“We can’t stop so soon,” Isolde says, dismounting with unfair ease. When she meets my eyes, I can tell what she’s thinking: the Destiny. It could still be going full speed right now, farther from our reach every wasted hour.

I want to keep going, but I’m completely drained. I’m going to stop soon either way, whether it’s taking a break or passing out and falling facedown into a ditch on the side of the road. Isolde seems to soften as soon as she takes in my appearance. I’m so stiff that Raze has to help me off, awkwardly working one arm around my waist and lifting me off the horse as if I weigh nothing. My boots splash into the mud that I assume must have once been the street, before the rain.

Isolde props me up with her shoulder. “You don’t look so good.”

I thought I’d been doing an okay job hiding how much I feel like crawling out of my skin and leaving it behind as I sprint away at top speed, but apparently not.

Olani, who’s quickly shaping up to be the most functional of the four of us, delegates before we can start bickering again. Raze is sent (whining) to find me some new clothes, and she accompanies Isolde and me to arrange accommodations for the horses and ourselves.

I hesitate when I see the iron horseshoe nailed above the inn’s door—a ward against faeries. It won’t keep everything out, but it’s effective as a warning to banshees and wandering faeries: Stay away. Harassing the mortals here is not worth your trouble. I have no intention of harassing anyone, and I still shiver as I pass beneath it.

Isolde and I are silent as Olani makes the transaction with an economy of words that is impressive even to me. We have so much to talk about, but I don’t know what’s safe to say in front of strangers.

Isolde, however, can only hold her tongue for so long. “Just one room?” she asks sharply, as we climb the stairs to the third floor. Every step sets my muscles on fire.

“Unless you can pay for another,” Olani replies bluntly.

That shuts her right up, but she slumps. We don’t have a coin to our names. Everything we had—everything—had been in that wagon.

But I can’t start thinking about that again.

Our room is a tight little space with two narrow beds, which is another problem I can worry about later. It’s relatively clean, as far as these places go, with a thick, bubbled pane of glass that looks down at least a hundred feet of rocky cliff face to the churning ocean, a lantern that barely lights the corners of the room, and—thank Fate—a basin of water.

“Okay,” Olani says, as soon as the heavy door clicks shut. “Let me see that head wound.”

Isolde’s hands go to her hair. “It’s nothing. Really. You already bandaged it.”

Olani rolls her eyes. “I grew up in an apothecary. Let me see it.” Ignoring the moment of silence under our matching confused stares, she adds, “You’re no use to us so concussed that you can’t think straight. Or dead.”