Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(46)
And—goose bumps break out all over me as I see it—there are more scratch marks than before. The long, pale, curved slashes look like wounds in the stone.
My eyes follow the slashes around the crack in the door. Into the hallway. Fading just before they reach my feet. There’s no mistaking the implications this time.
A Solarian beast is in Havenfall.
11
That evening, I’m crouched in front of the fireplace in the reception room, trying to focus on taking deep breaths. The distant strains of the Elemental Orchestra float through the halls from the ballroom, but the music is nearly drowned out by the clatter of hail on the skylight, so heavy and loud that I’m sure at any moment the glass will break and rain down on me.
After what we saw in the tunnels this morning, I spoke to the Silver Prince and Princess Enetta, letting them know that there was almost certainly a Solarian somewhere on the grounds and that we had to keep everyone inside. The Silver Prince offered Byrnisian magic to buy me time. The storm he spun has been raging all day, rattling the windows and making the light dim and dull. Now it’s dark, but the storm is slow to fade. My heart stutters every time lightning lines the windows in red, or thunder sounds in the distance. It’s the first time I’ve been alone all day, and the dread that I’ve managed to push down through today’s meetings is fighting its way back up. Making my pulse race and my ribs feel too tight, like my heart and lungs are fighting for space inside me. Sweat drips down my back, but I still feel cold, even holding my hands close to the flames. Tendrils of panic have worked their way into the edges of my mind and they’re pulling, pulling, pulling.
There’s a Solarian somewhere near. It could be literally anywhere.
No. I can’t go there. Graylin told me after the tunnels that their shapeshifting ability only goes so far. That from what he can tell from the history, most Solarians can only cycle between two or three forms that manifest over their lifetime. They can’t take one glance at a person and mimic their appearance, or shrink themselves down to nothing. We’ll know it when we see it. I don’t need to be afraid of Kimmy hurrying by in the hall, silver meal tray in her hands; or the moth I can see on the glass of the west window, seemingly unbothered by the rain, slowly beating its wings.
But I still am.
Every time I close my eyes, I’m back in Mom’s kitchen cupboard, boxes and tins and cans pressing against my back and legs, hearing Mom scream and Nate scream and smelling hot copper blood through the crack in the door. I can’t see anything, just flashes of color and movement, blue fur, red blood …
Focus, Maddie. I don’t have time to wallow in horrible memories, even if I wanted to. I reach for a happy one instead, something Dad told me to do in those early months afterward, when nightmares still woke me up screaming almost every night. You have more happy memories than scary ones, don’t you? Why give the scary ones so much space in your head?
It’s hard to think about the time before the attack, because there’s always an undercurrent of fear in the memories now—like I should have known such happiness couldn’t last. But I think about walking to the bus stop at the end of the street, clutching Mom’s right hand while Nate holds her left, cotton puffs swirling down all around us like summer snow. I think of the dinosaur costume she made me for Halloween and how big and brave I felt with claws and the tail that swung behind me. I think about lying underneath the Christmas tree with Nate, peering through the string lights woven through the branches that looked like a red-and-green galaxy.
When my head feels clearer, I let out a slow breath.
I need to be stronger than this. There’s a monster somewhere on the grounds of Havenfall and a hundred people around me who are counting on me to keep them safe. Even if they don’t exactly know it yet.
Footsteps sound outside, and I straighten up as the door to the hall opens and Graylin, Willow, Sal, the Silver Prince, and Enetta all file in. Graylin is holding what looks like a bolt of dark leather. The lines of his face seem more deeply drawn than ever before, and I feel a twist of sorrow. Graylin loves poetry and music and Marcus. He shouldn’t be holding what I know he’s holding. But his jaw is set as he deposits the bundle on the nearest coffee table and carefully unrolls it, the contents gleaming in the low light.
He’s brought a collection of weapons from the old armory room on the second floor, weapons that my whole life up till now have just been for show—more a museum exhibit than anything, but not anymore. Willow and I each receive a curved, slender short sword; Graylin and Enetta both get belt holsters with gold-filigreed Fiorden revolvers—light and elegant, rain-and snow-proof and fitted with capsules of poison instead of bullets.
Brekken and I used to play-fight in the woods as kids, pretending to be Fiorden soldiers, sparring with wooden swords or firing BB guns at empty pop cans balanced on tree stumps. Hoisting a weapon feels different now—it’s heavy, slippery in my sweating hands as we make our way down into the tunnels. Tomorrow we’ll go out to try to find the monster; tonight we’ll try again to seal the door so no more can escape. Byrnisian magic didn’t work, but maybe Fiorden magic will. They can heal flesh—maybe they can heal whatever’s amiss with the doorway too.
It’s hard to tell if anything about the doorway has changed since yesterday. The orange light is still there; shadows still flicker and shift on the other side. This time it’s Graylin who steps up, along with Enetta, and they stand with their eyes half-closed and their hands against the stone. They’re very still, but I can almost feel the slow pull of their magic, the current. Graylin told me once he could feel the movement of water beneath the earth if he looked for it, the same way I can touch someone’s throat or wrists and find a pulse. He said the mountains were living things just like him or me, different but no less alive. I wonder what the mountains are telling him now.