Curses. I’ve never actually maneuvered the Destiny through a town this small before. It’s...tricky. Luckily, it’s still early enough that the streets are mostly empty of wagons, though I do send a few pedestrians and unlucky goats diving for cover. I can finally breathe again when we turn onto the straight, wide strip of the main road.

Finally, I look around. The wagon’s interior is disordered, with things strewn over the floor where they’d been thrown or knocked over. Bits of broken glass sparkle in one corner. Overall, it’s a disaster, but I’m relieved. It could have been much worse.

Once he’s decided that our new companions are not a threat, Birch pretends to nap in a corner as if nothing had happened. His eyes are calm slits, and his pink tongue pokes slightly out of his mouth, like he’s a cat and not a faerie creature that has just viciously hexed people—people completely deserving of hexes, but still.

“Birch!” I exclaim, realizing just how worried I’d been about the brownie and how attached I’ve grown to him. “You clever thing. What a good kitty.”

“What is that?” Olani and Raze look out of place in the cramped wagon, cringing as far from the faerie creature as they can manage.

“Our brownie. How’s it looking back there?” I call to Isolde, who is still peering intensely out the window.

“Good so far.”

Good. I jerk the wheel to the side, rumbling off the road in a sharp turn.

My ears fill with overlapping protests as Isolde, Olani, and Raze all jolt with the sudden movement. Ignoring them, I yank on the brake.

The Destiny rolls to a stop in the grass.

“Seelie, what are you doing?” Isolde struggles to her feet. She has a split lip and an impressive collection of bruises blooming under her skin, along with the blood smeared over her face and the stab wound that has reopened in her arm. Aside from all that, she looks great. At least none of it will kill her.

I meet her eyes, and understanding lights there quickly. She agrees with me. This is shaping up to be way more than we signed up for, and we’re not moving until we get some kind of explanation.

Olani somehow managed to stay planted on the bench. Raze slumps with his back against it. He still has a relatively feral look in his eyes as he takes in his surroundings. He trembles as he struggles to overcome his nausea enough to speak. Finally, he coughs and manages, “Nice place you got here.”

Well, that’s not what I expected. Isolde’s eyebrows rise, and Olani looks like she’s trying very hard not to get mad. She takes the deep breath of a parent dealing with a particularly difficult toddler. “How did they find us, Raze?”

He looks at her, then Isolde, then me. His easy charisma drops like a badly made mask, and he buries his head in his hands. Limp strands of hair ruffle around his fingers. “I don’t know. We need to keep moving.”