I still feel self-conscious as we descend the stairs again, tugging at the fabric and trying to get it to sit right, tucking my necklace under the collar. A few inches of blistered pink skin peek out from the edges of the sleeves and the neckline. My singed apron has been replaced with a hemp belt, wrapped twice around my waist to make it fit, and I feel the absence of my familiar scraps of ribbon and leather like I’d miss one of my own fingers. I pluck at the embroidery on one of my sleeves instead.

“I think I did well,” Raze says, valiantly attempting to stab a pick in the frozen surface of discomfort between the four of us. No one responds.

The ground floor of the inn is a swarm of people, lit in buttery pools of flickering light by lanterns scattered throughout. And they’re all talking over each other, the overlapping sounds of speech and laughter crescendoing by the second.

“I want to go back upstairs,” I murmur, low enough that only Isolde can hear me. Waves of damp hair tumble, still loose, down my back. I twist one strand nervously between my fingers as I resist the urge to hide behind it.

“Too bad,” she whispers back. “The least we can do is eat dinner together. We’re a team.”

“For now.”

My sister gives me her classic, top-shelf Warning Look, but it doesn’t work on me this time. Looking at her face, her brow wrapped up in that bandage, all I feel is sorry. I’ve only been thinking about myself this whole time. I can’t stop thinking about myself, and what a nightmare this whole thing has become, and how my head won’t stop buzzing and I feel like a tracked rabbit, predators closing in, and my magic is still simmering—put away for now but near enough that I have an unfamiliar awareness of it.

But this day has been hard on her, too. All she’s doing is her best, holding herself together by clinging to the hope that we can make this arrangement with Raze and Olani work out.

The nice thing about being saddled with the two of them is that, unlike Isolde and me who disappear in a crowd, they force their way through easily. People clear out of their paths, and in a room that had seemed overrun down to the last inch, we find a table in a corner that’s almost quiet. It’s right under one of the lanterns, next to a couple playing cards and flirting drunkenly. I try not to stare at the blue-gray, hound-sized dragon curled sleepily around their feet. Even though they’re extinct in the wild, I’m used to seeing dragons of every size and color as pets, but still—surely that isn’t allowed in here?

The table is slightly, unnervingly sticky. No one else seems to care.

“I feel like we may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” Raze says, once we’re all settled.

I frown. “Do you mean the time you tried to slit my throat, or the time you cornered us while we were passed out and forced us to work with you?”