It would be a long three weeks.

The cargo hold was roomy, at least, though they had to keep watch for sailors coming down for supplies several times a day. It had been dangerous sneaking onto the trading ship because it had meant flying over open seas at night and landing on the ship when most of the crew was asleep. Then they’d crept down the stairs to hide amid the cargo.

The hold creaked and rolled with the waves, its arched roof supported by large wooden beams. In the back, they’d found crates of cheese, blackberry juice, and other goods, enough to keep them very well fed until they reached the southern jungles. When the others weren’t looking, Ellie dropped nearly her entire supply of coins into one of the crates, to assuage her guilty conscience.

As she snacked on a delicious wedge of cheddar, washing it down with juice, she studied the sea chart she had found in a box of navigational equipment. Gussie fiddled with a tin bowl and some needles, trying to make a compass but mostly just groaning as she fought back seasickness. Twig was fast asleep in a crate of hay. A cluster of white candles provided light and could be extinguished in an instant if they needed to hide.

Ellie tossed a crumb of cheese to Lirri in her ongoing mission to win the temperamental little animal over. The marten took the offering but hissed in return.

“Should I check on him?” she whispered to Gussie.

The Falcon girl glanced across the hold at the bundle of dark feathers curled in a sheepskin.

“He hasn’t eaten since we landed on the ship,” Ellie added. “That was yesterday.”

The last time she’d tried to rouse Nox, he’d refused to even open his eyes.

“He’ll come around eventually,” said Gussie, but she sounded unsure. “Sometimes people just need to be left alone.”

Ellie frowned, not sure she agreed. There had to be something she could do to make Nox feel better, or at least to get him to eat and talk again. He wouldn’t even say how badly his chest hurt from the crossbow bolt that had nearly killed him. He’d been wildly lucky, but there was still a dark purple bruise on his sternum that Ellie knew had to hurt.

The loss of the skystone was a different sort of wound, but she tried not to dwell on that. What was done was done, and besides, she’d rather have Nox alive than the gem intact. Maybe that was selfish, given how many lives the skystone might have saved from wingrot. But even despite the pang of guilt she felt, Ellie would have traded a dozen skystones for Nox’s life.

Sighing, she turned back to the chart. With the piece of charcoal she kept in her pocket, she drew an X near the unlabeled island of the Crag.

“Do you think the floating city follows the wind currents?” she wondered. “If it does, maybe its course can be charted just like a ship’s. You know about all that stuff, right?”

Gussie looked at her a moment, then held up one of the sewing needles. “See this? Let’s say this needle represents everything I know about science and the way things work and wind and charts and ships and how cities don’t float.” She flicked the needle, and it went spinning way into the shadows, lost in the depths of the cargo hold. “That’s what all of it amounts to if the island you say you saw is real: nothing.”

“It wasn’t just me,” Ellie returned. “Nox saw it too. We were both there.”

“The realm of gargols,” whispered Twig.

Ellie turned to see him still lying in the crate, but now his eyes were wide open, staring at the curved ceiling.

“Maybe,” she said. “I mean, it was definitely infested with them. But … I never thought of gargols as the type to build anything, much less a whole city. And the place was obviously in ruins—walls falling down, plants growing over it all.”

She jumped to her feet and began pacing. “What if that city wasn’t the only one? What if there are more of them up there?”

“Then we’d have heard about them,” Gussie pointed out. “I’ve read thousands of books, not just science but history, geography, even legends and myths. And none of them mentioned anything about islands in the sky. Do you really think there could be a whole world up there, just floating around, and you’re the first person to see it?”

Ellie bristled a bit. “This is also the second time I’ve seen it.”

“Right.” Gussie lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “The first time, you just forgot to mention it.”

“Um. More like you all dumped me in the woods and left before I could. What are the odds that the island I saw over Bluebriar Forest and the one we found over the Crag are the same? I know what I saw, Gus. I know it doesn’t make sense. But it was real.”

“I believe you,” Twig piped up.

Ellie sighed. “Thanks, Twig.”

He grinned, then stuck a stick of straw between his teeth and lay back, chewing happily. Of all of them, Twig was certainly in the best mood. They were on their way to the southern jungles, the place he’d dreamed of seeing for years—or rather, he’d dreamed of seeing the mysterious elephant creatures it supposedly was home to. He’d been the first to agree to Ellie’s plan to sail there. Gussie still seemed unsure, while Nox had merely shrugged and gone along with whatever the group decided. He’d barely spoken more than ten words since the Crag, and Ellie wondered if he was still angry at her for forcing him to leave.

But what other choice did they have? The Clandoms weren’t safe. They couldn’t return to Cloudstone. Right now, the only hope they had was of following Nox’s mother’s last wish: to find shelter in the south, in the one land they knew of that was beyond King Garion’s reach.

Maybe that was where Ellie belonged. Maybe she’d never go home again, and some new life was waiting for her in the hot jungles.

It was hard to imagine.

But with three weeks of sailing still ahead, she had plenty of time to wrap her mind around it. For now, the only thing she could think about, beyond worrying over Nox, was the city in the sky.

“I keep thinking about the Restless Order,” she said. “Remember how they always talked about a thing called Truehome?”

Gussie looked up, frowning. “So?”

“What if …” Ellie paused, then shook her head. The idea forming in her mind was far-fetched and sounded ridiculous even to her. And yet … for some reason, her pulse was pounding in her ears. When she closed her eyes, she could see it all again so clearly: the ruined towers, buildings, streets. The glow of the skystones beneath it all.

“We have to go back,” Ellie whispered.

Gussie dropped her tin bowl with a clatter. “What?”

“C’mon. You can’t tell me you aren’t a little curious. Gussie … this could change everything. Even if it really is just the home of the gargols, if we could learn about it, maybe we could find a better way of fighting them.”

“Or talking to them,” added Twig.

Ellie glanced at him, startled. That was an idea that had never crossed her mind.

“Maybe,” she murmured. “The point is, until we know more, we don’t know what’s possible. But don’t you want to find out? This could be it—the way we change things.”

“There she goes again,” said a dry voice across the hold. They all turned to look at Nox, who’d stood up. His eyes were averted, his hands curled into fists. “Ellie Meadows, on a mission to solve everyone’s problems, everywhere.”

“That’s not fair,” Ellie said.

He shrugged and walked closer, picking up a bottle of blackberry juice and drinking deeply. The others watched him in silence, even the candle flames seeming to shrink warily.

“Are you … feeling okay?” Ellie asked at last. “Nox, I’m so sorry about what happened. If you want to talk—”

He gave a short, acidic laugh. “I most definitely do not want to talk.”

“It wasn’t Ellie’s fault,” Gussie said. “We all did everything we could to help your mother.”

“You’re right,” he said. “It wasn’t any of your faults. It was mine.”

Taking the juice, he returned to his nest of furs and sat with his back to them.

Ellie and Gussie exchanged looks.

“We’ve got to get him to Khadreen,” Ellie whispered. “Maybe being with his family will help.”

Gussie nodded, looking back at Nox with an uneasy expression. “I’ve never seen him like this before.”

“He lost everything he had in one moment,” Ellie said.

“He still has us,” said Twig.

Ellie nodded but wondered if that was enough. Nox looked haunted, lost. She recognized that emptiness in his eyes because she’d felt it herself, the day she’d given up her dream of being a knight and been thrown into the king’s dungeon. And long before that—when her parents had been killed by gargols right in front of her.

Yes, she knew what it was like to feel your world shatter around you.

But she’d pulled herself out of it. She’d found a new purpose in the skystone and the hope it represented—that she could make a difference in the world by healing people with wingrot. But what would save Nox from the darkness inside him?

His mother had asked Ellie to take care of him.

She’d called Nox a flame in the darkness.

A cold wind swept through Ellie, making her shiver. Nox’s mother’s words and Elder Rue’s swirled her head like leaves, mingling and merging.

“Ellie!” hissed Gussie. She grabbed Ellie’s sash. “Get down!”

With a start, Ellie realized the wind she was feeling wasn’t just in her head. It was a draft blown in from the cargo hold doors, where a sailor was descending the steps. Gussie had already blown out the candles, and Twig pulled the lid of the crate he was in over himself.

Dropping down, Ellie crouched between two barrels and quieted her breathing.

The sailor rooted around a crate for a while, found what she wanted, then plopped down to enjoy her spoils—a large flagon of cordial. Suppressing a groan, Ellie wished she’d chosen a more comfortable hiding spot. The sailor was obviously not going anywhere for some time.

It would be a long three weeks.