Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(34)
Of course, there’s an even worse possibility—that if more Solarians have escaped, they won’t stay on the grounds at all but slip down the mountain to hunt and destroy human families like mine. But there’s nothing I can do about that possibility, except work to seal the door as soon as possible. There must be a way hinted at somewhere in the massive library, and if anyone can connect the dots, it’s Graylin and Willow. I need to keep everyone calm in the meantime and hope that the beast the Silver Prince killed was the only one that got through.
I head outside and to the stables. It’s the start of a summer day so beautiful it feels treacherous, the sun casting down gentle warmth from a glazed blue sky, the scent of pine drifting on the breeze, one big pretty lie trying to tell me everything is okay. My mind and heart won’t stop racing. I want to run, to burn off some of this jittery excess energy, but even with the bracelet, I can’t leave now. What would that look like to the delegates, that I run at the first sign of trouble?
Hanging out with the horses always calms me. In the musky, hay-scented warmth and dimness of the barn, I make for the stall at the far end, where my favorite pony, Kitkat, rests. Her ostensible purpose is to be a mount for delegates’ children on expeditions around the grounds, but she’s so obstinate and lazy that her days are mostly spent wandering and grazing. She whickers softly when I pull the apple I’ve carried from the dining room out of my jacket pocket and, once I let myself in, chomps it noisily, her velvety chocolate nose brushing my flat palm.
But even her presence can’t chase away the tornado of anxiety whirling in my thoughts. The loft shows in bits and pieces through the cracks in the floorboards above me, bathed in soft light. I can see the stain in the ceiling where I must have spilled the wine last night. Spilled the wine kissing Brekken. The glow I felt then has been replaced by a piercing ache, a vine with so many pointless questions for thorns.
Where is he?
What has he done? How long has he been planning it?
The kiss—did he mean it? Did he mean any of it? Or has our whole friendship been a means to an end?
It felt so real. How could he betray me? How could he break my heart?
He couldn’t have been plotting anything then—we were kids. And trying to pinpoint the threshold—the exact point when we shifted from real to not, assuming his vanishing is what it looks like—will make me crazy. But still I can’t stop going around in circles. First the jolt of remembering his lips on mine, his hands on me; then the nausea of guilt and betrayal. Na?ve, I was na?ve. Just like when I was a kid, when I looked out the window, saw a shadow skirting the house, and dismissed it as nothing. I’m too distracted by a sunny sky, a pretty face.
And now Marcus is paying the price—all of Havenfall is paying the price.
Soft footsteps from outside the stall startle me. I didn’t hear the barn door open. I straighten up hastily, swiping the back of my wrist across my eyes just as Kitkat’s stall door opens.
Irritation mixed with shame shoots through me when I see Taya standing in the doorway, a pail of feed in her hands. Why is she always around during my worst moments?
She raises her eyebrows at the sight of me. Her eyes are shadowed, dark circles under them—she can’t have gotten much more sleep last night than I did—but she looks otherwise put together in leggings, a plaid button up, and a soft T-shirt, the sleeves of her flannel pushed up around freckled forearms. Wisps of pale hair escape from the braid lying over her shoulder.
“I didn’t expect to find the Innkeeper in here,” she says, setting down the bucket in front of Kitkat; the horse nuzzles her cheek before diving in.
“I’m not the Innkeeper,” I say, standing and brushing hay off my pants. I dreamed of hearing that title for so long, but now it just piles me with guilt and fear. “That’s my uncle. I’m just filling in until he gets better.”
“What’s the matter with him?” Taya asks.
“Uh …” I didn’t think about that bit of the lie. “Bad flu.”
“In the summer?”
“Hey, it happens.”
Taya’s eyes narrow, as if, for the second time in twelve hours, she knows I’m lying. Somehow it was easier to lie to the whole dining hall full of delegates at breakfast than it is to lie to her in this cramped stall now.
I reach for something to put her off the scent. “Last night, you said you had important stuff to do with your life,” I say, winding my fingers into Kitkat’s mane for emotional support. “What did you mean?”
Something Marcus told me once when teaching me how to charm delegates: everyone loves talking about themselves. Keep them talking—always have a question ready—and you control the conversation.
She blinks. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious,” I reply, offhand. “You’re kind of mysterious, you know.”
“Says the girl who materialized out of the woods at o’dark hundred last night.” She eyes me, the corner of her mouth twitching up and ending the ruse of seriousness. “Maddie, are you a werewolf?”
A laugh breaks unexpectedly out of me. “Only if you’re a vampire. You were out there too.”
She does have the pale skin, I think absently, the dark circles beneath her eyes that are somehow kind of sexy. The tragic past, the leather jacket. I wonder where our vampire myths came from, if they were ever rooted in one of the Realms.