The realization did not help with the travel. Hours sitting on a tiny plane didn’t ease my anticipation. Being around so many humans always made me anxious. They always wore too much cologne—I don’t know why they were so hung up on dumping alcohol and oils over themselves, but it always made me sneeze.

That was annoying, but it wasn’t the source of my anxiety. Humans could be so quick to turn on each other, but I’d read enough history to know that they had a tendency to use violence when they encountered something new and strange. On top of that, airports had become sort of battlegrounds for humans, with security everywhere, looking for anything that didn’t belong.

And I didn’t belong.

Bryn had been a tracker before she joined the guard, so she was far more used to moving seamlessly among the humans. It also helped that she was more ordinary-looking than me. She was prettier, really, but I meant that her eyes matched each other.

As we made our way through the airport in Winnipeg to catch the next flight, I wondered how I’d gotten on the plane in Sweden, after Indu had held me hostage. How had I gotten through? Who had taken me to the airport and bought the ticket?

Indu had to know his way around, with all his traveling between human cities. Isarna on the island in the Swedish Bay of Bothnia, Doldastam in the Canadian subarctic, and Fulaträsk in the southern swamps of the United States. All of that was costly, and it required an understanding of human customs and laws across multiple countries.

That was the kind of thing that a tracker like Bryn would know. They had to be well versed in all parts of the human world to go among them and gather up the changelings—and their trust funds. Most changelings were left with families in relative proximity to their kingdom, but we couldn’t exactly stop the hosts from moving whenever they wanted. Bryn had gone to Chicago, Seattle, Montreal, Atlanta, and she knew of others that went to London, Tokyo, and Dubai.

But that kind of travel, with the right documents, and the appropriate training for a sheltered teenage troll to blend into the cosmopolitan human world, was costly and time-consuming. The kingdoms sent young trolls to school to learn human etiquette, defense, and persuasion techniques.

How could an isolated tribe like the Älvolk have the money and know-how to do that, when they had no changelings or trackers?

It was late when we finally landed in Oregon. Bryn had to rent a car so we could drive to where Merellä is hidden along the coast. I could not wait to get there and take something for my throbbing headache, since I didn’t know how human medications would work on a troll.