I want to say I expected it.

  I didn't.

  Enderly was a nothing village at the edge of the valley — market square the size of a courtyard, a blacksmith, a temple, an inn. The kind of place you pass through. We were passing through.

  Then I saw him in the middle of the main street, arms crossed, reading a posted broadsheet like he was trying to solve it.

  I stopped walking.

  Tam Birchwood. My best friend since we were six years old. Dark-haired, a head taller than me, sunburned forearms, a pack that had been repaired at least twice. He looked like someone who'd been covering serious ground.

  He turned around.

  And saw me.

  The moment went on for a while. Three years of things unsaid doing what they do — building pressure. I braced for it. Anger, accusations, the cold shoulder. Three years of silence, three years of me choosing to disappear without explanation.

  He crossed the street in about four strides.

  "You absolute idiot," he said, grabbed my shoulders, and shook me.

  I blinked.

  "Do you know how long I've been looking for you? Three years, Kael. Three years! I found your camp in the Greywood four months after you left, then you'd moved, so I started following pelt sale records in Cresswick, and then—" He stopped, seemed to remember there were other people present, and looked at Lyra and Dren.

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  "Hi," Lyra said pleasantly.

  "Your face is on a wanted poster," Tam said to me. He pointed at the broadsheet. There were three sketches on it. Me. Lyra. Dren.

  "When did that happen?" I said.

  "Probably around Cresswick," Lyra said, examining it with professional interest.

  "They've got the nose wrong," Dren said, and went inside the inn.

  I introduced Tam to Lyra while Tam kept giving me the look. The look that meant we're not done talking about this but I'm tabling it for now.

  Over dinner — which turned into a long dinner, because Tam insisted on the full explanation and Lyra gave it to him, which took over an hour — I watched my best friend go from confusion to disbelief to quiet attention.

  After, he said: "So you need to stop an immortal."

  "That's the current plan."

  "And you're the only one who can do the actual magical part."

  "Apparently."

  He looked at me for a long moment. Then: "I'm coming."

  "Tam—"

  "I'm coming, Kael. You don't get to keep making decisions about what's good for me." His voice was even. That was worse than if he'd shouted. "That's what you did three years ago. You decided your company was too dangerous for me. You decided I'd be better off without a goodbye. You decided, alone, without asking me." He set down his fork. "I'm done with you deciding that."

  I didn't have an argument. He was right. He'd been right all along.

  "Okay," I said.

  He blinked. Clearly he'd prepared for a fight.

  "Okay?" he said.

  "You're right. I handled it badly. You should come." I paused. "I'm sorry. For the leaving. Not for the fire — I mean, I'm sorry about that too — but the leaving I chose to do, and I told myself it was for you, and that wasn't entirely true."

  "What was it?"

  "Running was easier than watching people be afraid of me."

  Tam was quiet for a moment. Then he picked his fork back up.

  "I was never afraid of you," he said.

  "I know," I said. "That almost made it harder."

  We sat with that for a moment.

  "All right," he said. And just like that, three years of distance compressed into something navigable. Not gone. Not fixed entirely. But a start.

  "All right," I agreed.

  Dren, from across the table: "Can we talk about the route now."

  We talked about the route.