by Sara Holland
I put on a smile as I straighten up. “Your Highness. Welcome to Havenfall.”
Enetta looks at me without recognition. She’s been here previous summers, but I’ve never gotten so close and I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; most delegates saw me as a child in years past, beneath notice.
“I’m sorry to hear the Innkeeper is unwell,” she says in her melodic, faintly accented voice. “I do always enjoy his stories. Such a curious world you have here.”
“He will be fine,” Graylin says firmly before I can reply.
I can’t tell whether it’s for Enetta’s benefit or mine or his own. But whatever it is, it seems to make the Silver Prince lose patience. Halfway across the room, he whirls, moving so fast that for an instant he’s only a metallic blur.
“You can’t know that,” he says. His eyes light on me. He didn’t even notice me come in. “Madeline, this princess”—the word drips with condescension—“shouldn’t have been allowed through. Movement through the doors will disturb the balance of the Realms further.”
I automatically step between them, surprised. He’s not wrong—using the doors too much destabilizes the magic of Havenfall that keeps all the doors in equilibrium. But we knew the princess was coming late, and it’s not her fault the doors have already been disturbed in the last twenty-four hours. And now he’s offended Enetta.
“How dare you?” she asks, rising from her chair. She’s almost as tall as he is, and her eyes seem to shimmer.
Graylin raises his hands beside me. “There’s no need for unpleasantness,” he says evenly, but I realize with a jolt that it’s me Enetta is looking at expectantly.
“It’s all right.” I lift my voice, glancing around to try to address everyone at once. “Princess Enetta knows that she is welcome at Havenfall anytime. She was expected.” I try to picture Marcus here in my place, try to hear the words he would use and mimic them. “The doors are safe.”
My gaze locks with the Prince’s as I finish the sentence. I hold it, trying to communicate to him with my eyes. Stay calm. Keep the peace. But he still looks wrathful. After a long, tense moment, the Silver Prince inclines his head. He sweeps out of the room and I let out a breath, careful not to let my relief show on my face.
It’s not the elegant, fair solution Marcus would have come up with.
But Marcus isn’t here. Only I am.
10
By the time I drag myself up the stairs to the staff wing that night, I’m exhausted. My head aches and my limbs are heavy as stone.
I push one of the hallway windows open with a creak, desperate for fresh air, and poke my head out and stare up, trying to draw strength or serenity from the gorgeous spread of stars above me. They look like thousands of diamonds scattered carelessly over blue velvet. The music from tonight’s dance still echoes in my head, an enchanting siren call. A part of me wants to keep drinking and dancing until this day is scrubbed from my head. But I know I can’t do that. The delegates can distract themselves with dresses and jewels, liquor and music, but I need to keep my head clear.
I don’t know how Marcus does this. After I got Princess Enetta settled in her suite and soothed her scorched pride over the Silver Prince’s treatment—you know how Byrnisians are, I’d told her, smiling like we had an inside joke, no manners—I had to rush off to “hear petitions and moderate grievances” in the dining hall, per the schedule. Then to dinner and dancing. All the while I had to keep a smile on my face; all the while I had to squash down any stray thoughts that crept in of Marcus, or Brekken, or what I’d found in the Heiress’s room.
She wasn’t in the dining hall at dinner, and though I glimpsed her across the ballroom once or twice when she was dancing, by the time I got out from behind the bar and wove my way through the crowd, she was gone.
What reason could she or Brekken possibly have to want the door to Solaria—a dark world, a hellscape, if Havenfall’s library books are to be trusted—open? And yet, how could Brekken stealing my keys and vanishing on that same night be a coincidence?
Now all the fear I pushed down all day bubbles back up with a vengeance, making my eyes burn. Fear, and anger too. Because if Marcus had trusted me sooner—if he’d let me help him with the day-to-day operations of the inn, like I’ve begged him to for years—I wouldn’t be so damn out of my depth now.
Most people are still downstairs dancing or working, so the hall is empty. I walk quietly, though, not wanting anyone to hear me and ask what I’m doing up here. I thought of telling Graylin about finding my lost keys in the Heiress’s desk, but I haven’t had a moment alone with him since this morning, and besides, I don’t want to heap more worry on top of his fear for Marcus. I want him to concentrate on fixing my uncle so that he can wake up and help us figure out how to seal the Solarian door so everything will go back to normal.
Please let everything go back to normal soon. I don’t think I can do this.
My knock on Taya’s door is soft, but she opens it right away. She smiles when she sees me, but it’s a guarded, grim sort of smile. She stands back to let me in, and the door falls shut behind me.
Her room is tiny. Since she was late coming to the inn, all the other staff got to choose rooms first, and she ended up with one that’s sparse, almost monk-like. Her bed is neatly made, her tattered backpack hanging off the foot of it, and a few shirts and pants are hung in the closet beside her bomber jacket. She’s wearing leggings and a thin, worn Rascal Flatts T-shirt, which has to be a hand-me-down. She doesn’t really seem like a Rascal Flatts kind of person.
The papers are stacked on her bedside table. I make a move toward them, but then the pressure behind my eyes rushes up again, and after a day of pushing it down, of smiling and shaking hands and assuring delegates that of course, of course my uncle will be fine, I suddenly can’t hold the tears back anymore. They flood my eyes all at once and swim there, blurring my vision. With my back to Taya, I blindly grab the papers and flip through them, trying to look busy while I furiously blink the tears away. But I feel my shoulders trembling.
“Maddie.” A small hand finds my shoulder. “Tell me the truth. Maybe I can help.”
Her voice is kind, with none of its normal snark, and it feels like a harpoon through me. I don’t turn around, don’t meet Taya’s eyes.
“You wouldn’t believe me.” The words spill out of me, too much, too fast.
“Try me. I’ve seen a lot of weird shit today.”
“I’m sorry, Taya, but I can’t.” I clutch the papers to my chest and nearly knock her chair over in my pivot toward the door.
But then Taya steps past me, faster than it seems like she should be able to. She stands between me and the door, her arms slightly spread and her face deadly calm. “No,” she says. “You’re not leaving this room until you tell me why.”
I stop, wiping my face with my sleeve. I hate that I’m crying and hate it more that I can’t stop. Marcus would never let any situation at the inn get to him like this. “I can’t. I really can’t. I’m sorry.”
“What if I told you I already know?”
That catches me off guard, my breath hitching. She read the papers.
“I read the papers,” she confirms.
Should have seen that one coming, Maddie, I think distantly.
But didn’t I? I knew it was a possibility when I gave her the papers, and I did it anyway. Maybe a small part of me wanted her to snoop, if only so I could finally talk to someone.
“So … what’s in them?” I ask carefully, or as carefully as I can through tears and a plugged nose.
“Where to start?” she says with a laugh. “One, that there are other worlds. That there are doorways to those other worlds right below our feet.” She points down, at—or past, I guess—her scuffed combat boots. “I wish I’d met your uncle. He seems like a cool guy.” She’s smiling, but I can’t figure out the implications of it. Does she think it’s a joke? Some kind of prank?
“I asked some of the other staff,” she goes on, �
�and they told me to talk to Willow. So I did. And she told me it was all true. That she meant to tell me earlier, on the first night; that she told everyone else. And that’s why everyone’s just going around like everything is normal. When there’s people downstairs with scales on their cheeks.”
I take a deep breath, a tentative relief starting to unfurl in me. “So you know about the realms? And you don’t think we’re all batshit crazy?”
She shrugs, a deceptively casual gesture. She paces toward me and sits on the edge of her bed, the old mattress creaking beneath her. The lamplight does nice things to her face, easing the sharpness and the shadows.
“I have a twin brother,” she says softly. “Terran. When my parents died, we were split up and put into different foster homes. I haven’t seen him since I was four. But I remember the stories he used to make up.”
I open my mouth, about to say something trite like I’m sorry, but Taya shakes her head at me to let her finish. “He always talked about a place like this, a palace that held doorways to a million worlds. So when I read those papers … I don’t know, it seemed like fate or something.”
She smiles ruefully, like she expects me not to believe her, when I’m the one holding my breath, riveted. “Ever since Roswell, I always figured we aren’t alone in the universe.”
She quirks one eyebrow to show me she’s at least half-joking. And I feel myself smiling back through the tears drying on my cheeks.
“We’re definitely not,” I say after a moment of contemplative silence. “Except I guess it would be the multiverse, not a universe.”
“Semantics,” she says, but she smiles. “What I’m saying is that if you’re crazy, I am too. I believe you.”
And it’s that easy, that simple to share the truth of the Adjacent Realms with another person.
I think of all the hours I spent as a little kid trying to explain it to my dad, and knowing he just thought I was making it all up. Now a weight seems to lift off my chest, just a little. It’s good to be believed. To be understood.
“So now we’ve established that, wanna tell me what’s wrong?” Taya says. She moves to sit cross-legged on the bedspread, the smile fading off her face.
“It’s a long story.” I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat. “Can I sit?”
Taya gestures wordlessly toward the armchair in the corner; I sink into it and draw my knees up to my chest. I tell her the SparkNotes version of everything that’s happened since we arrived at Havenfall, leaving out most of the strands I still don’t understand—the disappearance of the Silver Prince’s manservant and Brekken. I tell her that there’s a world full of monsters, the long-dormant door to that world cracked open again, and something got through.
Her eyes flicker, unreadable through it all, but she doesn’t speak. Not until I tell her about the Silver Prince seeing Brekken in the tunnels.
“What if he was wrong?” she asks, resting her chin on her folded hands. “Or lying?”
I blink. Of all the questions she could ask, I wasn’t expecting that one. “About seeing Brekken? Why would he lie, though?”
She shrugs. “Dunno. But you said you’ve known Brekken forever. I just heard a bit of your talk with this Prince guy in the reception room, but he seemed kind of pissed about the Fiord princess being there.”
“Fiorden,” I correct. I fiddle with a hangnail, tugging at it until it hurts. “Clearly I have a habit of trusting the wrong people. Maybe I should just assume that to be the case, going forward.” A bitter chuckle escapes my lips, and a question rises in my mind: do I trust the Prince?
The truthful answer is I don’t know. He’s charming, a little too much so. Slick. But he saved his people. He leads them. If the Byrnisians trust him, what business do I have questioning him? I don’t have any reason not to trust him.
“Okay, here’s the thing.” Taya speaks after a long moment, sounding suddenly, strangely uncomfortable. She looks between the papers and me, as if deciding whether to share something. “I read up on Solarians a bit.” She reaches down and opens the nightstand drawer to reveal a book, hidden where the Bible would be if this were a regular hotel. It’s leather-bound, yellowed, the embossed title reading A History of the Solarian Realm.
“There’s nothing in there about eating people,” she says. “Sucking souls, yeah, but nothing about—you know.” Her nose wrinkles in distaste. “Does it make sense that there would be nothing at all left of the Prince’s bodyguard guy?”
“There was a lot of blood,” I say automatically, thinking about the horrible stickiness on my hands and clothes. But then I remember—it was blue blood, not red. Was there red anywhere? Maybe Sal or Graylin or Willow cleaned the worst of it up before I got to the tunnels?
A shudder rips through me at the thought, as I imagine red blood staining Havenfall ground. Red like in the kitchen that night. We never found Nate’s body either.
I take a deep breath, picturing clean air filling me and shoving the gruesome thoughts away. “The Silver Prince has more reason than anyone to want to find the truth,” I say, maybe a little too fiercely. “Bram was his friend.”
“Okay, it was just a thought.” Taya slips off the bed to pace in front of the window.
“Brekken stole my keys,” I point out.
“We don’t know that for sure.” She gazes out at the mountaintops. “You had them and then you didn’t.”
“And then they were in the Heiress’s room.” I feel my mouth tug down, remembering.
Taya perks up. “Maybe you just dropped them somewhere, or she took them in the ballroom.” She pauses, her eyes far away. “Do you think she opened the door to Solaria?”
I shrug. “I don’t know how she could have. I thought only a Solarian could do it. But it seems like she’s involved somehow.”
And why would she be? Academic curiosity? Some kind of vendetta against Marcus because of whatever they were fighting about last year?
Fear settles cold into my insides, bringing with it the threat of memory—bloody kitchen, broken glass. I don’t want to get sucked in, so I make myself get up and move to the bedside table, where I leaf through the papers we stole from the Heiress’s room.
“Did they say anything else?” I ask, turning to Taya.
Taya raises her eyebrows at me, as if to say, obviously. She perches on the windowsill, her back to the moon and the mountains, her legs swinging off the edge. “I think the Heiress is smuggling something between the Realms.”
I feel colder. “What do you mean? What would she be smuggling?” But the images from inside her room stick in my head. The piles of trinkets, several college educations’ worth of silver just lying around. And the drawers full of cash.
Taya comes over and taps her fingers on the top page of the papers we stole. It looks like something torn out of an old-fashioned ledger, with descriptions of objects written in the Heiress’s careful writing.
Silver teapot with vine handle.
Pendant with silver chain and Byrn-diamond stone.
Plain silver ring.
And so on, with eye-popping amounts of money corresponding on the other side.
That’s not the strangest thing, though. Beside each object is a symbol in green ink, almost like a hieroglyph. As I run my pointer finger over the column, Taya leans over and pulls another sheet of paper out of the pile, flattening it under the lamplight.
“Here’s the key to what that all means.”
Sure enough, the page she’s holding replicates the symbols beside the descriptions of the objects. And—my stomach drops—each one seems to represent a kind of magic from one of the Adjacent Realms. Blood healing—that’s Fiorden. Wind-wielding, rain-calling—Byrnisian. Wakefulness—Fiorden again. And on and on. There have got to be three dozen symbols on this page.
“She’s trading magic,” Taya whispers, almost reverent. “Maybe that’s why she would want the door open? Another world to trade with?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I mumble, half to mysel
f. Solarians are monsters; surely the Heiress couldn’t be trading with them.
But that’s not right. Whatever can be said about the Solarians, they were once welcome guests at Havenfall alongside the Fiordens and Byrnisians. They participated in the trading of goods between the worlds just like everyone else. They were our allies, right up until the day they turned on us.
But surely the Heiress knows they aren’t to be trusted?
I sit down on the bed, my heart racing, trying to make sense of this. I’ve heard rumors among the delegates of magical objects before—enchanted swords or cups or rings, carrying Adjacent magic inside them. Just like on Earth we have stories of grails or swords pulled from stones. Marcus always dismissed them as old wives’ tales. He insisted Fiorden and Byrnisian magic runs through its people’s blood. It can’t be separated from them.
But what if the rumors are true?
“Weird,” I say, but instead of coming out light and airy, my voice cracks on the word. I keep coming back to the same conclusion: I have to close the Solarian door as soon as possible, to keep anyone and anything from getting out or in. As long as the door’s open, the inn is vulnerable, a gaping wound right below our feet.
Taya, now leaning against the desk—it’s like she can’t sit still or stay in one place—looks up. “What is it?”
“It’s only …” I clear my throat and gather my thoughts. Buying time, I drop the papers on the nightstand and line up their edges carefully. “I still kind of can’t believe that you believe me. About everything.”
