Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(49)

“I’ve always wanted magic,” I say, adding a laugh to balance out the longing I’m sure he can hear in my voice. “I think all humans do.”

I try not to think of the fact that I also always dreamed of seeing Fiordenkill with Brekken at my side. I doubt even the Silver Prince knows of magic that can undo a betrayal.

“I think you already have it.” The Silver Prince’s eyes gleam and, as if to emphasize his words, a pair of meteors slashes through the sky above him. In my tiredness, it seems to me they look like portents. But of what, I don’t know.

“I can’t help but think it fate that our reigns should coincide like this,” the Prince goes on. He brushes the back of my hand with his fingers, and it startles me enough that I don’t think to correct him. I’m not a ruler, just …

Just what? A caretaker? A substitute—

“Innkeeper,” the Prince says softly, as if he can read my thoughts. He smiles. “We will put this Solarian in the ground, and then we will find a way to break through to the power that lives in you.”





12

I usually love the rain—the gentle patter of it on rooftops and how it makes the light steady and unchanging from dawn to dusk. Like white noise, it quiets my always-racing mind, makes me feel cozy and protected. When it rains in Sterling, Dad never asks why I’m not going out with my friends. I can stay curled up under the covers, watch old movies and forget about everything else for a while, like the world has paused its turning just for me.

But it’s been raining so long and hard now that everyone at Havenfall is getting antsy, including me. Anxiety bubbles in my gut as I creep down the stairs, careful not to step on any of the spots I know to be creaky, though if the delegates can sleep through the rain pounding on the windowpanes, a loud stair step probably won’t disturb them. It isn’t yet dawn—when our hunting party will go out in search of the loose Solarian—but I’ve been awake since four, the machine-gun rattle of rain on the roof yanking me back every time I slipped toward sleep. I should have known it was a lost cause. It’s probably a good idea to get something in my stomach anyway before I go out in the woods after a monster. Even if my gut is already churning, I need all my strength.

All I want to do is turn around and run back upstairs and lock my door behind me, close the curtains and wait for someone braver, stronger, better to deal with the loose Solarian, the open door, the Heiress’s secrets—all of it. Every cell in my body screams to find a safe corner, curl up, and hide with my back to a wall and wait this all out. The natural thing to do when there’s a predator loose and you’re the prey.

While Graylin spent his spare hours yesterday pouring healing magic into Marcus, Willow was in the library, researching other ways we might try to close the door. But until she hits on something, all we can do is post more guards in the tunnels and, in the meantime, try to hunt down this beast before it starts hunting us. Graylin and Willow and Sal, the Silver Prince and Enetta, and the security staff will all be part of the hunting party. I can’t ask them to risk their lives and not go into the woods myself. We have to find the Solarian and end it. We can’t fail. I can only pray it’s still on the grounds—not gone down the mountain, not escaped into the world to kill someone else’s sister, someone else’s brother, shatter someone else’s life into irreparable shards.

Someone crosses by the stairwell a ways down from me and I freeze. It’s a middle-aged man with pale yellow hair and a furtive way of moving, coming from the direction of the front door and going toward the meeting rooms. He’s there and gone across the hall before I even fully register it, but something about him makes me stop walking.

It’s not that I don’t recognize him. There are plenty of people here I don’t recognize, new staffers or delegates whose names I haven’t gotten around to learning, though Marcus would scold me for that. No, it’s because I did recognize him. But from where? His walk—head down, shoulders bunched up—set off a skin-crawly feeling in me. And the memory of his leering smile …

It hits me. The guy from the bus. The one with the newspaper, who tried to chat me up on the way into Haven.

What is he doing here? And how did he get past the Silver Prince’s boundary charm?

Before I can think too much about it, I change course, turning not left toward the kitchens but right, after the man. A creepy dude on a public bus is bad enough, but a creepy guy in my inn, before dawn, today of all days—I don’t like it. I want to know what his business is at Havenfall. As I turn the corner, I just see the tail of his shabby coat disappearing around the next one. Careful to tread lightly and keep my distance, I trail him across the first floor. The rain masks the sound of my footsteps.

Soon enough, the man vanishes behind a door in a back hallway. It’s one of the meeting rooms, disfavored by the delegates because it’s small and plain with no windows. I pause at the end of the hall, ready to duck back behind the corner if need be and wait to see if he’ll come back out.

He doesn’t. And when I listen closely, I think I can hear a low, muted murmur of voices from inside the room. Goose bumps rise on my arms—he isn’t alone. Maybe he does have a legitimate reason to be here, but I have a bad feeling. Slowly, silently, I drift closer until I’m standing right in front of the door, and the voices resolve into clarity.