Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(65)

“What do you mean?”

The Silver Prince turns on his chair to fully face me. The light of the lamp doesn’t seem to reach him; the moon reflects off his silvery skin and hair, catches the slight scale pattern ridging his cheeks.

“You love the inn for what it is, not for how it can profit you,” he says. “The magic, the possibilities, the doorways. This life has been cruel to you, and so you take comfort in the knowledge that other life is there, even if you cannot access it. Byrnisians are much the same.”

Something in his voice is sharp, like a razor floating in honey.

“Marcus feels the same way,” I tell the Prince, defensive.

“Possibly,” he replies, eyes steady on mine over the bed and Marcus’s form. “But you must know that he is not practical like you. He looks for good where there is none. He used to believe the Solarians could be redeemed. Even when it risked the peace of the Adjacent Realms. Even when it put his family in harm’s way.”

I don’t understand what the Silver Prince is trying to tell me. I’ve never heard of Marcus looking kindly on Solarians. Why would he, after what happened to Mom and Nate?

“What do you mean, his family?”

“I mean the attack on your mother and brother,” the Silver Prince says, softly surprised. He looks down at Marcus, and now his eyes are cold. “Everyone knows it happened because your uncle invited a Solarian into the home. He tried to shelter it, and it killed your brother.”

My blood is icy water in my veins, and my voice comes out a hoarse whisper. “Where did you hear that?”

The Silver Prince dips his head, his eyes cutting to my uncle’s pale, blank face.

The ice water turns to ice itself. I can’t move, I can’t think. For an instant, I’m in the cupboard again, Nate’s scream searing into me and leaving a burning brand on my heart. Then—

“You’re wrong,” I choke out.

Sympathy looks odd on the Silver Prince’s face, unnatural. “Maddie, I’m sorry. I thought you knew—”

“I need to be alone right now,” I say.

I instantly regret it. The Prince is the most powerful person here, possibly the only person keeping us from total chaos, and I need him. But he doesn’t appear angry. He doesn’t move either.

I feel sick, feel emptied out as I stare down at Marcus. Even in sleep, his face is so familiar, so safe. Every summer, he’s come to pick me up at the crossroads, and when I saw him through the bus window and watched the smile break out over his face, that’s when I knew I was safe, I was home.

He is compassionate; he’s always thinking of others first. Is it possible that what the Silver Prince is telling me is true, and that his boundless kindness extended even to Solarians, the monsters who killed my brother?

There was the sound of breaking glass. There were a million shards sparkling on the linoleum kitchen floor. But thinking back now, I can’t remember if I heard the window break before Mom shoved me into the cupboard, when we were still just a normal family baking brownies, happy and together, or after, when the monster dragged Nate’s body through and into the night.

Could Marcus have let a Solarian in?

We were his family, Mom, Nate, Graylin, and me. We were supposed to come first.

But now Nate is dead and Mom is locked away from me forever, and he’s wasting away, and there’s a monster out there in the woods. If the Prince is telling the truth, Marcus’s foolish kindness has already demolished half our family, and might finish me and Graylin off any day now.

How could he have let the monster in?

“I’ll leave you be,” the Silver Prince says, snapping me back to the present. His voice is calm as a frozen landscape, without a touch of anger. “When you’re ready, come find me. We need to address the defection of the Fiorden delegates.”

“What can we do about it?” I ask, my voice raw. “They’re gone.”

“Exactly, and there must be repercussions.” His voice turns over from authoritative to gentle again. “This is the second time the Fiordens have betrayed Havenfall. Remember Brekken.”

“I remember,” I say, because I don’t want to hear more about Brekken from the Prince. I know he thought he was acting for a good cause, stealing my keys to investigate Marcus’s involvement in the magic black market, but it still stings fiercely that he didn’t tell me. That he didn’t trust me. That he left me.

“We all want to believe the best of intentions in others,” the Prince says. Sitting still as a statue, casting a shadow even taller and thinner than he is, he seems older, more the eerie, powerful magical being he is. “But it’s not always the truth.”

Even if he doesn’t know Brekken’s real motivations, he’s not wrong about me. I trust too easily, too soon, and now that flaw has put in danger not only me, but the whole inn and everyone in it. I feel frozen.

“What should we do?”

The Silver Prince’s lips pull up in a small, regretful smile of acknowledgment. “Fiordenkill must face sanctions,” he says. “They’ve disturbed the balance of the doorways, and the Solarian door has opened wider. My elemental soldiers have it blocked off with a barricade of iron, but if more Solarians come through, even that may not hold.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, seeming to see straight into my soul. “So what do you think is an appropriate price for the danger they have put us all in, Innkeeper?”