by Sara Holland
Stolen.
I want to scream. I want to collapse. I want to throw a knife or put my fist through glass. I want to kill Cadius. But I can’t move.
Then the horror hits all at once, a concentrated punch to my stomach. Even though I haven’t touched anything at the feast, the meal I ate back at Brekken’s grandparents’ cabin suddenly threatens to storm back up my esophagus.
Instinct takes over. As laughter and jeers rise up all around me, I drop my bowl back onto the serving table. It cracks, and sticky plums roll everywhere, but I don’t stop to see if anyone noticed. Instead, I run from the hall as fast as I can with my gut heaving and my fist pressed to my mouth.
I have tears in my eyes and can’t really see where I’m going, but I hear people jump out of my way as I stagger to an alcove and throw up between a taxidermied wolf’s front paws. Brittle moth-eaten fur crackles beneath my hand as I sling an arm around the wolf’s neck for support and the stink of stomach acid burns my eyes.
Once I’ve finally emptied my stomach, I look up, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Scandalized stares surround me; though my vision is still too blurry to make out details, I feel the weight of judgment. I stare back, unblinking, too angry and disgusted to care about the attention. If I were in Havenfall, someone would materialize right about now with a damp washcloth, a glass of water, and a comforting hand, but I know better than to expect any kindness here. A nest of snakes is too kind a phrase. As my eyes clear, the remnants of tears trickling down my cheeks, I channel my judgment into my gaze, letting all these vultures know I find them as disgusting as they must find me.
I can’t take this party much longer. I head back toward the ballroom, intending to find Brekken so we can get outside and I can breathe the fresh, cold air. But when I step inside and look around, I don’t see him. Just so many fast-moving strangers, a whirl of unfamiliar, unfriendly cloth and flesh.
12
Fear plummets through me. Where is he? Panic speeds my heart as I look at face after unfamiliar face. And then—a glimpse of copper hair at the far side of the ballroom, near the north entrance. Relief fills me and I shoot toward Brekken, avoiding the veins of silver set into the walls, as he turns his head, his familiar sharp profile coming into view. But then I see who he’s talking to.
Cadius Winterkill.
A stillness sets in. A feeling of calm, cold anticipation. Play your cards right, Brekken, I think, and skirt the room toward them, deliberately casual, keeping my head turned toward the orchestra as if that’s my destination. Keeping Brekken and Cadius in my peripheral vision, I can see that the lord of Winterkill looks loose, drunk. He laughs uproariously at some undoubtedly hilarious joke, and Brekken laughs along with him, tipping his head back. Gradually, carefully, I edge close enough to hear their conversation. Which is in English, thank God. I wonder if Brekken steered them that way, or if Winterkill is putting on airs, using the language of the privileged, of the delegates.
“I’d love to learn how one conducts a business from a man such as yourself,” Brekken says, leaning heavy on the charm. “Everyone says you’re the best.”
“I am,” Cadius boasts, his voice wavery with drink.
His back is to me, but the arrogance is clear in the set of his shoulders and his swaggering walk. I can’t help the thoughts that cloud my mind. How did my mother ever love him? How would she feel to know what he’s become? Or was he this way all along, concealing his true self beneath the charming exterior, lying with every breath up to the moment he betrayed her?
It’s enough to send a shiver of terror through me. If Mom could fall for a guy like this … how can I trust that anyone is who they seem?
I manage to catch Brekken’s gaze over Cadius’s shoulder. Brekken’s eyes widen a little, then go soft with relief. All of it too subtle, hopefully, to be discerned by Winterkill or anyone else.
“Will you show me a token of your success?” Brekken presses, lowering his voice.
I have to strain to hear it. Even just watching the exchange, my heart speeds up. It’s a bold move, bolder than I’d expect from careful Brekken. But if it works …
Cadius hesitates for a second, but then he nods and draws back toward the exit, beckoning. I can’t see his expression, but I imagine it as fraternal, conspiratorial. I guess this is the same across all the worlds—that for evil men, the profit of corruption isn’t always enough. They want to be seen, recognized, their genius acknowledged. Even when it’s risky.
Catching Brekken’s gaze again, I nod at him and mouth, Go. My pulse is racing. This wasn’t part of the plan, but we’d be stupid not to take the chance dangling before us. Brekken nods back, minutely, and follows Cadius out the door. I wait a moment, and then follow too, at a distance. I grab a half-full goblet of wine from a side table as I go, in case I need to feign drunkenness at some point.
Early on, the halls are crowded with Fiordens, milling about, drinking, talking, and laughing. But they empty out quickly as Cadius leads Brekken along, speeding with drunken purpose. Soon, the estate seems deserted but for the three of us, and I fall farther back to escape notice, as far as I can without letting the two men out of sight. Down hallways, around bends, up staircases.
My nervousness grows the farther we go. We are clearly past the places meant for guests; the alcoves with their taxidermied animals have given way to simpler, though still ostentatious, decoration. Paintings and gaudy tapestries and vases of pale flowers adorn this part of the castle. If someone catches me this far from the ballroom, I’ll have no plausible explanation for being here, goblet or no goblet.
I slow my pace again, listening for the sound of Cadius’s heavy footsteps up ahead to guide my own since I can’t hear Brekken’s. Two things inexplicably fly through my head: What would I tell Marcus if I lost you? And What would I tell your dad if something happened to you?
So much fear. It governs every move in our family. We don’t want to lose any more than we already have. But it feels like no one except me remembers that life isn’t a series of losses. We could gain things too, if we’re brave.
But then, up ahead, the footsteps slow and stop, and Cadius and Brekken’s conversation starts up again, too low to hear. Carefully, putting each foot down slowly so my boots don’t squeak against the polished stone, I move around the corner.
Up ahead, a partially open, heavy-looking oak door affords a view of an office. I see bookcases and a chair upholstered in sleek fur. Brekken and Cadius stand inside, talking, but the conversation has switched over into the Myr language. I can’t make out any of it.
Frustrated, I draw back into the opening of an adjacent hallway, so I won’t be seen when they leave. I followed them because I didn’t want to be separated from Brekken, but maybe I should have stayed in the ballroom, since I’m little good to him as backup. We came here to observe, and I’ve seen a lot, but I can’t think how we’d use any of it. What we need is to find the phoenix flame armor. Only then can we take this hub of the soul trade down. Maybe there’s something in the office, a map, schematics?
My attention snaps to the sound of Cadius and Brekken leaving. The office door closes, and two pairs of footsteps walk down the hallway. Brekken’s tread sounds heavier than normal, like he’s doing it deliberately to warn me.
I shrink back against the wall, shuffling away from the opening to the main hallway, hoping the shadows are enough to cloak me. Brekken and Cadius pass, strolling casually back toward the ballroom, a delicate brass key dangling from Cadius’s fingers. I want to signal to Brekken, to get his attention so we can escape and figure out our next steps, but there’s no way to do so without Cadius noticing too.
I wait for their footsteps to fade, figuring I’ll give them a head start before returning to the ballroom, as much as I don’t want to. But as soon as I do, another idea seizes me.
The office door. It’s only a few yards away to my left. I saw the key dangling from Cadius’s fingers, but maybe … I sidle over and try the knob. It turns beneath m
y fingers. The door gives.
Shocked, I crack the door and slide inside before I can think too hard about it, shutting the door carefully behind me. My heart slams in my ears as it clicks closed. Brekken must have left it unlocked somehow.
Slowly, I turn to look around at Cadius’s office, half in disbelief at my good luck and half wary that this is some sort of trap. It’s a large, luxuriously appointed room, the decorations slightly less in-your-face than in the rest of the castle, but there if you look. Inlays of delicately carved bone scroll over the walls, climbing onto the bookshelves and sprouting into tiny sculptures of animals dancing along the molding. Paintings are set into the walls, fantastical landscapes rendered in oil and charcoal. There are woven tapestries lined in rich fur, shimmering with metallic thread. Bearskins—or something skins—cushion the floor, silencing my footsteps as I cross over to the desk.
In contrast to everything else in the room, the stretch of polished oak is bare, empty. I run my fingers along the glassy surface, my silk gloves hiding any fingerprints. Where to begin? Carefully, keeping alert for any noises that might tell me I’m not alone, I start opening the small doors set into the front of the desk, each leading to their own compartment. It contains the things you’d expect, quill pens and stacks of creamy paper, a wax stamp seal. Worry creeps in that this has all been for nothing. But then—a small compartment near the bottom of the desk yields a small, silvery key.
My breath catches, my fingers reaching for the key before I can decide if it’s a good idea. I’m highly aware of how I don’t have much time, how at any minute someone could barge in. Graylin would kill me if he knew what I was doing. If I was being cautious, if I was being safe, I would drop this and run back to the ballroom.
But that key.
I straighten up, looking around the office for anything with a lock. Immediately, my gaze falls on a cabinet on the other side of the room, near the window. A long, squat thing of black polished wood, with carved claw feet. Hurriedly, heart in my throat, I go over and slide the key into the small lock in the middle of the cabinet.
It takes me a couple of tries to get the key in the right way, but then something deep in the mechanism clicks. The whole front of the cabinet falls slightly open with the sigh of old wood.
I can feel the sweat pricking at my palms as I crouch and open the door wider. I don’t know quite what to expect—soul-silver? Money? Weapons? But as my eyes adjust to the dimness, I realize it’s papers, stacks of them, arranged into sheaves and tied with black silk ribbons. At first I feel childishly disappointed—that it’s not something more dramatic. Then I shake my head to clear it. Glancing over my shoulder once more to make sure I’m still alone, I grab the nearest handful of papers and undo the ribbons, stripping off my gloves and stuffing them in my pocket to work more efficiently.
The writing before me is in English, which surprises me for a moment, until I make out a few more words. Silver. Transfer. Soul. Then it makes a cold kind of sense. English is what everyone uses to communicate with people from other Realms, since it’s what we speak at Havenfall. Of course, then, it’s also the de facto language of the soul trade.
I’m looking at a spreadsheet, strangely mundane despite the old-fashioned paper and ink. Someone has drawn a neat grid of lines—I imagine them using a straightedge—and filled the resulting rows and columns with objects, numbers, prices, and notes. Not too different from the papers I found snooping around Havenfall, back when I thought that the Heiress—and then Marcus—was complicit in the trade. Reading the record, a pang goes through my heart at the sudden, unwelcome memory of doing something similar with Taya. Of sitting with her in the twilight dimness of my room, puzzling over nonsensical phrases, trying to put the pieces together into a narrative that fit in with what we knew of the world.
But I shove that memory away. Now isn’t the time to wallow in memories of Taya, wishing things could have turned out differently. That’s never a helpful thing to do, but it especially isn’t now, with a ticking clock and so much on the line. When any minute I could be caught and thrown out or jailed or worse. So I slam the door on my memories and return my attention to Winterkill’s records.
There are two additional columns on this page, one that didn’t appear on any of Marcus’s or the Heiress’s papers. It’s filled with words I don’t recognize, some of them repeated over and over again across several rows. It’s alphabetized, but that’s hardly helpful when I don’t know what they mean to begin with. Bairul. Banzon. Bhrima. Bulmont … It reminds me of roll call at school when a substitute teacher comes in, stumbling over all but the blandest of names.
The end of the thought snags, makes my heart skip.
Names.
Could they be? I look again, hands trembling. The second column has more of what could be names, but they are not alphabetized and there are few repeats. Could these be given names, and the first column surnames? Of … of Solarians?
My hands are already reaching back into the cabinet, like they have a mind of their own. I turn up the edges of the pages to get a glimpse at the names, and then let the paper fall again. Searching until I see a column full of N’s. Naasi. Naevan. Naimar. Naradeim. Narita. Natrath.
No Nahteran.
Disappointment is bitter on my tongue as soured wine, but I don’t let it stop me. I put that pile aside and reach back in, checking the names until I find the T’s. But that, too, is a dead end. No Taya.
I stare down at the paper, feeling utterly defeated and inadequate. There’s a next step. There has to be, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve caught so many lucky breaks. I’m in Winterkill’s office, but I’m still completely helpless to find a single one of the captive Solarians. To save them.
But then something catches my eye. The T’s start halfway down the page in my hand. But before that, it’s S’s. Specifically, a third of a page where the same two letters are repeated over and over again.
S.P.
My attention is caught, but I’m not sure why. I flip one page back. There it is again, except now the page is unbroken—a whole column filled just with S.P. S.P. S.P. The page below that is the same, and the one before that. The names in the second column are as scattered as ever. Was a whole family of Solarians victim to the soul trade? Confused, I look at the first-name column, trying to make sense of it. Then something makes my veins turn to ice.
Nahteran.
Suddenly, everything snaps into place. The first column isn’t surnames at all. It doesn’t refer to the Solarians whose souls are ripped from them and used for petty magic. It’s buyers. Traders.
S.P.…
Footsteps from outside bring new terror rushing in, real-life horror to add to what’s on the page. They’re too close—can’t be more than a few yards away from Cadius’s office door. Setting the top page aside, I shove the records back into the cabinet—no time to reaffix the ribbon—and let the door fall shut. It clangs, making me flinch, and my hand darts out reflexively, but the noise is already made. All I can do is fold the sheet of paper with Nate’s name on it and shove it into my bra. I take a quick sweep of the office to make sure everything appears just as it did before I came in, before tiptoeing to the door.
When I pause before it, everything is quiet. I wait, not even breathing, but I don’t hear a sound. Maybe the person passed by. Or maybe I imagined the footsteps, all the fear I’ve been shoving down bubbling upward in the form of delusions. I’m not sure which I like less, but I wait a few moments before reaching out to open the door, in case I didn’t imagine them—to let whoever I heard put some distance between them and me.
But when I do reach for the doorknob, it turns before I even touch it. I stare dumbly for a second, wondering if somehow Cadius’s stolen magic has rubbed off on me—and then my brain catches up with reality and I throw myself backward, falling onto the bearskin in my scramble to hide.
But it’s too late. The door opens, and a man’s silhouette fills the threshold. I freeze, going entirely still as if that’l
l save me, as if Cadius will only see me if I move.
But then I realize—it isn’t Cadius in the doorway.
My lips move, but nothing comes out.
Nate?
13
It’s as if time has frozen around me, like my body and mind and the world has suddenly been encased in glass. I’m pretty sure my heart stopped beating. For a long, long, long moment, all I can do is stare at the boy in front of me, his name ringing in my head.
Nate.
Nate, the little boy in a red apron, singing along to the radio with Mom as he helped her make brownies.
Nate, who pushed me on the swing set and taught me how to make snow angels.
Nate, whose screams have haunted my nightmares for ten years. Nate who I thought for so long—so long—was dead.
He’s not dead. He’s standing in front of me. Grown up. With black hair now instead of blond, wearing Fiorden clothes, a leather breastplate, leggings, and a cloak. I’d recognize him anywhere, at any age, with any hair or clothes. Nate.
He steps inside and shuts the door behind him. His movements are quick and confident. He stares at me, head cocked. “Losir a sedyn?” he asks.
Through the haze, I remember the words from Graylin’s lessons, and put it together. Who are you? But my voice doesn’t work.
His accent is strange. It’s Fiorden, but there’s something else beneath it. A hint of the long flat vowels of our middle-America upbringing. And there’s something else too, a musical, almost singsong quality to his words that’s familiar from somewhere, but I can’t place it.
Nate steps forward, glancing over his shoulder at the door before reaching down toward me. He asks something else in Myr’s language. I think he asked me if I’m all right.
I open my mouth. Close it again. Open it, try to speak. Nothing comes out but air, a faint gasp. Nate looks concerned. His chin furrowing in the exact same way as when we were kids. It feels like a knife in my chest. He says something else, the strange words flowing out. Finally, I manage to push myself to my feet. I shake my head, my thoughts slowed to a sluggish crawl.
