Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(70)

“They may have felt guilty,” the Heiress says. “Or perhaps they felt it would put you in danger if you knew. I don’t agree with everything your uncle has done, Maddie, but I know he loves you. Your mother too.”

But the words feel hollow when they land in my chest. I want to believe the Heiress, but I can’t. With so much chaos and blood around us, I can’t give my family a free pass. I cast around for a change of subject.

“The book you’re writing,” I say finally. “Is it really a history of Havenfall?”

The Heiress laughs softly and shakes her head. “No,” she says. “No, that is not my book to write. Maybe it will be yours, someday.”

“Then what are you working on? When you’ve had all those people up here for interviews?”

“Magic.” The Heiress lets the silver chain slip through her fingers and pool in her palm. “I want to know the nature of it, how it manifests across the worlds. Fiordens have their healing and natural gifts; Byrnisians have control over the elements; Solarians have their shapeshifting. Some of that magic has been bound up in these objects.”

She leans forward and lets the necklace fall, a slipstream of silver between her fingers. She catches it at the last moment and leans back. “But I don’t know how. All these objects—they’ve been at Havenfall for as long as anyone can remember, or Marcus or I have brought them back from elsewhere. I don’t know how they’re created. I’ve never seen one made. I believe there must have been a people, from one of the worlds now closed off, who had the power to bind magic to matter. But I don’t know which one.”

I think of the tunnel, the dozens of dead doorways, dark portals leading nowhere. “How will you ever find out, if the people are gone?”

Her eyes flit back and forth between me and the necklace. “I don’t know if I will. History, even the history I was there to witness, slides quickly out of my grasp when there is no one else to remember it with me. And now I’m trying to write about something I haven’t even seen; everything I know comes to me secondhand.”

She smiles, though it’s more sad and tired than genuine. “Things would be much easier if your Brekken were still here, you know. He was supposed to be making the trades while I stayed here and did the research. Now I have to go down into town tomorrow and deal with that dreadful man …”

My Brekken. The words sink into my heart like a fishhook and tug. I know now that he was fighting a good fight. Working with the Heiress to bring the magical objects safely back to the inn. But the hurt of my stolen keys is still raw, tangled up with my shock and disbelief that Marcus would allow the black market to fester. And I don’t know if I’ll ever even see Brekken again. In the roller coaster of the last few days, that hasn’t really sunk in—but now it hits me, all at once. He’s my best friend. I love him, and he’s gone.

I push the thoughts away before I can go too far down that road.

“What time are you going to the antique shop?” I ask her, trying to steer us away from topics of Brekken and leaving and guilt and regret, back toward practical, safe ground. “I can get you some security—”

But a knock at the door cuts me off before I can finish the thought. The Heiress snaps to full alertness, her head turning in the direction of the door, her spine going army-straight. She catches my eye and points to the wardrobe in the corner.

I stare at her questioningly. Even with the curfew, there’s no rule saying people can’t visit each other’s rooms. But as she makes a stabbing motion for emphasis, something inside tells me not to argue.

I stand quietly, pad over, and slip into a world of perfumed fur, silk, and velvet just as another knock comes and a man’s voice sounds.

“Lady Heiress?”

I reach out and pull the wardrobe mostly shut just as the Heiress goes to the door and opens it.

“Lady Heiress.”

I don’t recognize the voice, but the man’s accent is Oasis. One of the Byrnisian delegates, maybe.

“The Silver Prince asked me to tell everyone of importance that the Solarian beast has been captured.”

I suck in my breath without meaning to, the Heiress’s floral perfume that clings to her coats scratching my throat. But I guess the messenger doesn’t hear me, because he keeps talking.

“Everyone is invited to come view the beast in the ballroom, if they wish.”

“It lives still?”

Even from here I can hear the skepticism in the Heiress’s voice.

“The Prince is deliberating with his advisors on what to do next. He plans to interrogate the beast.”

“Then I wish him the best in that endeavor,” the Heiress says, crisp and cool.

The door shuts. I hear her footsteps tread close, and then the wardrobe opens, blinding me for a second.

“Well?” she asks me as I stand there amidst her coats, a sneeze caught in my lungs and my heart beating fast with mixed relief and terror. “I suppose you’ll want to go see this beast?”



When we get to the ballroom, there are already more than a dozen delegates there—mostly Byrnisians, but a few of the remaining Fiordens too, and a handful of human security guards. Sal and his team of guards are standing in a circle in the middle of the room, facing outward to keep the small crowd back.

Behind them I see the tops of iron bars, rising and converging. I can’t see much else, but my body knows. It tells me in the racing of my heart, the sweat gathering at my palms and trickling down my back, and the sick twisting in my stomach.