Havenfall

by Sara Holland

  “Your Highness,” Brekken says, and a shiver of awe drops down my spine as I realize who this man must be. I’ve heard stories about the Silver Prince. He’s the one who created the massive city of Oasis when he was scarcely more than a boy, erecting a magical barrier to shelter its people from the elemental storms that have nearly decimated Byrn. Imagine if one guy single-handedly stopped climate change, is how Marcus explained it to me once. The Silver Prince rules that city now, and most of the world’s inhabitants with it—everyone in Byrn lives in Oasis, except for a handful of nomads who value their independence enough to brave the lightning and hurricanes and burning wind.

  Looking up now into the Silver Prince’s deep-set eyes, I find myself doing math in my head, trying to match the stories I’ve heard to the young man towering over me. He’s probably around twenty-three, twenty-four—not that much older than me, but I can almost feel the power rolling off him like a force field. His magic must be unimaginably powerful to have kept the Oasis storms at bay. He’s never come to the summits before, since he was the only thing standing between Byrn’s last habitable city and destruction. I guess the fact that he’s here means the storms must have finally calmed.

  Willow never thought it would happen. She’d always joke that she was lucky to be banished, that she was going to live longer than everyone stuck in a dying Byrn. Seeing the Prince now, his serenity and power, I can’t help but feel a little awed.

  “Soldier,” he says, dipping his head toward Brekken. Then he looks at me and tilts his head, considering. “And you must be Madeline.”

  There aren’t many humans here other than summer staffers, and it’s not a surprise he recognizes me. Still, it’s weird. I’m used to keeping my head down and avoiding everyone. So I’m caught off guard to be on a first-name basis with a prince from another world.

  The Prince doesn’t introduce the other man—a servant, his bodyguard? He just zeroes in on me, those iron-colored eyes holding mine, and says, “You seem troubled.”

  Brekken looks sharply at me. Fiordenkill and Byrn don’t have the same rules for small talk as we do. Most of the Fiordens who come to Havenfall would sooner swallow coals than talk about feelings, and Byrnisians, on the other hand, prize truth and forthrightness.

  My stomach turns. I am troubled, but I don’t want Brekken to know that. Yet I can’t be rude to Oasis’s and, by default, Byrn’s ruler. I can’t jeopardize Havenfall’s relationship with an entire world.

  “It’s nothing,” I say, forcing a smile to my face. “I’m just tired.”

  The Silver Prince tilts his head slowly. It’s a little unnerving.

  “Is that true?” His voice isn’t reprimanding, just curious.

  The man wearing silver is a silent, eerie presence behind him, his colorless eyes taking in everything.

  Brekken moves forward, as if to step between us, but I hook my pinkie around his to stop him. His actions carry more weight now that he’s a soldier, and my feelings aren’t worth an inter-world incident.

  “It’s just …” I choose my words carefully, trying to find a version of the truth that will satisfy the Silver Prince. “This is the most important place in the world to me. It’s not just a party that happens every summer. It’s my home.”

  As soon as the words are out, I regret them. Brekken’s eyes widen, and it feels as though I’ve given too much away.

  “Your home?” the Silver Prince asks.

  His words are affectless; we could be discussing anything. Still, my skin prickles. Why is he spending his first visit to the Adjacent Realms—a visit that must have been in the works for years—asking the sixteen-year-old Innkeeper’s niece about her feelings? What is that Byrnisian intuition telling him about me?

  “After this summer, Marcus will decide if I can stay for good.” I look at myself in the mirror along the wall. The gems in my ears glitter in the low light, and laughter and music weave together all around like a beautiful net. “It’s—a lot of pressure is all.”

  Then, I feel stupid. The Silver Prince saved his people from the elemental storms that obliterated almost the whole of his world. He maintains the barriers that keep everyone in Oasis alive. What do I know about pressure?

  But when he smiles, it’s sympathetic. “These are dangerous times,” he says. His eyes meet mine in the reflection. He seems to give off his own light; I understand why his people follow him. But he gives me the feeling of driving down winding mountain roads. It’s awe-inspiring, despite the fact that—or maybe because—it’s a long way down. There’s a feeling of power coiled inside the Prince. The air crackles a little around him.

  “But,” he adds, “I sense danger is familiar to you.”

  I look toward him, surprised and wary. “What do you mean?”

  An image flashes, as it so often does—my mother and brother cowering in the kitchen as a dark shadow bears down on them. My brother’s piercing scream. But I push it away, panic gathering in me, as if somehow the memory will spill out into the Silver Prince’s sight. Like he could see how I hid, how I let a Solarian kill Nathan.

  “I understand Marcus’s fears,” the Silver Prince says, still affectless. “But strife shapes us into who we are meant to be. And places us where we are meant to be. Don’t you think?”

  Even though he’s a total stranger, something in me leaps at the words, overjoyed to be seen. I nod, my pulse racing for some reason.

  Brekken clears his throat, and the Prince smiles. Even his teeth have a silvery tint. I wonder what his life is like at home in dangerous and wild Byrn. A place ravaged by storms born of elemental magic run amok.

  “Well, I must be off,” he says. “It was a pleasure to meet you both.” He inclines his head at Brekken and me in turn, and then sweeps away.

  It’s not until he’s gone that I think to ask what he meant by dangerous times.

  Brekken turns to me, a crease between his eyebrows. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.” I let out a laugh that, somewhat to my surprise, is real.

  Maybe he’s right, maybe Marcus is right to be afraid. The Silver Prince certainly seemed dangerous, as does Brekken in a way, with his sharp-cut uniform and eyes I could lose myself in. But that just makes it all the more thrilling, my knowledge of these people and theirs of me.

  Havenfall might be dangerous, but I am equal to it. I’m part of it. I belong here, more than anywhere else.

  I take a sip of my drink. Fizzy heat rushes down my throat, warms my chest. Feeling emboldened, I pluck the other drink from Brekken’s hand and put them on a side table. Then I do what I wanted to do earlier and twine my arms around his neck as a new song begins. I’m already taking a risk ignoring Marcus’s request. I might as well take advantage of this bravery while it lasts.

  The knot in my gut unwinds as his arms come up around me. The scent of snow fills my nose, and his cheek is cool against mine. It makes me wonder what it’d be like to experience the winter chill of Fiordenkill. I’ve only seen glimpses of it through the open door in the caves below the inn, but I imagine snow-cloaked mountains, ice shining over lakes, castles with fires glimmering in their windows. With the exception of Havenfall as a safe zone, Byrnisians and Fiordens can’t travel outside their worlds without deteriorating, and humans can’t visit Fiordenkill or Byrn for more than an hour or so. People have tried to make it before, and the books say it’s a horrible way to die—like drowning.

  But it’s not impossible. Once, when I was a little kid, a Byrnisian runner made it as far as Telluride before collapsing. Marcus had to send in a cleanup crew with bribes and berry wine to ply the skiers who’d seen a scaled man dying in the snow. I daydream, sometimes, that someone will find a way around our bodies’ limits. About seeing Fiordenkill at Brekken’s side.

  Brekken pulls back, his hands on my arms, and looks at me with warm eyes that shift into concern as they travel over my face.

  “Maddie,” he says, his voice soft and low. “Can we go somewhere else? Alone?”

  I
nod, something fizzy as champagne bubbling through me. “Took you long enough. Let’s get out of here.”

  5

  After delivering Marcus’s bottle of champagne from his office, Brekken and I make it out of the inn unnoticed, another bottle of wine clutched in Brekken’s long fingers. We slink through the gardens and into the barn, past a few shiny cars and Taya’s motorcycle. I laugh out loud when a snort from the chestnut mare makes Brekken jump back.

  “It’s just a horse.”

  “We don’t have these back home.” Brekken looks indignantly at me, then stretches a cautious hand up to pat the animal’s cheek. He’s clearly doing it for my benefit, and I have to choke back another laugh as the horse snorts and he flinches. “They’re so … large.”

  “Says the boy whose army rides giant wolves around,” I tease.

  “Our wolves aren’t nearly this big. And they don’t have sharp hooves.”

  I swallow a laugh. I shouldn’t be uncharitable—I know that in centuries past, Fiordenkill was at war with Tural, a world peopled by centaurs. You can still find the odd hoofprint in some of the caves beneath the inn. But that world was closed off sometime in the 1700s, so it’s hard to take Brekken’s fear seriously.

  “You and I have very different ideas of what’s dangerous.”

  I think again of the Silver Prince’s words as I go to the ladder that leads to the barn loft and climb up, reaching a second floor filled with hay. The walls are covered with rakes and old harrows and tools I don’t know the purpose of. A hole in the roof reveals the night sky. I swear there are somehow more stars above Havenfall than there are elsewhere, and the moon always seems to hang low. As if the heavenly bodies can sense the doorways at Havenfall and are huddling in close, hoping to catch a breeze from another world.

  As I plop down on a hay bale and wait for Brekken, it occurs to me why Marcus and I disagree. We, too, have different ideas of what constitutes danger. Marcus thinks it’s Havenfall, the soldiers and swords, cliffs and deep pools, the doorways in the cellar, the current of politics that simmers beneath everything, even as all the delegates drink and laugh together. And maybe that is dangerous. But not nearly as dangerous as staying in Sterling would be. I hate how everyone looks at me like I’m about to break or explode, making it feel like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing is as dangerous as the loneliness that wraps around me sometimes, as cold and real as an iron manacle.

  When Brekken climbs up too, the sudden silence rings loud. He stops and stands framed against the hole in the roof, a soldier’s silhouette, and for a second the expression on his face is strange, still and uncertain. We can hear the music and noise from the summit, distantly, but the two of us might as well be in another world. Memories swirl through my mind like petals on the wind: him as a boy, the two of us chasing beetles or climbing trees after birds’ nests. The bond between us is still there, but it’s changed into something taut and charged, something that steals my breath.

  But then he smiles, and unfastens his cloak, and it’s like no time has passed between us at all. He spreads it over the hay bale and comes to sit beside me, legs crossed. We’ve done this every summer for ten years, since he first appeared in Havenfall when he was seven. He was accompanying his delegate mother. It was the first summer after that horrible night. I was still shell-shocked after my mom’s arrest, after what happened to my brother.

  We were the youngest residents of Havenfall then, too young to be part of the festivities, so Marcus packed us away to my room. Our babysitter was a maid who slipped away after half an hour—but it didn’t matter. Brekken and I were already in our own little bubble, entranced with each other. I was more surprised that he seemed fascinated with me too. Not for the reasons I was already coming to expect from people. Not because he’d seen the picture of me in the news, my round face red and wet with tears as a bailiff pulled me from a courtroom, usually accompanied by Mom’s mug shot and the moniker “Goodwin Lane Killer.”

  This beautiful boy—even as a kid he was beautiful—was fascinated with me. My freckles and short fingers, my toys and love of horses that I’m pretty sure made him think for a while I was some sort of hero, facing up to those terrifying beasts. That first summer with him was the first time I felt like a person again, running around Havenfall and getting underfoot, teaching him knock-knock jokes (he never quite mastered the format), and exploring the woods around the inn, even though we weren’t allowed outside, because everyone thought a Solarian might still be on the loose.

  That entrancement’s never faded for me, but I’ve no idea if the same is true for Brekken as he sits across from me, deftly uncorking the wine bottle. I don’t know if he thinks about me when he’s not in Havenfall, when he’s going about his day, riding wolves or sharpening his sword or lying in bed in the barracks. I don’t know how he feels about a lot of things. But then he distracts me by reaching into a satchel on his belt and bringing something out. A gilt-paged book only as long and wide as his hand, bound in dark red silk that gleams in the moonlight. The language on the spine isn’t familiar to me, but a chill sweeps through me as Brekken translates.

  “Iavalar. Poems,” he says, looking up at me with a smile. He presses the volume into my hands, still warm from being close to his body. “By Stimarya, one of Myr’s most famous poets. Some people think her verse sentimental, but I’ve always loved it.”

  I blush, running my finger along the smooth edge of the book. “Thank you so much,” I whisper. Brekken has always brought me gifts from Fiordenkill, but they’re usually little trinkets, jeweled earrings or good-luck charms of tiny carved-stone animals or, when we were littler, pretty rocks or leaves he found in the woods. Nothing as personal as this before. “You’ll have to teach me what they mean.”

  “No need.” Brekken reaches over, opens the book and holds it open in my hand with two fingers. “I translated them already.”

  I look down, my skin heating at his closeness. Sure enough, the printed text of a poem in the strange language of Myr runs down the right page, but on the left, Brekken’s careful, compact handwriting fills the page with blue ink. I make out a few phrases—snow like fleece falls over us; the tender stars hang low—before Brekken laughs, low in his throat, and shuts the book.

  “Don’t read them now or I’ll be self-conscious.” He takes the book and slips it into my jacket pocket, an easy, familiar gesture. “How about you save them for the fall?”

  I shift my weight, pleased and embarrassed, and the loft floor creaks slightly under us. Maybe it’s Marcus’s words earlier—You know how people talk—or maybe it’s just how Brekken looks in his soldier’s uniform, the embroidery on his tunic accentuating the flare of his shoulders and the blue of his eyes.

  “Okay. But I didn’t get anything for you.”

  Not when I wasn’t sure if I was even coming to Havenfall until that last moment at the bus station.

  His eyes and teeth shine as he smiles. “That’s all right. I’m here, that’s enough.”

  I lean closer to him without quite meaning to. These three months with him every year are all I get. No pictures or videos to remember him by, and it’s not like I can talk about him to anyone at home. Yeah, I have a crush on this guy. He’s a fairy-elf-warrior type. Gorgeous, stoic, not much of a sense of humor, but that might be because they don’t have sarcasm in his world. And he doesn’t think I’m a freak, so that’s a plus.

  He produces a deck of cards from his breast pocket. It has gilt images on the back. “Cards of the Caves?” he asks, and I nod, because this is another of our traditions. A silly game, a kids’ game, but it makes my heart beat faster because it’s ours.

  “So,” he asks, grinning as he cuts the deck into two equal stacks and hands one to me. “Anything happen this year?”

  He puts one card down. Appropriately, it’s Fiordenkill, the white flowering tree on the back suggesting their blood and plant magic.

  It’s the same question he always asks, but there’s no way I’m telling him about the
thing, not at all. The words—death penalty—are cold, heavy, ugly, final. They have no place here under the stars, between us. I put down another card—Tural, from the centaur silhouette. Brekken grins and takes both cards, setting them down at his side. Fiordenkill beat Tural in that war, leading to the centaurs deciding to close off their portal. So it went in history, so it goes in the game.

  I shrug off the loss and throw the question back at him. “You tell me.” I pat the uniform cloak beneath us. Sleek black fur, like mink, ripples under my palm. “What does a soldier do in a queendom at peace?”

  I slap down another card and bite my lip to stop the shudder. It’s the picture of a silver goblet filled with wine, or maybe blood. It represents Solaria.

  “Soldiers are always needed.” Brekken takes a sip of wine, passes the bottle to me. “The High Court …” He trails off, his fingers brushing mine. “There always seems to be some sort of issue. Good to have an army on hand.” He glances up at me, and I try to ignore the undercurrent of something unreadable in his voice. “What was the Silver Prince talking about earlier? About you being unhappy?”

  He puts down another card, an insignia made of the four elements, for Byrn. This win is mine.

  My chest tightens. “It’s just my uncle.” Now it’s my turn to look down, not wanting to see Brekken’s reaction. “He thinks, I don’t know, that I don’t understand the risks of being here.” I remember the Silver Prince’s words earlier, delivered with such surety. Danger is familiar to you. “But I do. Understand, I mean. And I don’t care.”

  Brekken looks down, fiddling with the wine cork, flipping it between his fingers. “I always wondered, you know. Why do you keep coming back here, when this is where the Solarian monster got through, the one that …?” He doesn’t have to finish the sentence. We both know how it ends. The one that killed my brother.

  “Well, it’s not like Havenfall is more or less dangerous than anywhere else,” I say, going for lightness. “There could be Solarians anywhere on Earth—sorry, Haven—if they were here when the door to Solaria closed. And anyway, if there are any of them left, I think I’m safer here than anywhere else.” I punch him lightly on the arm. “Seeing as how I have a brave, strong soldier to protect me and all.”