by Sara Holland
I move through the inn, oblivious to its inhabitants, to the voices calling for me to slow down or watch out or explain what’s happening.
I dart down hallways and around corners and leap down the hidden stairwell at the back, three steps at a time, until I stand at the juncture—the open space where the tunnels to all the different doorways intersect, each of the dozens of tunnel mouths around me inviting me into different worlds.
Though the tunnel mouths are unmarked, I know them all, could navigate them in my sleep. Cold fresh air, incongruous this far underground, seeps out from my left. There’s the tunnel that contains the door to Fiordenkill. A gust of icy wind, smelling of snow and ocean salt, blasts out and snowflakes get in my eyes, melting and running down my cheeks like tears. If I went left, I’d see a bright white sky, the peaks of a castle. Then another gust lashes me from the right, this one hot and dry, smelling like molten metal. If I went down that tunnel, I’d see a metallic city, silvery buildings against an orange sky, the last city in a ravaged world—not by industry like here, but by magic. Then there are tunnels that lead to closed doors, empty sockets to nothing, yawning portals to worlds that fell apart or were closed off hundreds or thousands of years ago.
I thought Solaria was one of them. Dead, safe.
I run forward into the Solarian tunnel as my vision blurs with tears, adrenaline battling with exhaustion as I descend. My legs feel about to give out, and every breath burns my throat. The Solarian tunnel is dark and slopes down, so far down I can almost feel the weight of the mountain pressing on my chest. I take out my cell phone to see by. And I see not a stone wall, but something else.
A crack.
A fissure in the expanse of rock, shadows swarming beyond it.
Claw marks score the stone on either side.
The door to Solaria is cracked open.
7
A pale, long-fingered hand closes around my arm, and my heart seizes. I tear free and spin around to see Willow’s face, white in the dark.
“Maddie,” she says, breathless. “Come back. It’s not safe to be here.”
“How many Solarians got through?” I hear my own voice as though through water, strange and distant.
“Maddie—”
“How many?”
“I don’t know,” Willow says, her Oasis accent slipping through in her fear. “No one knows. Come back now.”
I turn back to the doorway and look at the crack in the smooth stone. My body feels stiff and cold, hard to control. The opening to Solaria—a crack scarcely a finger’s width across, bleeding darkness—calls to me in the same way that cliff edges sometimes do, whispering dark thoughts into my head. Come closer. Step over. What’s on the other side? There’s motion in it, malevolent life. I think I can hear something from the other side too, a distant, low thrumming like the breath of some giant beast.
“We need guards here,” I say dumbly as Willow drags me back toward Marcus’s office. “We have to stop anything else from getting through. We need to seal it shut again.”
I don’t say out loud the fear hanging in my mind, that something already has gotten through—something besides the monster dead on the floor. Who was down here tonight? Someone is dead. And Brekken, Brekken—
I cut off the thought as Willow and I reach the office. Graylin, Sal, and the Silver Prince all look up as the door slams shut behind us. Graylin’s hands are raised flat over Marcus like he’s a puppet master and the glittering magic in the air is his show. But my uncle is still unconscious. Sal paces with his hands in his pockets. Someone’s shoved the carpet-wrapped corpse off to the side, and the Silver Prince sits in the now-upright armchair, his elegant posture at odds with the blue blood on his boots. Tension hangs in the air and in the men’s steely expressions. I get the sense that I’ve walked into an argument and the echoes have only just faded.
The Silver Prince levels his gaze at me—not suspicious exactly, but curious, evaluative. He saw Brekken and me together in the ballroom. Does he remember us holding hands, or the way Brekken stepped protectively in front of me?
I can’t let my mind stray to Brekken now, or I won’t be able to think, or figure out what to do next. I lean against the wall, trying to focus on the feel of cold stone against my shoulders, as Sal takes his leave, saying something about moving more staff to guard duty, so people are watching the juncture at all times.
“How do we shut the door?” I hear myself say, once it’s just Graylin, Willow, the Silver Prince, and Marcus’s unconscious form left in the office.
Everyone turns to me. I don’t like the looks on their faces. From stricken (Willow) to scared (Graylin) to pitying (the Silver Prince), they all look like they know something I don’t. I zero in on Graylin, the most familiar face in the room—except for Marcus, that is, but he’s still out cold.
“Graylin, you’re a scholar.” I hate the edge of pleading I can hear in my voice. “Annabelle and her forces closed the Solarian door a hundred years ago, after the first attack. How did they do it?”
I don’t think he has an answer. I can tell from the dismay on his face, but I need to hear him say it.
“We don’t know,” he replies quietly. “No one knows.”
My knees go weak. I press harder against the wall to stay upright, tears burning behind my lids. Part of an Innkeeper’s job is to keep meticulous records of everything. I’ve lost count of how many times Marcus has impressed that upon me. “How is that possible?”
“Annabelle didn’t want people to have that knowledge,” Graylin goes on softly. “She was afraid that if anyone else knew how to close the doors, it would open Havenfall up to infighting and wrongful alliances. She closed the door to Solaria and kept the how a secret her entire life.”
I rub my eyes, stunned. The door to Solaria is open. Nothing at all between us and a world full of monsters who can take any shape, walk wherever they wish. And because of the shortsightedness of one Innkeeper a hundred years ago, we don’t know how to close it.
“The screaming,” I hear myself say.
The Silver Prince cocks his head at me.
“I heard it. Everyone did.” It occurs to me that I don’t know who was screaming. Was it the Prince’s dead servant? Marcus? No. That’s another place I can’t go right now. “What do we tell the delegates? The staff?”
Willow worries her lip. “Not the truth, not yet,” she says. “That will cause panic.”
I’ve never seen her so discomposed before, and a sharp pang of unexpected pity goes through me. This isn’t like the normal problems she faces, drunken fights between delegates or lackadaisical staff sneaking off to do God knows what in dark corners. She can’t fix this with a few soothing words or well-placed glares. This was a threat to Havenfall, Havenfall which is as much her home as it is mine. Maybe more so. She has nowhere else to go.
After a few moments of silence, Graylin speaks up. “There was that boy,” he says, “last year, who decided it would be a wonderful idea to sneak past Sal and into Fiordenkill.”
“Jayden,” I supply weakly. I remember the frostbite incident, but I don’t see where Graylin is going with this.
“We could say another staff member went through a doorway and got themselves injured,” Graylin says heavily. It sounds like it costs him to say it—I know how he prizes honesty. But his eyes flicker down to Marcus, and I see his shoulders settle and square.
He looks at me, and I nod. It’s a good idea.
Willow frowns but nods too. “I’ll tell them a new recruit got through the Byrn door. Got caught up in a solar storm.”
I nod, imagining the Byrnisian solar storms Willow’s told me about, where the atmosphere thins enough for the deadly heat of their two suns to pierce straight through. Numbly, I improvise an end to the story: “They made it back through the doorway, but we had to send them straight to the hospital.”
“So the summit will continue?” the Silver Prince inquires. His fury has cooled and now he seems the calmest of all of us, his voice light and level eve
n as we stand over the corpse of the monster that ate his friend.
The sound of it chases away the panic a little, and I turn to look at him, studying the sharp, still angles of his face.
His magic tamed the storms that had nearly destroyed a whole continent. Surely with his help we can devise a way to close the door. The only other choice, as far as I can see, is to call the whole thing off—end the summit and send everybody home to their respective realms. But it would have to be tonight, while it’s still the solstice. And I can’t stand the thought of Marcus waking to find the inn empty and dead. We can fix this—we will fix this.
“Yes,” I say. My voice only comes out even because my panic has morphed into numbness, but the others don’t need to know that. “We’ll say the commotion was caused by a staff member, and post guards in the tunnels until we figure out how to reseal the door. There’s no need to send everyone into a stampede when the Solarian is dead.”
Assuming that was the only one that got through. I’m careful not to look at the bloody carpet-wrapped mound in the corner.
Willow looks grim but determined. “All right,” she says. “I’ll spread the word.” Then she’s away, hurrying off and leaving the office door open to the dark tunnel.
Anxiety crashes over me anew, but I know Willow carries a knife; she can defend herself. I hurry to close the office door with shaking hands. Somewhere down toward the juncture, I can hear Sal speaking to the guards, his indistinct voice echoing up to us. Now that I have my feet under me, I go to Graylin’s side, reaching for Marcus’s wrist to search out his pulse. It’s there, but weak. A new fear washes over me.
“What if he’s not awake by tomorrow?” I murmur to Graylin, very aware of the Silver Prince’s eyes resting on us both. “The summit is starting. The delegates need him.”
Everything that happens at Havenfall hinges on the presence on the Innkeeper. Marcus makes announcements every morning and evening at breakfast and dinner. He attends all the official summit functions—meetings and negotiations that require a neutral presence to moderate between Fiorden and Byrnisian interests. He resolves disputes. The whole point of the summit is to put the most important people from all the Realms in the same room, to ensure continued peace between the worlds. But that can’t happen without Marcus.
Plus—and I can barely bring myself to articulate this even to myself—he’s my uncle. The only family on Mom’s side I have left, the only person who I can talk to, really talk to, about Mom and Nate. If anything happened to him …
Graylin puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it—”
“No.” The word, soft but commanding, comes from the Silver Prince. He’s on his feet now. Looking not at Graylin, but at me.
“What good will come of waiting?” he asks us. “A leaderless society is a vulnerable one. There are plans to be made. We must close the Solarian door.”
I look to Graylin instinctively, but he shakes his head. “It can’t be someone from another Realm,” he says softly. “The laws are clear about that. The Innkeeper—or anyone acting in the Innkeeper’s stead”—he swallows, but goes on—“has to be neutral. Has to be human.”
I sense the direction of his words, and panic reignites, flaring in my stomach. “Sal,” I say. “Sal could do it …” I’m not ready. Not yet.
The Silver Prince steps forward. His face and voice are softer when he speaks to me.
“Madeline,” he says. “I was younger than you are now when I erected the barrier around Oasis. Youth is nothing if you have a clever mind and a strong heart.”
But I don’t have either of those things, I want to say. If I were strong, if I were clever, everything would be different. My family would still be here. Maybe Brekken would still be here, if I had been sharper-eyed, kept better track of what his hands were doing in the hayloft. I could have stopped him, made him explain himself.
“I’m sure Marcus will wake up soon,” Graylin says, squeezing my shoulder with his left hand, while his right still streams magic down into Marcus’s chest. “But until then, we’ll be with you every step of the way, Maddie.”
“You won’t be alone,” the Silver Prince echoes. There’s something about the way he’s looking at me, steady, intense, that feels like an anchor.
I swallow, laying Marcus’s wrist carefully down at his side. To give myself time to consider, and to have something to do with my hands, I bend and gather some of the scattered papers from Marcus’s desk, carefully avoiding touching any of the sticky blue blood staining the floor.
It makes sense, I guess, why someone from another Realm can’t lead Havenfall. Tensions between the magic-gifted worlds have flickered and shifted over the centuries like tides; most recently, in the nineteenth century, before the city of Oasis was built around the Byrnisian doorway, the ruinous climate of that world sometimes spilled through into Haven and the other worlds. Gouts of flame or ice or toxic, blistering wind, strong enough to fill the tunnels and wipe out anyone unlucky enough to be passing through at the moment.
Back then, Fiorden and Solarian delegates entered a secret alliance to close off the door to Byrn forever. Byrnisian delegates caught them in the act, and it sparked a battle that led to a dozen dead delegates on both sides. The Innkeeper at the time—whoever held the post before my ancestor Annabelle—stopped the violence with a hasty treaty: the door would remain open provided that Byrn weathermakers were posted there at all times to keep the passageway safe. But it’s clear that the Silver Prince has never forgiven the short-lived Fiorden–Solarian plot to cut his world off from the Realms.
And Brekken. He’s gone, and so are my keys, and that can’t be good. It definitely doesn’t look good. What could my friend possibly have to do with this? His face flashes through my mind, his laughing smile as he stepped away from me at my door. The lightness of my pocket where the office keys are missing. Our kiss, his hands on me, under my clothes.
It doesn’t square with the boy who carried shiny polished stones or bits of brightly colored eggshells or books of poetry in his pockets, all the way from another world, just to give them to me.
My eyes blur with tears, a drop falling on a piece of paper as I pick it up, some kind of handwritten receipt. Marcus is so careful, so conscientious of his responsibility to keep the peace. Please let him wake up.
The Silver Prince’s voice comes softly, breaking me out of my spiral of thoughts. “Madeline?”
Get it together, Maddie. People are depending on you.
I take a deep breath, stand and lift my chin. Fear rages in my chest, but I can’t let that rule me. Solarians took my mother and brother from me. I won’t lose Havenfall too.
“Okay,” I say to the room. I meet the Prince’s steady gaze, drawing some comfort from knowing Graylin is behind me. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
The Silver Prince nods and leans casually against the bookshelf, folding his arms. He doesn’t seem discomfited by the Solarian corpse at his feet. “My advisor, Bram, and I were leaving the ballroom earlier tonight when we saw a Fiorden soldier heading toward the tunnels. It didn’t seem right, so we followed.”
I swallow hard. “And you’re sure it was Brekken of Myr? The soldier we spoke to in the ballroom?”
I strive to keep my voice casual. I spoke to lots of people in the ballroom tonight. The Prince doesn’t know there’s anything special between me and Brekken. I want to keep it that way—I don’t want anyone to know, not until I’ve untangled what’s going on.
The Prince gives me a considering gaze. “Yes, fairly sure. Red hair and red jewels in his ears.” His tone says he is entirely sure, even if he’s trying to be tactful.
Even though I expected that answer, it’s still a blow. My stomach sinks, and I lean back against Marcus’s desk, gripping the papers so tightly they crumple beneath my fingers. All the feelings I had kissing Brekken float back to me, but now they’re twisted and corrupt, heady joy turning to sick dizziness, the butterflies
in my gut dissolving into nausea.
I work hard to keep my voice even and ask the Silver Prince, “And then what happened? What did you see at the juncture?”
“The soldier went into the Solarian tunnel.” The Silver Prince drops his gaze, clear regret crossing his face. “I didn’t follow. I didn’t think there was any danger in it. I thought—just a dare from a fellow soldier, or a girl …”
I think of Marcus earlier, warning me against being seen with Brekken. If he did have something to do with this and anyone finds out about the kiss, I’ll be shut out of talks like this, out of piecing together what happened with the Solarian door. No one will trust me to be neutral. No one will trust me, period.
“What did you and Bram do?” I ask.
The Prince lowers his head into his hands. Regret looks strange and incongruous on him. “I checked in the Innkeeper’s office while Bram went to intercept the boy, and I found it like this.” He looks up and waves a hand around, indicating the open drawers, the evidence of the place having been searched. “Then I heard a scream from down the hall. I ran out and found that thing—and no Bram. Just his sword.” He points at the carpet-wrapped corpse; his voice trembles with righteous anger. “I slew the beast, but it was far too late. And the Fiorden boy was gone. He must have opened the door to Solaria and then escaped back to Fiordenkill.”
My stomach turns over, swirling with sickness and questions. How could Brekken have opened the door when it’s been closed for almost a century? He has no reason, no ability. And yet, why else would he have been down here? Why would he take my keys?
And that brings a whole new tangle of questions to the surface: If Brekken lied to me, how deep did it go? Was everything between us just a ploy, a setup? My throat constricts as I glance at Marcus’s unconscious form. I’m sorry. You were right. The rise and fall of his chest is scarcely perceptible. I will him to move, to wake. But he doesn’t.
“We shouldn’t take rash action,” I say, trying to sound braver than I feel. “We don’t know enough about what happened to place blame. Not yet, anyway. We need to keep everyone calm and find a way to secure the door. Sal should look through Brekken’s room to see if he left any sign of what he might—or might not—have been up to. And we can sweep the grounds to make sure no other Solarians escaped.”
