by Sara Holland
That was until last year. When I arrived in June, she was gone, her suite empty, and all Marcus would tell me was that they’d had a falling out.
“Did they make up?”
“I don’t know.” Graylin’s mouth flattens. “They still don’t seem on very good terms, even though Marcus and I spent all afternoon moving her knickknacks into the suite. But your uncle won’t tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m sure they’ll find a way to smooth things over,” I say, happy to hear that the Heiress is back, but unnerved because it’s not like Marcus to keep secrets—not from me, and especially not from Graylin.
Taya stands, a vacant smile on her face, and I find I can’t meet her eyes. I know the wine, the enchantment, is necessary to not blow the secret of this place wide open. But somehow, I prefer the scowling version of her.
“You probably want to clean up and join the party. Will you just take, ah—”
“Taya,” I supply, and she cocks her head at me, eyes bright.
“—Taya to the staff wing, and Willow can figure out where to put her.” Graylin smiles at me. “I’ll make sure your room is ready.”
He waves us off, and my heart lifts as I beckon to Taya and lead her up the right side of the grand staircase, the thick red-and-gold rug soft beneath our feet. I can hear the music from beyond the green curtain, the strange haunting melodies of the Byrnisian Elemental Orchestra, the laughter of the delegates, and it takes everything I have not to turn and run toward the sound. It feels like I’ve been awake for weeks, like my visit to the prison this morning was a lifetime ago. I need to call Dad and break the news that I’m not in Nebraska, and my muscles are sore from sitting so long on a bus and straddling a motorcycle. But I’m here, and that’s all that matters.
We reach the aged common room outside the staff wing, hearing chatter and laughter before we even round the corner, loud and loose with the influence of forgetting-wine. On the first day of employment, Willow always tells the human staff the basics about the Adjacent Realms and the peace summit, just enough so people can do their jobs and don’t get freaked out if they get a glimpse of weather magic or a glimmer of scales. Surprisingly, everyone usually takes it more or less in stride. There’s something about this place that makes people accept magic. That draws them in, along for the ride until the second dose of forgetting-wine in August.
In Byrn and Fiordenkill, the portals aren’t a secret the way they are on Earth. Most of those who attend the summit are upper-crust, Fiorden nobles or elite Byrnisian soldiers. But there are civilians, too, in each delegation, who come to supplement the inn’s human staff in housekeeping or security. Each spot is a huge honor, so I’m told, given out as a prize to the most promising youth among their peoples.
Those chosen tend to treat summers at Havenfall like one big exotic party, bringing wine and sweets to trade with the humans. This year is no exception.
Inside the staff lounge, worn velvet couches ring the wood-paneled room, filled now with mostly humans, but a few Fiorden and Byrnisian staff too. Several open bottles of wine balance precariously on side tables and armrests. Someone’s dragged in an old boxy TV, and a young Fiorden boy whose ears are adorned with jewels—showcasing the wealth of his family—laughs uproariously at Jeopardy!
The Boulder kids, a group of four college students who’ve come to work here every year for three years, have coaxed some new maids into a louche version of beer pong, played with Fiorden wooden goblets and Byrnisian purple wine. I’m surprised Marcus let them back for another summer, even if they can’t remember last year. One of them, Jayden, snuck into the caves and stepped through the door to Fiordenkill. The enforcers on the other side threw him back through the doorway, gasping and frostbitten, barely conscious. It’s only because of Graylin’s healing magic that Jayden still has all his fingers and toes. Marcus likes to remind me of that—that the magic of Havenfall isn’t just flowers and wine and music. It’s powerful and dangerous, a current that will drown you if you don’t keep a good head on your shoulders.
At a massive desk in one corner sits Willow, the beautiful Byrnisian woman who serves as Marcus’s chief of staff. She looks a bit like Amal Clooney, if Amal’s skin glittered in a distinctly scale-like pattern under certain lights. If the whispers I’ve heard are true, she was high up in Byrnisian circles before some sort of affair gone wrong drove her from Oasis, Byrn’s last habitable city-kingdom. If she resents being stuck here now, corralling frequently drunk humans into keeping Havenfall running, she doesn’t show it except by being ruthlessly effective.
She leaps out of her chair when she sees me, though, and hurries over to wrap me in a perfumed hug. She’s been here my whole life and is almost as much family as Marcus and Graylin. Everyone at Havenfall—all the delegates, at least—just accept me. It’s deeply weird to go from being the freak at home to everyone’s friend. I feel like they see me as a novelty, a sidekick, not an equal to Marcus. But this summer I’m ready to change that notion, ready to prove that I’m fit to move permanently to Havenfall when I turn eighteen—and take over as Marcus’s successor one day.
“Madeline,” she says warmly, holding me by my shoulders so she can appraise my appearance, a survey which leaves her looking, as usual, unimpressed. “You look a bit ragged.”
I feel a smile forming all the same. “I’m sorry. I was on a bus all day.”
“You can’t go to the ballroom like this.” Willow twirls a limp lock of my short hair around her finger.
“I won’t. I promise.” I turn to the side to look back at Taya, who’s lingering in the doorway, uncertain. “But first—I brought you another staff member. I know she’s late, but she’s all right. She gave me a ride here.”
I smile encouragingly at Taya and draw off to the side while Willow finds her name in her massive ledger. Soon, Taya has a job assignment—reporting to the groundskeeper to trim hedges at 8:00 a.m. sharp tomorrow—and a room key pressed into her palm.
Before she goes, Taya smiles at me. “Hey, Maddie, right?”
Surprised that she remembered my name after the wine, I nod.
“I’m Taya,” she says. “Thanks for the tour.”
Then she’s gone.
I swallow down the weirdness of that interaction and turn back to Willow, hoisting my smile back on. “How’s everything so far?” I ask her.
“Oh, chaos as usual,” Willow says, slashing a hand dismissively through the air. “We’ve already had a minor catastrophe, when Marcus realized we didn’t have enough wine for tonight, so I haven’t had time to catch up on Realms gossip. Do you think you could sniff some out to save me from dying of boredom in my office?”
She lays a hand over her heart in mock seriousness, and I grin, happiness shooting through me. With the chatter of voices all around and the buzz of the TVs and the bits of otherworldly music floating up from downstairs, I feel buoyed by sound and life. So different from Sterling, where the reigning noise is empty silence punctuated by the thunder of highway traffic rushing by. When I was a kid, when I had just moved in with my dad, there were names too—names flying like knives. Freak. Jailbird. On the playground, on the school bus, the few times I made the mistake of trying to play with kids in the neighborhood. Now I don’t get the names so much, just despising or pitying stares that always feel like they’re drilling holes in me.
“Where do you want me?” I ask Willow, pushing those thoughts away to get back to the present. Where I’m wanted, needed.
“I’ll put you at the bar. Get those delegates drunk and report back on what’s happening in my city.” Her eyes gleam, hungry for information.
Half an hour and a quick shower later—quick because for all Havenfall’s charms, the ancient pipes can never be relied upon to supply hot water—I plop down on the bed, wrapped in a fluffy blue bathrobe, and dial Dad’s number. To calm the anxiety that rumbles in my stomach as the phone rings, I look around my room, focusing on each of the familiar objects in turn to calm myself. The shelf loaded with impr
essive-looking tomes on Realms history, which I must have forgotten to return to the library last summer. The small window and the starry mountain-broken sky I can see through it. The quilt beneath me, made of interlocking diamonds of Byrn silk and Fiordenkill velvet; a gift from Marcus to my mom when I was born. Nate had one, too, but I don’t know where it is.
“Hello?” Dad’s voice breaks off the melancholy thought. “Maddie?”
I hear the muted hum of the TV in the background. I imagine him in our cramped living room, exhausted after a long day of fixing wiring and repairing power lines, kicked back on the recliner—but worried, now, because of me.
In a second, the wistfulness is gone and the nerves are back. “Hi, Dad.” I fiddle with the edge of the quilt. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” Dad sounds wary. He knows something is up. “Marla’s gone to pick up a pizza and we’re about to watch the game. How about you? Have you made it to your grandma’s yet?”
I know I should feel guilty about coming here behind his back. I should. But it’s hard to feel guilty when such a great relief is filling me up, lifting my spirits. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in months. But I try for a contrite tone when I say, “No. Dad, I … I went to Havenfall instead.”
The sound of the TV clicks off. There’s a long silence, and I twist the quilt between my fingers, trying to parse it. Is he angry? Disappointed?
When he speaks, though, it’s with resignation. “Maddie. You should have told me.”
“You didn’t want me here.” Even though I don’t mean to, I can hear that I sound defensive.
“No, I didn’t,” Dad replies. “I don’t think it’s good for you to be there. There’s a whole world for you to explore.”
There are whole worlds here too, I want to say. But I stay quiet, knowing Dad doesn’t know about the Adjacent Realms, about the magic. He’s visited the inn—I have a dim memory of the four of us, Mom, Dad, Nate, and me, visiting for Christmas when I was very small—but only in the winter when it was empty.
“I’m learning things here too,” I tell Dad. “Marcus is teaching me about the business side of the inn, how to balance a checkbook and stuff.”
That’s a stretch, but I want it to be true. This summer, I’m going to focus on learning, on being a help, so that Marcus will let me stay full-time after I graduate next year. What Dad doesn’t get is that Havenfall isn’t about hiding away from the world. I’m creating a life for myself in the one place I can really make a difference. I failed Mom and Nate years ago, and Havenfall is all that’s left of our family. I won’t run away from that.
“I had to, Dad,” I say, emotion leaking into my voice in spite of my best efforts. “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” He sighs. “I know you’ve had a hard year, what with … the news about your mother. And you’re almost an adult; you’re old enough to be making your own choices. But I want you to study for your SAT while you’re there. You hear me?”
Tears gather at the edges of my eyes. “I will. And I’ll tell Grandma.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” he says wearily. “I’ll call her. Right after I call your uncle and tell him to keep an eye on you.”
I swipe the tears off my cheeks. “Thanks.”
“Be safe, Maddie.” His voice goes a little quieter, concern entering it. “I worry about you, you know.”
“I know.”
And I do. I grip the blanket, sitting with the guilt. I know Dad cares about me; I know he only wants what’s best for me. We just have different ideas of what that is. He doesn’t deserve my lies.
But I remember being a little kid and telling him about doorways and magic, and the way he grinned and ruffled my hair and told me never to lose that imagination. At some point, I started to understand why Mom never told him it was all real. The lie isn’t hurting anyone, and telling the truth would mean a coin toss between upending everything Dad knows about the world and having him think I’m crazy. The image of my face in Mirror Lake lingers behind my eyes as I tell him I love him and hang up, feeling guilt and relief in equal measure.
After coaxing my short, messy hair into something resembling a style, I open the closet, considering the bright array of Byrn- and Fiordenkill-inspired clothes that have waited patiently for me since last summer. My usual jeans–Doc Martens–canvas jacket combo won’t cut it in the ballroom, so I pull on velvet riding breeches and my favorite Byrnisian jacket. It’s dark blue linen with gold buttons and panels of black shining scales marching down the sleeves. Then to balance that out—Marcus always says I should take care not to seem partial to one Realm—I stack jewels in my ears in the Fiorden style. Brekken and I made the piercings the summer we were both twelve, hiding in my room with a needle and candle. It could have been a disaster, but he did careful work, two even lines of piercings along the edges of my ears.
I choose three jewels for each ear—blue, green, and silver, the colors that symbolize peace between the last three Adjacent Realms. I swipe gray powder over my eyelids and mauve over my lips, and for the first time in a long time I look in the mirror and smile.
My bedroom is at the end of the Fiordenkill wing, a big room with a dormer window facing west. The view of the sunset over the mountains is the best in Havenfall, and as a bonus, there’s a shortcut—a narrow, out-of-the-way staircase used mostly by the staff, but which takes me past the hallway where the Solarian guest rooms used to be.
Now the hallway is sealed off with pine boards, since no one else wants to sleep in those rooms. It would be cowardly to take the long way around just to avoid passing a covered-up doorway, so I rarely do, but just walking past it on the landing always makes ice cascade down my spine. There’s something about the idea that Solarians used to sleep in rooms just like mine, with cedar eaves and windows looking out over the mountains.
The wooden boards have warped with age, opening up cracks between each wide enough to see through. After the Solarians were banished, my great-great-grandmother painted the walls and ceiling in that part of the dormitory a pleasing light blue, scrubbed the floors to a high shine that still glints underneath the cobwebs, but no one was willing to stay there. Annabelle couldn’t erase the memories of rough places where claws gouged the walls, bloodstains on the floor.
As kids, Brekken and I once dared each other to peek through the cracks and see what we could see. But when I knelt and pressed my face to the wood, a shadow scurrying across the floor scared me so bad I jolted back and almost fell down the stairs. Brekken caught me and held me to his chest until I stopped shaking, already chivalrous at ten. After that, I looked up what happened in the library. Back when Havenfall’s tunnels opened up to three worlds instead of two, back when guards surrounded the grounds both to keep humans out and Solarians in—because unlike the rest of us, they can travel throughout the worlds without getting sick—a political disagreement ended when a Solarian delegate murdered a Byrnisian princess and ate her heart right out of her chest.
After the war that followed, the door to Solaria in the tunnels beneath was closed, and the Solarians’ old guest rooms have stood empty ever since. Too many bad memories and mojo. Even the human cleaners, who don’t know what happened, are put off by this part of the inn, as evidenced by the thick layer of dust on the floor of the stairwell, thick enough that as I walk past, I leave footprints behind me. The Solarians are gone, I remind myself.
But they aren’t, not entirely. One killed my brother in Sterling eleven years ago. It might still be out there. Who knows how many more might have slipped through the dragnets.
We don’t talk about such things at Havenfall, though. The guests would be horrified if they knew how Nathan died, why my mother ended up in Sterling Correctional when, despite all her flaws, she didn’t kill my brother. I’ve never told anyone except Brekken and Marcus about that, because the important part of the story is something that would threaten the very peace that was brokered here so many years ago, the reason for the summit ever
y year. Marcus just told the rest of the delegates that his nephew had died and his sister had moved away. It wasn’t technically a lie.
Marcus always told me the purpose of the summit is to remember the Accord that allied Byrn, Fiordenkill, and Haven. But if you drill down deeper, if you read the Accord, the real reason behind it is darker. It’s Solaria.
I shake the dark thoughts away. Now isn’t the time to get dragged into a dark mood. I have a job to do. And someone to see.
When I come down the stairs, the ballroom is filled with people. They’re spread out below me, and even though I’ve seen this tableau so many times before, I stop for a second and drink it all in.
Havenfall. At last.
The peace summit officially begins tomorrow, but it looks like most of the delegates have already arrived. The denizens of the three worlds practically glitter, the crystal chandelier shedding light on their bright hair, feathery hats, and silk scarves. Staff, human and otherwise, flit between them with trays of prettily arranged snacks and bubbly drinks. Voices and laughter in three languages rise up to me. A handful of guards—mostly humans who report to Sal Fernandez, Marcus’s trusty head of security—are stationed at intervals along the mirrored walls. More a formality than anything—Havenfall hasn’t needed defending since before I was born—but their presence makes me feel safer.
In the corner, the Elemental Orchestra plays—three musicians using strange instruments with Byrnisian magic. One plays something like a harp, but instead of plucking the strings she plies them with small flames spurting from her fingertips. Another produces tinkling sounds by spinning ice over a wooden frame and smashing it with a mallet, over and over. And a gold pipe contraption wraps the small stage, emitting mournful notes whenever the players send air into it with a thrust of a palm. It looks like a steampunk game of Mousetrap, but the sound is wistful and wild all at once. The elemental magic that flows through Byrnisian blood never ceases to amaze me.
The ballroom is huge, and it seems even bigger because of mirrors lining the walls on either side, while the far windows show a magnificent moonlit view of the mountains and Mirror Lake. I should be looking for my uncle, but I can’t stop my eyes from scanning the crowd for someone else instead. For broad shoulders and hair that flames red in the light. His name is stuck in my head like the song of the summer on the radio. Brekken. Brekken. Brekken. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I find him, but my gut says this is the year to do something, say something, make something happen. Maybe it’s the leftover adrenaline from the motorcycle ride, or my fears about not being welcomed back, but I feel brave, maybe a little reckless.
