned. “Of course.”

“What is that thing?” Lorelei asked flatly.

“A schellenrock,” she said. “They enjoy making mischief. It must’ve heard us coming and hoped to sidetrack us.”

The schellenrock seemed to wilt a little under Lorelei’s impassive glare. “If that was meant to be funny, I’m not laughing.”

“Please behave,” Sylvia hissed. “They’re very easily offended. You don’t want to see it angry.”

“We don’t have time—”

She saw red as Sylvia held up a placating hand. “It may be able to help us. Give me just a moment.”

She picked her way slowly toward the pond, stepping carefully around fat white mushrooms. With the same tenderness she’d reserved for the village children, she crouched at the edge of the water and dipped a finger into it. The surface rippled at her touch.

“Good afternoon, sir,” she said. “We don’t mean to intrude in your territory. We’re looking for a friend. A man, just a bit taller than me but shorter than her. Brown hair. Wears a vasculum…” Here, she paused and amended, “A tube around his neck. He is always shoving plants into it. Have you seen him pass by?”

The schellenrock seemed unimpressed. From within the recesses of its hood, a set of citrine-yellow eyes blinked slowly. It inspected the hem of its cloak, twirling this way and that as if it were infinitely more interesting than whatever Sylvia was saying. Lorelei wanted to strangle it for its insolence. But Sylvia smiled almost fondly and withdrew a single silver bell from her pocket.

“Fair enough. Well, I brought this bell all the way from Ruhigburg.” For effect, she rattled it. It chimed sweetly in the eerie quiet of the woods. “I think this would make a fetching addition to your cloak.”

The schellenrock waded closer, its eyes shining with covetous longing.

“You may have it,” Sylvia continued, curling her fingers around the bell and clasping it to her heart, “ if you would be so kind as to point us in the right direction.”

It nodded eagerly. Sylvia beamed, holding her palm flat again. Lorelei could only think of how she’d tricked the alp and threatened it for the information she wanted. But Sylvia allowed the schellenrock to reach out with its small, clawed hands and pocket the bell. It jangled merrily, and although Lorelei could not see the creature’s face, an almost childlike happiness radiated from it. It shook the bell as Sylvia had, but the ringing was muffled and discordant from how tightly it clung to it. Her headache pounded in time with the sound.

“Well?” Lorelei demanded.

The schellenrock looked at her, then Sylvia. Slowly, it turned and pointed toward the summit. The tallest peak pierced the sky like a lance. Lorelei thought of the legend the old woman had told. Tomorrow night, when the moon was full, it would scrape against that jagged rock and spill its blood into the alpine lake below.

The Ursprung was nearly within reach.

“You’ve seen him, then?” Sylvia asked. “He’s alive?”

“For now.” Its voice brushed the shell of Lorelei’s ear, as light as dandelion seeds carried on the wind. “The women of the woods have had their fun with him. I heard them laughing about it.”

“The eschenfrau?” Sylvia asked. Lorelei tried to ignore the unease in her tone. When the schellenrock said nothing, Sylvia pressed, “Do you know how to reach the summit?”

It hesitated. With a sigh, Sylvia reached into her pocket and placed another bell on the shoreline. The schellenrock snatched it, and it disappeared into the dark recesses of its cloak. “Follow this stream until you come to a blade. When you cross its edge, you will be there.”

“Speak plainly,” Lorelei snapped. “What does that mean?”

But as soon as she took a step forward, the schellenrock slipped back beneath the water. A ripple passed over the surface, and then the lake lay as still as a mirror. It reflected the glitter of stars overhead and the grinning shape of the pines.

“You frightened it,” Sylvia said sourly.

“It was spouting nonsense! With those directions, we will get even more lost.”

“If you have any other ideas…”

Lorelei did not. And so, for nearly two hours, they followed the schellenrock’s stream like a thread unspooled through a labyrinth. The altitude increased sharply along this path, and by the time the sun set, Lorelei’s breaths came shorter and nausea had begun to set in. She had read about mountain sickness before in travel narratives, but she hadn’t expected it to hit her so brutally. The headache was a consistent throb in her temples. She did not say anything until a veil of snow draped itself over the mountainside.

“We should stop for the night,” Lorelei wheezed.

“Agreed.” Sylvia crossed her arms against the chill. The snowfall clung to her pale eyelashes and gathered in her hair. “It’s probably best that we share a tent tonight.” Lorelei must’ve made a repulsed face, for Sylvia drew herself up taller with indignation. “Unless, of course, you would prefer to freeze.”

“No,” Lorelei said through gritted teeth. “That sounds reasonable. Of course.”

While Sylvia pitched their tent, Lorelei struggled to coax a fire to life. When they finished eating a meager meal by firelight, Sylvia banked the coals and crawled into the tent. Lorelei reluctantly followed. Inside, it was cramped but surprisingly cozy. A strange lantern burned in the corner, throwing warm light against the walls, and the floor was piled with furs.

“It’s so small.” Lorelei hadn’t intended it as an insult, but her words came out sharply all the same.

Sylvia glowered, her ears burning red as she unfastened the straps on her sleeping bag. “Well, I’m sorry it is not to your standards, but this is all we have.”

Lorelei opened the glass door of the lantern and blew. The flame danced over the oil, but it did not extinguish. She tried again—and again—to the same fruitless result. Sylvia watched this unfold with some amusement but said nothing. Lorelei could only conclude it was some work of fairy magic that would lose its charm if explained.

At least it was useful.

In a huff, Lorelei lay down beside her. Sylvia squirmed away, putting as much space between them as possible, and Lorelei tried not to feel stung. She shouldn’t be surprised Sylvia would treat her like some sharp thing she couldn’t touch, or a venomous snake that would strike given the chance. She had long since destroyed any camaraderie that could exist between them.

As she settled in, she sank deeper into Sylvia’s ridiculous collection of furs. Once, Lorelei might have mocked her for it, but at the moment she was incredibly grateful for the warmth. Her fingers were half-frozen inside her gloves, but already some life was beginning to return to them. No matter how she adjusted her position, she could not keep their shoulders from brushing together. It was nearly unbearable. The only mercy was the heat of Sylvia’s body bleeding into her.

As Lorelei rolled onto her side, it struck her how vulnerable Sylvia looked like this. In the darkness, her skin was as pale and luminous as frost. Her snowy eyelashes brushed against her cheekbone, and her hair flowed around them like moonlit water. All it would take was a twitch of her hand to twist her finger around one of Sylvia’s curls.

As if she sensed Lorelei’s thoughts, Sylvia opened her eyes. Lorelei’s breath almost caught at how they seemed to glow. She’d surely be ensorcelled if she looked into them a moment longer, and dear God, what was happening to her?

“Lorelei?” Sylvia’s voice was terribly small when she asked, “Why do you hate me?”

I don’t hate you—just what you represent. It surprised her, how easily the answer came to her. But when she opened her mouth, she could not bring herself to say it. Hatred was far too uncomplicated an emotion for Sylvia von Wolff.

“I am no threat to you any longer. You have the position you so desperately wanted,” Sylvia persisted. “But even if you didn’t, it never needed to be this way. Ziegler played us against each other.”

The tight feeling in her chest gave way to grief. “Don’t you dare. You were the one who made this a competition. For years, you were always underfoot, always trying to upstage me. As if you ever needed anything but your name.”

Sylvia’s lips parted. Anger darkened her cheeks. “The von Wolff name means something, yes. It’s the name of Anja von Wolff: the ruler of a rebellious province, a woman always waiting for her opportunity to strike.”

Lorelei was startled into silence. She’d heard Sylvia speak exasperatedly about her mother before, but this was the first time she’d sounded almost as though she hated her.

“She is the real reason I enlisted in Wilhelm’s army.” Her voice trembled. “What else could I have done? When I first began visiting Ruhigburg as a child, people watched me as though I would turn on them like a rabid dog.”

“No one thinks that of you anymore,” Lorelei said, surprised at her own gentleness.

“Because I have spent my entire life trying to shed that association. But I cannot falter even for a moment, especially when I take over from my mother. You saw what the sentiment was in that village. They are primed for rebellion! I will always have to prove myself.”

Lorelei certainly knew what it was like to feel as though she was the ambassador for— No. She would not feel sorry for Sylvia von Wolff.

“I’m so terribly sorry about that.” Lorelei sneered. “I’m sure I made for a difficult obstacle to overcome.”

“I’m so tired of your self-pity!” Sylvia took a deep breath. “And I’m so tired of fighting you. Ziegler could have made enough room for the both of us.”

An instinctive shudder tore through Lorelei. They didn’t bury her soon enough. They hardly buried her at all. As soon as they turned back, Ziegler’s ghost would be there, waiting for her on the waters of the Vereist. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

“I speak the truth of the dead. Death is maybe the only time we get to speak the truth about a person. She wasn’t always good. She used us both.”

Lorelei closed her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Sylvia made a soft, frustrated sound. “Then how can I ever hope to make amends with you?”

She leveled Sylvia with a flat, impassive stare. “You can’t. Our worlds are too far apart.”

“You’re so dramatic. Do you know that?”

Lorelei laughed bitterly. Coming from her , that was rich. “You have no ability for self-reflection. Let me help you, then. Can you honestly say that speech you gave the other day was harmless?”

“They’re just stories, Lorelei. Saint Bruno likely didn’t exist, but of course my family likes it because—”

“Ah,” Lorelei said. “So you do understand. Stories are tools.”

“Precisely! Ones that hurt, yes, but ones that could finally bring people together.” Sylvia’s eyes blazed in the darkness. “You weren’t there on the front lines. You did not grow up in a land eager for revolt. You have never seen a day of war. If we can make people understand that we’re not so different, then Brunnestaad’s soil will never be drenched with blood again.”

“Tell me a story, then.”

Sylvia seemed startled by the harshness in her voice and the abrupt change of topic. “Very well, then. Which one? Ah, all right.” She cleared her throat. “Back in the days when wishes still held power, there was a girl with a red cloak—”

“Not that one. What about ‘The Bright Sun Brings All to Light’?”

Sylvia’s expression shuttered.

Feeling vindicated, Lorelei said, “What about ‘The Yeva in Thorns’?”

“I don’t want to tell those,” Sylvia said, almost too quietly to hear.

“And do you think I do? Do you know how many times, how many ways, I have heard stories like those? Those stories are who you are, just as much as your red-cloaked girl. I have transcribed them, illustrated them, and sent them to the publisher. I’ve done this to myself in the hope I might have a chance to do something good.”

For the first time in her life, Sylvia didn’t have anything to say. She looked utterly overwhelmed, as though she had not thought Lorelei capable of such passion. But Lorelei was too far gone to hold back now.

“I have no place in the Brunnestaad you’re building.” Her voice trembled. “We Yevani are rootless. We belong in the city, flourishing there like vermin. We’re nothing but a blight on this pastoral fantasy your silly little travelogues are helping create. That is why I despise you. We would never have been friends. We will never be friends. There is no crossing this gulf between us.”

“I don’t hate you,” Sylvia whispered.

Somehow that of all things wrecked her. Raggedly, she whispered, “Liar.”

Sylvia smiled wanly. “I thought I was a terrible liar.”

Lorelei rolled onto her back again and let out a humorless note of laughter. “You say I know nothing of war, but I do. I’ve fought one for years. Death haunts me, and I don’t know how to banish it.”

“Death happens. There’s nothing you have done to invite it and nothing you can do to banish it.”

Lorelei stared up at the canvas roof of their tent. Branches scraped against it as the wind gnashed its teeth.

“I have found,” Sylvia continued tentatively, “that the only thing that closed those wounds was forgiving myself. I can’t bring them back, and neither can you. The only thing you can do now is live.”

Sylvia would never understand. When you were Yevanisch, you were alive for the dead as much as you were for the living.

Sylvia sighed quietly and turned onto her side. Back-to-back, Lorelei felt an ocean of distance filling the bare centimenters between them. She listened to the unevenness of Sylvia’s breathing, the whispering laughter of the eschenfrau in their trees.

Over and over again, she repeated to herself, I hate you , I hate you, I hate you. Like an incantation—like a fairy tale—repetition might make it true.

In her dreams, she slipped into cold, dark waters. Her hair and her coat billowed behind her. Her lungs burned. And all around her, suspended, were the pale, haunted faces of the people she had abandoned in their final moments. The people whose souls she had damned to walk the earth forever, barred from the afterlife.

Lorelei opened her eyes to a smothering heat. For a moment, everything around her was hazy, as if she were watching the world from beneath a deep pool of water. Her hair was damp against her temples.

Drowning again.

But then she registered the fur blanket soft against her cheek. The canvas of the tent around her. And then: Sylvia, draped over her like some over-affectionate squid.

It took all her strength not to thrash free. She’d been a child the last time anyone had slept in her bed. Rahel used to crawl into her room whenever a nightmare struck. It wasn’t wholly unpleasant, except for the fact that Sylvia was a veritable furnace .

Lorelei became too aware of her own breathing, her quickening pulse. This was its own kind of torment, knowing how it felt to have Sylvia pressed against her. It was a cruel vision of something not meant for her.

“Von Wolff,” she said quietly.

Sylvia only made a sleepy noise.

“ Von Wolff ,” she repeated, more urgently. “Wake up.”

Sylvia stirred. When her eyes opened, they were twin full moons bare inches from Lorelei’s face. She blinked once, then jerked back with a soft shout of surprise. “Ah! Lorelei! I’m so sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Lorelei muttered. “Just…Get off me.”

She disentangled herself, taking her hypnotic warmth with her, and said, “Well. I suppose that is one way to ensure neither of us freeze in the night.”

“Thank you for your quick thinking,” Lorelei said dryly.

Reluctantly, she crawled out of the tent. Her boots crunched in the snow that had fallen overnight. She was still cloaked in Sylvia’s residual warmth, but the cold nipped at her exposed skin. And now that she had risen, the insistent pressure behind her eyes returned in full force. Every breath felt shallow, as though someone were trying to smother her, and she felt exhausted despite the full night’s rest.

The sooner they got off this godforsaken mountain, the better.

It occurred to her that she had no idea what time it was. The snow glittered beneath some cold light, but she saw no sign of the sun in the eerie purple sky. For that matter, she had no idea where they were anymore. Nothing looked familiar. As she drank in her surroundings, she became more and more certain that the trees had uprooted and rearranged themselves while they slept. The path they’d been traveling had been stitched shut like a tear in fabric.

Sylvia emerged only a moment later. “I don’t like it here.”

That, at least, they could agree on.

After they struck camp, they continued to follow the schellenrock’s stream. The terrain only grew more brutal—and the air colder. Every now and again, Lorelei swore she felt snow seep into her boots, and when she lifted her foot to inspect the damage, a small hole had begun to wear through the sole. That promised frostbite eventually. Assuming, of course, she didn’t keel over from altitude sickness before they reached the summit. Her pace had slowed to a crawl, and her every breath rattled feebly in her chest.

“I thought it would feel different,” Sylvia said absently.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” Sylvia adjusted the straps of her pack with a preoccupied expression. “Is this really where the Ursprung is? This place is certainly striking. But I expected something more…”

“Sublime?” Lorelei offered.

“Precisely!” She looked pleased. “If this is truly the origin of all magic in the world, don’t you think it should look more, well…magical?”

“I’m sorry you’re disappointed.” Lorelei tipped her head. Right now, the sky was perfectly clear: a thin, airy purple threaded with distant stars like a needlepoint canvas. “The perpetual twilight isn’t enough for you? Perhaps you would have preferred a ray of light piercing the heavens? The face of God himself peering through the clouds?”

“Oh, leave it,” Sylvia muttered. “Perhaps we need to be closer to the summit.” Then, she nodded, as if agreeing with her own assessment.

Lorelei was too exhausted to continue to prod at her—especially when her final conversation with Ziegler popped into her head. Are you sure?

No, Ziegler had assured Lorelei of her certainty. Lorelei refused to pick open this wound again. Ziegler had been meticulous with her research—and the legend they’d heard in town all but corroborated it. It would be a cruel twist of fate if someone had murdered her over a false conclusion. It was unthinkable that she’d died for nothing.

As they rounded a bend in the stream, a vista stretched out before them. Lorelei stopped dead in her tracks. Soaring above her was the mountain’s serrated peak, crowned with snow. It seemed to her both close enough to touch and a thousand worlds away.

She turned back toward the path just as a gust of wind shook the snow loose from the trees. Through the shroud of white, Lorelei could make out a faint smudged shape in the distance. She squinted, and blink by blink, a lean-to materialized. Her heart swelled with such hope, she was certain it had to be another hallucination.

“Do you see that?”

Sylvia gasped. “Yes! I think it’s—”

Before she even finished her sentence, Sylvia took off running. Lorelei followed close behind her, then immediately regretted it when her lungs seized. She doubled over to catch her breath, a headache pounding behind her eyes.

“Saints, Lorelei.” Sylvia circled back to her. Her tone was exasperated, but Lorelei did not miss the glimmer of concern in her eyes. “Are you drinking enough? Hydration is very important at this height, you know.”

“Yes,” Lorelei groused. “I’m aware.”

Together, they trudged onward. The cold wind sliced through Lorelei’s coat, and frost gathered on her eyelashes. Exhaustion weighed down her every step, but she kept her focus trained on the lean-to—and the smoke rising from a dying campfire. Her blood sang with determination. If she could save just one person, perhaps it would be enough.

“Ludwig!” Sylvia called. The wind did its best to snatch her voice away. It tore mercilessly at the canvas tarp.

No motion came from within.

They exchanged a look. Lorelei dropped to her knees and crawled inside. Within, wrapped in no fewer than four coats, was Ludwig. His face was a horrible ghostly white, and his parted lips had turned blue. Her entire being recoiled from the sight.

Why are you doing this to me? Why do I survive when people die all around me?

There was no sense to be made of something so senseless, so—

No, she reminded herself sharply. There was nothing in this universe that was senseless, especially not violence.

She forced herself to look at him. A faint breath whistled out from his nose, ruffling the overlong hair in his face. Thank God . She glanced over her shoulder at Sylvia.

“He’s alive,” Lorelei said, once she swallowed down the emotion lodged in her throat.

Sylvia let out a sob of relief, crawling in next to her. She slipped off her gloves and rested them on his cheeks. Ludwig groaned. She sucked in a breath and brushed the hair back from his forehead. His blanched skin shone with sweat. “He’s running a fever.”

“Lorelei? Sylvia?” Ludwig’s voice was barely a rasp. With each rattling breath he took, Lorelei felt that low-banked hope within her settle into ashes. It sounded like he was drowning on dry land.

Sylvia rummaged through her bag and procured a waterskin. She held it to his lips and carefully helped him drink. After a few moments, she twisted the cap back on and turned to Lorelei with a troubled expression. “He’s been cursed.”

“Cursed?”

Sylvia turned over the palm of his hand and pulled back his sleeve. The tracery of veins in his wrist was green and thick against the pressure of her thumb. Roots, Lorelei realized after a moment. Her stomach twisted nauseatingly. Now that she was looking at him closely, she noticed the bark grafted onto his skin. It crept out of his collar and advanced determinedly toward his throat.

“How did this happen?”

“This is eschenfrau sickness. He must’ve angered them somehow.” Sylvia began pawing through his bag. She pulled out a thin strip of pale gray bark: a piece of an ash tree.

“He must have collected it as a sample. That fool.”

“I’m not so sure.” Sylvia turned the bark over in her hands. “Ludwig is more cautious than that. Besides, he would have put it in his vasculum if he wanted to preserve it.”

Dread settled heavily within her at what Sylvia implied. “But if someone else planted it on him, they’d be sick as well, wouldn’t they?”

“Unless the eschenfrau gave it freely. They do love mischief.”

Lorelei’s mood darkened. Ludwig wasn’t dead—not yet—but superstition lingered. Best not to discuss this where he could hear it. “Come outside.”

Outside, snow continued to fall, but she could hardly feel the cold. She drew it around herself like armor. When Sylvia spoke again, her voice trembled with fury. “Why would they do this to him? It would have been kinder to kill him outright.”

“Someone didn’t want him to find a way to the summit. They’re trying to delay us again,” Lorelei said lowly. “We pushed on after Ziegler was murdered, but they knew we couldn’t continue if he was this ill.”

When they returned to camp, there would be no waiting for the king’s paltry justice. She would kill Heike herself. She must’ve been wearing a particularly murderous expression because Sylvia tentatively rested her hand on her shoulder. “Lorelei…”

She shrugged her off. “Stay here and watch him. I’m going to find the Ursprung.”

“Oh, no, you’re not! He’ll die if he’s out in the cold much longer, and I can’t carry him back by myself.”

“Look at him.” Lorelei gestured helplessly at Ludwig’s crumpled form. “He’s not going to make it either way.”

“You don’t know that! We owe it to him to try.”

They were suddenly very close together. Lorelei had not realized she’d moved, but it was practically instinct now to use her height to her advantage. And yet, Sylvia did not budge. She looked as though she was making her last stand before some horrid fairy-tale creature. Lorelei hated it. She stepped closer, until Sylvia’s head had to tip back to hold her gaze. Until she could feel the heat of Sylvia’s breath against her lips. Until her vision was filled with nothing but Sylvia’s defiant, blazing glory. She had half a mind to grab her chin and…

Sylvia made a strange noise, but her silver eyes were molten, almost expectant.

Lorelei had to remind herself that Sylvia could not, in fact, read her thoughts. She put some distance between them and drew a slow breath in an effort to compose herself. It felt impossible to get enough air.

“I understand your concern,” she said. “However, if we don’t find the Ursprung now, we won’t get another opportunity. They’ll try to stop us again.”

Sylvia did not look entirely convinced.

“And perhaps it’s our best chance at saving him. None of the tales agree on what it’s capable of, but if all magic flows from it, it’s possible that all of them are correct. Perhaps the Ursprung has healing properties.”

“I…I don’t know if that syllogism holds,” Sylvia said, disoriented.

“We owe it to him to try,” Lorelei replied, unable to resist one final jab. “I’ll be fine alone.”

“But you have no idea what you’re up against!” Sylvia protested. “And if you don’t return—”

“All the better for you, I suppose.”

Sylvia rubbed her temples. “You stubborn fool. I’m coming with you.”