Havenfall

by Sara Holland

  When we get to the ballroom, there are already more than a dozen delegates there—mostly Byrnisians, but a few of the remaining Fiordens too, and a handful of human security guards. Sal and his team of guards are standing in a circle in the middle of the room, facing outward to keep the small crowd back.

  Behind them I see the tops of iron bars, rising and converging. I can’t see much else, but my body knows. It tells me in the racing of my heart, the sweat gathering at my palms and trickling down my back, and the sick twisting in my stomach.

  Solarian.

  Predator.

  Enemy.

  The Silver Prince stands off to the side, talking with Willow. He catches my eye when the Heiress and I walk in and gives a small smile. Not proud or elated, just a small acknowledgment of me, as if in catching the beast at last he is doing only what’s expected of a leader of Havenfall. That’s what he wants.

  He lifts his hand and gestures toward the cage, an invitation for us to come forward, and the crowd parts as if by magic.

  My feet seem to have a mind of their own. They carry me forward. This isn’t like the encounter in the forest, when adrenaline and the need to fight kept true fear at bay. Now I only feel fear. I sense everyone’s eyes on me and I know people are looking, waiting to see how I’ll react. The ballroom around me is dim and fuzzy, and sound becomes muted, like it’s reaching me through a wall of water. The only thing that’s clear is the monster in front of me.

  The Solarian.

  The cage wall cuts up my view of it, thick metal bars interspersing a long curve of blue fur. The monster is on its side with its back to me, its blood-matted fur crushed against the polished tile floor. Muscles ripple under its skin as it breathes, but the motion is shuddering, trembling. Its head is tucked against its chest, its tail lying limply on the ground. Its shoulder is wounded, torn open by some jagged blade, and I can’t look too long at the wet blue-black flesh beneath without feeling sick. Smears of blue blood mark the floor around the Solarian, and, I realize, trail all the way from the door of the ballroom. There are blue footprints on the tile where the crowd walked in Solarian blood. It’s on my shoes.

  Has the Prince dragged the Solarian in all the way from the forest? Why has he brought it here for us all to gawk at, rather than locking it up secure in the tunnels? Why didn’t he just kill it?

  Guilt spears through me, and I check those thoughts, digging my fingernails into my palms. If I’ve learned anything over the past week, it’s that my gut can’t be trusted. My instincts lead me wrong. The Silver Prince was the one, in the end, who finally brought the beast down, and if he thinks we can learn anything by it, I can’t let my squeamishness get in his way.

  That would make me no better than Marcus, forgetting what the Solarians really are. And with the beast captured, at least that means Taya is safe. For all my anger with her, I’m glad about that. Hopefully she’s on a bus by now, headed somewhere far away from here.

  I turn to find the Silver Prince, only to realize he’s already right behind me. I didn’t hear him approach at all. I feel a drop of sweat slide down my spine, but I force myself to get it together.

  “Thank you,” I say, gesturing blindly to the Solarian. “For getting the job done.”

  I hate how I sound. Weak, trembling. No one would look at the two of us and think I was the Innkeeper.

  But the Silver Prince just nods with his usual graciousness. “I thought the hunting parties might have been scaring it off, so I went to the woods alone.”

  And sure enough, I can see the toll the fight took on the Prince. I see the scratches of branches across his face, and the way he’s favoring his left leg. He went after the beast alone. He risked everything to do what I couldn’t.

  And all at once, I know what has to come next.

  Being the Innkeeper means doing what’s right for Havenfall no matter what. Even if it shames you. Even if the words taste soap-bitter on their way out.

  “I’ve made my decision,” I say. “I’ll write Fiordenkill out. I’ll accept your alliance.”

  19

  The Silver Prince calls a council meeting afterward. He invites me to come, but I make up some excuse about checking on Marcus. I know it’s a coward’s way out, but I can’t stand the thought of sitting next to the Prince in Marcus’s office and pretending I still have anything under control.

  I can’t stop thinking about Brekken—about how he would feel if he knew what I’ve just done. The severing of our official alliance with Fiordenkill feels more than just political. It feels like I’ve cut off a limb. All the dreams I’ve had of one day seeing Brekken’s home with my own eyes—the aurora’s curtains of light in the sky, the great wolves that fly across snow without breaking the frozen surface, the ice palace blazing with reflected stars—vanished. With the signing of one page of paper, the shake of the Silver Prince’s hand, I’ve slammed the door on my oldest friend, burned the bridge between our worlds. I’ve given up on the last person who really knew me for me. Who loved me for me.

  Or so I thought.

  I feel sick.

  It takes everything in me to walk, not run, from the growing crowd in the ballroom. With the threat of danger gone, the delegates are laughing and gasping at the caged Solarian, or exclaiming over the Prince’s brave deeds. The mood in Havenfall has definitely shifted.

  But all I can focus on is the smell of blood, the blue stains on the floor. The violence of it. I keep my back straight and my chin high, but I need to get away. From the Prince, from the Solarian, from everything. Why is it that the whole scene disgusts me? That the sight of the Solarian is burned behind my eyelids? Why can I imagine its gaze boring into mine?

  People pass me, smiling and laughing more than I’ve seen in days, on their way to see the Solarian. I hoist a smile onto my face, but I keep my eyes to the ground and walk faster so no one stops me.

  When I see Willow on the other end of a hall, I take a sharp left, weaving through the staff halls instead. I can’t face her. I can’t face anyone. I dearly wish Taya were here. I feel like she’d get it if anyone would—but she’s not here. I drove her away. Where was she even going? Did she get there safely? It causes a stab of pain to think that after everything, I didn’t even get her freaking number.

  When it’s finally quiet and I allow myself to look up, I find myself in the Solarian wing. I glance over my shoulder to see the stairwell entrance with its hastily made covering, the one pine board that always hung loose lying in the dust. I don’t even remember taking it down. The floral wallpaper around me is peeling with age, revealing warped oak beneath, and the light filtering down from the skylights above is choked with dust.

  I look ahead again, afraid to go any farther, but something stops me from turning back.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I whisper to myself, like that’ll help. The Solarian is caught; we’ll figure out a way to reseal the door; Havenfall is safe. I should be happy. It shouldn’t matter that it was the Silver Prince who brought the monster down. I’m not that vain to prioritize my own pride over everyone’s safety. I can’t be.

  No. There’s something else, something deeper and ugly. Something I’m afraid to look at too closely.

  Pity. Pity for the Solarian, caged and bleeding.

  I push a breath out through my teeth, disgusted with myself. That beast almost killed me. It took a bite out of Taya’s shoulder; it’s the same kind of monster that killed Nate. Yet it still turned my stomach to see it caught.

  No one knew how dangerous they were, the Heiress said.

  Marcus didn’t. But I do.

  I’ve never liked it up here in the abandoned wing. The air feels thick with ghosts, and I almost imagine I can still smell the blood that was spilled all those years ago. This hall’s floor plan is the same as the one where I live a floor below, but the doors are taller to account for occupants’ beast forms. The doors are all closed, but I can imagine Solarian guests waiting just behind them.

  My eyes are drawn t
o the door that sits above my own. The carpet of dust in front of it is thick, perfect—no one’s been inside for years, maybe decades. I’m sure Willow doesn’t know how dusty it is up here, that she just takes the staff at their word that they’ve cleaned.

  The dust reminds me of Nate. When we were little kids and the first snow would fall, we would scramble over each other in our effort to be the first out the door, the first one to mark the clean spread of white with our footprints.

  Without really meaning to, I turn the knob. The door isn’t locked. It creaks and opens under my touch into shadowy dimness.

  I go inside, feeling like someone is pulling puppet strings attached to my limbs. I don’t know what I was expecting as my eyes adjust. It’s just a bedroom, the same as mine, but without all the trappings of a life, the desk and books, scattered clothes and blankets that make my room mine, the documentation of me.

  It’s weird to think of a Solarian living here. I know they spent most of their time at Havenfall in their human forms, but I can’t picture that, just the beast I saw in the woods and in the cage. I can’t imagine such a creature choosing instead to look human, moving through these small rooms and narrow halls, knowing all the while that the power of claws and teeth is living inside them. It makes me wonder if maybe there’s a grain of truth in what Taya said before they left. That maybe the Solarians were just like everyone else; that maybe they only wanted to be left alone.

  But that doesn’t explain what happened to Nate or the gruesome incident that caused the door to Solaria to be sealed in the first place.

  I sink down on the bed, the dark blue coverlet dusty but neatly tucked in. The floorboards creak exactly the same way as they do in my room below. And suddenly, something occurs to me.

  There is a small space in the back of my closet, an alcove created by some oddity of the plumbing, too small for any real storage but big enough to hold—and hide—whatever my secret treasures were each summer. Books stolen from the Sterling public library, punk rock CDs passed down from Marcus and an old Walkman from Dad, shiny black stones from Fiordenkill that Brekken gave me. Nate’s jacks, pretty leaves, and Brekken’s poems. I get up to see if this room has it too.

  The closet is empty, but I can see that the same floorboard hangs crookedly, secured by one loose nail. I pull my canvas jacket sleeve over my fingers and use it to grab the nail and wiggle it free.

  And then I stifle a gasp.

  A five-sided box sits in the hiding space in the floor, its lid covered with ornate carvings. It’s formed from something that looks like wood except for its rich dark purple color, kept away from the dust and still shining.

  Moving fully on autopilot now, I carry the box over to the bed. It’s heavy. I set it down, the mattress sinking beneath it with a small puff of dust.

  It opens with only a soft protest. Inside, a thick silver bangle rests on a bed of velvet. I take it out and turn it over. It’s beautiful, simple, with a subtle braided pattern in the pearlescent Haven silver.

  Then I see the note. A small envelope of fine cream paper, tucked into the fold of the velvet.

  Guilt trickles through me as I reach for it, but I push the feeling away. Whatever this is, it belonged to a Solarian. They lived here and they killed people. That is their legacy. Whoever—whatever creature—left this, I don’t owe them any privacy.

  But the handwriting I unfold looks human. Old-fashioned, the paper yellowed, the script hurried and slanted, almost running off the page.

  Annabelle,

  You were right to want the do or closed. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. Keep this safe; a part of me is bound to it. It may be the last bit of me to survive.

  There’s no signature. But—Annabelle.

  That’s my great-great-grandmother’s name.

  A part of me is bound to it.

  It hits me all at once, so suddenly it’s like someone told me the truth long ago and I just forgot it up until now.

  It’s not some long-lost people who have the power to bind magic to silver.

  It’s Solarians.

  Shock wipes my mind blank as I stagger from the room and force my way out of the Solarian wing, stumbling down the hidden staircase at the back of the hall. I’ve lost time wandering the Solarian rooms. Soon, the Heiress will be meeting with her contact, Whit, in town. I have to let her know what I’ve found.

  As I burst into the cool evening air, heading to the stables for my bike, I feel the weight of the bangle around my wrist, the broken talisman that lets me through the Silver Prince’s perimeter stuffed in my pocket. The silver seems to thrum with power, sending electric tingles into my bones and up my arm. Maybe I shouldn’t have put it on.

  I bike the narrow path that leads through the trees on the far side of the garden, sure that at any moment the Solarian will burst through the trees, but it doesn’t. I stop at the perimeter, the place where the air blurs, the line where the forest shimmers, like a mirage coming off a baking hot highway. I grip the handlebars of my bike tight and take a deep breath, and then step forward.

  The air thickens around me and in my lungs, and my body grows heavy, and each step is a herculean effort, like I’m dragging myself through quicksand. My heart thuds painfully hard just to push blood through my veins. I squeeze my eyes shut, hating the feeling of the pressure clamping down on my skull.

  But then it’s over. The crystal bracelet the Silver Prince gave me must carry magic too, somehow. And I didn’t even think to give it a second thought before now.

  My mind races as I steer the bike down the mountain faster than I should. My heart hammers. At one point I almost hit a tree when a doe darts into my path. Later a pothole jars me so hard that I taste blood after biting my tongue. It’s like the universe is conspiring to keep me from catching up with the Heiress. But I must. I have to tell her what I know before she messes with any more of the silver.

  I don’t fully understand what I read back in the Solarian wing, but the basics are clear enough. The silver objects may carry magic from all the worlds, but the binding itself—that’s Solarian. And from the letter—the letter written from a Solarian to my great-great-grandmother, the Innkeeper—it sounds like the binding causes something of the Solarian to remain … inside the object. Like a cross between a Horcrux and Aladdin’s magic lamp, only with monsters instead of genies. And the Heiress has been touching this stuff, handling it, surrounding herself with it.

  This still goes against everything I know about magic. I always, always learned that magic was limited to its carriers. Fiordens can heal. Byrnisians have their elemental magic. And Solarians can shapeshift. It’s not supposed to be transferable. And yet, would the Heiress, would Marcus be so serious about the black market if all they were doing was cheating unscrupulous buyers out of a few bucks in exchange for ordinary silver? This has to be about more than just money. Solarians must be involved somehow, binding real magic to buy and sell.

  And if the objects carry some part of the Solarian in them, then … what does it mean that Mom’s name is on a list of HOSTS? What does the Silver Prince’s accusation mean, that Marcus trusted Solarians too much, was trying to work with them?

  My skin prickles. I don’t understand what’s going on, but I know that the Heiress is in danger. She needs to know what I know.

  It’s hot in town, even though the sky is gray with clouds. It’s like they’re a blanket, trapping in the June heat. Hot enough to drive everyone inside, I guess. The streets are empty, making the drone of insects on the air seem extra loud. Closed window shutters all around make me feel like I’m in some Old West ghost town. A dog barks somewhere, the sound echoing in the quiet. Soon sweat has soaked through my long-sleeve T-shirt. I can’t seem to get enough air, as if the Silver Prince’s barrier has clung to my skin.

  I almost miss the turnoff to the antique store and yank my handlebars to the left, sending up a spray of gravel. I check my watch. 3:41. Good. Hopefully I can intercept the Heiress before her contact gets here and ex
plain to her what I found, what I think is true. She can’t know about the objects’ connection to Solaria, or she would have never allowed them to change hands. My skin crawls when I think of them flowing out of Havenfall, circulating in the wider world.

  I park out back, so the bike’s hidden, and enter the antique store through the rear door. A bell chimes overhead when I enter, but the shop is empty.

  All the lights are off. Sunlight filters in through the front windows, but shadows line the shelves, clinging to the myriad objects perching there. Stacks of old-fashioned china, chipped mugs, porcelain figurines. Knit sweaters and blankets, Christmas ornaments, dolls and toy cars and action figures a few years out of date.

  Sweat dampens my palms as I look around, my breath sounding loud in the silence. So many ordinary things, but now it all holds an air of subtle menace. How much Solarian magic has passed through this place? Before this summer, magic was something for me to believe in, hold on to, a glimpse of something shining and more in a mostly boring and unfeeling world. But this … this feels dark. Oppressive, violent.

  A door at the back of the shop catches my eye. There’s a dark staircase leading downward, but I can see a light at the bottom. My hope rises that it’s the Heiress. I pad over and walk down, testing each narrow wooden stair for creaks before I give it my full weight.

  The staircase opens into a narrow basement room with a dirt floor and cinderblock walls. It’s noticeably colder—I can’t help but shiver—and the light, from a bare bulb flickering against the ceiling, doesn’t reach the far end of the room. There’s nothing here, and I’m about to turn around and go back up into the summer warmth when a flash of movement, low to the ground in the dark, makes my heart stop.

  A face materializes on the other side of the room. Not the Heiress. It’s too pale, the eyes too big. My heart is concussive in my ears as the person comes closer to the light.

  Holy shit, it’s a kid. A little girl, maybe eight or nine, though it’s hard to tell because she’s so short and skinny. Her hair is in two dark braids and she wears rolled-up jeans and a Haven T-shirt. Her feet are bare on the cold dirt. A cuff around her ankle chains her to what I can now see is a radiator against the far wall.