“How much longer?” Olani asks, looking up from a game of cards at which Isolde is now openly cheating.

I don’t turn, keeping my eyes on the road, my hands on the wheel. “I don’t know.” I’ve tried not to think about it. There’s so much unknown—so many dangerous possibilities—that it might be better to be blindsided. Or maybe we should just talk about it. “You really don’t know anything else about where we’re going, do you?”

Raze waves his hand aristocratically. “Depends what you mean by know.”

“I mean know.”

“Ah. Well, in that case—no. We don’t exactly know.” He’s standing over my shoulder, studying a map on which we’ve tried to replicate Leira’s scrawls from memory, and his shadow is starting to make me uncomfortable.

“Delightful,” I say lightly, offering him a sideways glance with my lips pinched tight together, curving less than one degree up at the corner.

We’ve reached a fragile understanding of one another, and even though he still makes me want to pull my hair out, it makes me feel a little better to know that it isn’t intentional. Not usually, at least. We’ve even managed to cut the squabbling down to one good fight a day or so.

We park the Destiny next to one of the hand-painted warning signs when the sky is still pink and orange, indigo-dipped at the edges. It feels like the sign is staring at me with its drips of faded paint reading TRAVELER BEWARE: FAERIE CIRCLE, accompanied by an arrow pointing into the forest.

I breathe in the sweet, sharp smell of pine as we build a fire and make camp.

We don’t have enough room to store enough food to feed four people for very long, especially since two of them are twice Isolde’s and my size. We’re down to the last of the dried foods, and that would worry me if I didn’t have so many bigger worries on my plate. As Olani scrapes a second serving of spiced rice and beans from the bottom of our biggest pot, I hand the last of my bowl to Isolde. She’s been hungrily watching me push it unenthusiastically around the bottom of my bowl, and I’ve lost my appetite, anyway.

“Are you sure?” she says, even though she’s already digging her spoon in. We’re pretending everything’s fine, but I can feel the distance between us like a pebble in my shoe.

I don’t respond. Instead, I watch Raze trying to set up a makeshift target on the other side of the fire. “Is this really necessary?” I sigh, pulling my knees up to my chest.

“You promised to practice,” Isolde says with her mouth full.

Raze looks over from where he’s attempting to balance a wobbly empty bottle on a not-quite-flat rock. Despite the chill in the air up here, he’s shed his coat, and his shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, showing off his freckly forearms. “Practice doesn’t end until we’re all sure you can fight off whatever enchanter Leira sends next without blowing the rest of us off the face of the mountain, Iselia,” he calls. “Now, get over here so we can get started.”