Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(42)

“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.”