Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(74)

A door at the back of the shop catches my eye. There’s a dark staircase leading downward, but I can see a light at the bottom. My hope rises that it’s the Heiress. I pad over and walk down, testing each narrow wooden stair for creaks before I give it my full weight.

The staircase opens into a narrow basement room with a dirt floor and cinderblock walls. It’s noticeably colder—I can’t help but shiver—and the light, from a bare bulb flickering against the ceiling, doesn’t reach the far end of the room. There’s nothing here, and I’m about to turn around and go back up into the summer warmth when a flash of movement, low to the ground in the dark, makes my heart stop.

A face materializes on the other side of the room. Not the Heiress. It’s too pale, the eyes too big. My heart is concussive in my ears as the person comes closer to the light.

Holy shit, it’s a kid. A little girl, maybe eight or nine, though it’s hard to tell because she’s so short and skinny. Her hair is in two dark braids and she wears rolled-up jeans and a Haven T-shirt. Her feet are bare on the cold dirt. A cuff around her ankle chains her to what I can now see is a radiator against the far wall.

My blood’s frozen. Coldness ripples through my body. I feel every bit as afraid as when I faced off with the Solarian in the woods. More than that. I want to run, I want to flee, because something is obviously deeply, deeply wrong. But I can’t leave her here. My blood roars.

It takes me too long to realize why her head snaps up, why her gaze focuses on something behind me and her eyes widen. Too long for the clomp of footsteps on the stairs to register. By the time it sinks in and I whip around, the strange man is already there, blocking my way out as he stares thoughtfully at me.

He is chalk-pale—Byrnisian, I realize with a shock, the faint pattern of scales ridging his forehead. I expected a human or even a Solarian. But no matter what, I know he’s not a friend.

I launch myself toward him. I don’t know what else to do, I just know that if a strange man gets you in his basement, you might as well kiss the world goodbye. But he just raises his hands and a wind bursts into existence, crashing through the small room, knocking me off my feet.

I sail past the girl and hit the wall hard. Pain explodes through the back of my head as I fall in a heap to the floor. The world spins and pulses around me, and I try to get up. But then the man is there, ripping the sleeve off my shirt in one violent motion and tying it around to gag my mouth. I swing my fists weakly, but they don’t connect with anything. Another moment, and there’s the ripping sound of duct tape tearing off a roll. And I’m attached to the radiator too.

Fear is a distant thing. I can’t focus on the man as he walks away. His movements are too fast, so I look at the girl. Crouching in the opposite corner, looking at me with those big dark eyes. Eyes that seem familiar somehow.

But I only have a moment to consider it. Because then the door at the top of the stairs slams shut, and my consciousness swims away with the light.





20

The world comes back to me slowly. The first thing I’m aware of is a murmur of distant voices. One of them familiar. The second thing is a strange light, glowing through my closed eyelids.

I force my eyes open. It hurts. Something’s crusted them shut so that opening them tugs at my lashes, and more—my head aches, aches like the worst sinus headache I’ve ever had and then some. My body hurts, too, like I’ve been beaten up, and a sick feeling of fear pervades everything and for a moment I can’t remember why.

Then all at once I do.

I try to bring my hand up to clear the gunk out of my eyes, but pain stops me. My wrists are duct-taped together, connected to a chain that clanks against something else metal when I move. I force my eyes open anyway and the cellar beneath the antique shop swims into view. The bare bulb on the ceiling, still off. The cold, useless radiator I’m chained to. And the girl. The light is coming from her, or rather, something she’s holding.

A spoon?

That doesn’t make sense. But that’s what it is. She’s holding a silver spoon, round end up like a torch, and it’s throwing off a faint pale light—enough so that I can tell she’s crouching as close to me as her chain will allow, concern scrunching her little face.

Great. She can’t reach me, and I can’t speak.

“Neru galtiya?” she asks, tripping slightly over the words, a tentative whisper.

I shake my head, racking my brain for what language that could be. It doesn’t sound like Byrnisian or any of the Fiordenkill languages I know of. Something about her presence is unnerving. It might be that I’m not used to being around kids, that they remind me too much of myself and Nate, of things I want to forget.

“Sura,” the girl says, pointing to herself.

I try to respond with my name, but the gag makes it impossible.

We regard each other for a long moment. I make a questioning sound through the gag, but she just shakes her head and points up at the ceiling, warningly. Her hands are free, though it hasn’t seemed to help her much.

The voices, though. One, a woman’s, is so familiar. My mind is sluggish and fickle, curling up like a snail in its shell whenever I try to think about anything too hard. But that female voice. Aristocratic now, haughty, but I remember it being gentle, careful, even when it was telling me hard things.

The Heiress. I came here to help her, to save her, and now I’m captive and she’s in as much danger as ever. The old guilt stampedes through me all at once. No matter what I do, I can’t save anyone.