Unseelie by Ivelisse Housman

Author:Ivelisse Housman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2022-11-16T18:36:44+00:00

chapter twenty-one

After another week, the ground starts sloping up again, soft meadows and forest giving way to sharp, cold rock.

When I study the compass for direction, it seems to sense that I’m looking at it. Every once in a while, it spins, just for attention, before continuing to point to its target. We’re getting close—and I still don’t really know what that means.

The Destiny rumbles over the stony road, shaking everything inside and making our teeth chatter. It already feels like fall in the mountains, with the occasional hot, dry wind to remind us what lies on the other side of the peaks. Sunlight filters through leafy stained-glass windows, turning green and gold and red as it strikes the path. Even the air smells different.

The first time we pass one of the signs, it’s a shock: a hand-painted wooden post warning us to turn back, that we’re entering active faerie territory. Everything falls silent until we’re no longer in its shadow.

Soon, the fiery-hued leaves give way to bristly pine needles. The evergreens are so tall I have to tilt my head all the way back to see where they brush the sky.

I wring my hands, massaging my left palm, a new habit I can’t seem to help.

“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

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