Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(9)
“I feel like myself here,” I say, a half truth.
What happened to her family is no one’s fault. Mine, though—those secrets are ugly. And looking down at the water, at who I could be, I know I want none of those memories at Havenfall. They are my past, but this place is my future.
It has to be.
3
Over the bridge, Havenfall looms above us against the starry sky, towering at the end of a winding gray cobblestone path. Two guards materialize from the trees to check our IDs before they let us go any farther. They’re human, but one wears a Fiorden fur cape and one a Byrnisian scaled jacket. Taya’s eyes narrow in confusion at their strange clothes as she hands over her driver’s license. I’m just glad the guards’ swords are hidden beneath their outerwear. And that Taya doesn’t see the rest of the guards, the ones I know are here, hidden in the trees, to make sure no unauthorized people get into the inn.
They wave us through, and faint strains of music float down to us as I lead Taya up. Excitement builds in my stomach when the inn’s gold-lit windows come into view, and it’s all I can do not to make a beeline for the door. Instead, I go with her to park her motorcycle in the stables, which Marcus has converted to double as a parking garage. Taya cocks her head as we claim a stall next to a huge, gorgeous chestnut mare.
“Never seen a hotel like this before,” she remarks, pocketing the keys.
In the low light, her locket seems to have the pearlescent shine of Haven silver, of Nathan’s jacks, and I wonder if she’s telling the truth about never having been to this town. Why would she lie about that, though?
“So where are you from?” I ask, trying to fill the silence.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but Taya seems to tense as we head up the path toward the inn’s grandiose front door.
“All over,” she says after a moment. “Foster care will do that to you.” Her voice is mild, conversational, but there’s the hint of a challenge in it. I detect it, because it’s the same tone I’ve deployed on so many “concerned” onlookers in my own life. Tell them the facts, see how they react. The more syrupy-fake pity in their reaction, the more likely they’re only talking to you to get the lurid details.
So I take a moment to figure out how to reply, reaching my hand out so it brushes the flowers lining the path. The soil here is rocky, hard to grow anything in, but the gardeners—with the help of a little Fiorden blood magic and a bit of Byrn-born rain in the dry times—have coaxed up small riots of brambles and rosebushes, their colors bright even in the dim of the evening. Birch trees line the path and vines drape picturesquely over the inn’s cedar walls. Muffled music and light spill from the windows above our heads.
“Which was your favorite place?” I ask her finally. Interested but casual, not nosy. A question to do with her, not her tragic circumstances. Sure enough, pleasant surprise flickers over her face.
“Roswell,” she says with a little smile. “I lived with an older couple. They were a little weird—said they’d seen UFOs, the whole thing—but kind. The town was shit but the desert was beautiful.”
“Ugh, that sounds terrible.” I fake-shudder. “Nothing but cactuses for miles around.” I imagine a flat, sunbaked plain, dotted with prickly plants and scraggly trees, the heat beating down. No whispering pines, no fog-scented wind, no mountains like the ones surrounding us now like silent sentinels, towering and safe.
“It’s ‘cacti,’ actually. And it’s not just that. There’s hills, sand dunes—”
She stops talking when we reach the inn’s carved, polished double doors, which look like something out of a storybook castle. They stand open to reveal the grand entrance hall, cedar-paneled walls rising to a high, sloped ceiling and lit by torches in sconces along the walls. A split staircase frames an archway on the other end, blocked with a green curtain, but the hall is empty except for a side table bearing a crystal flagon of wine and a deep armchair where Graylin, Marcus’s husband and the sole member of Havenfall’s welcoming committee, sits.
Graylin looks up from his book—Leaves of Grass—as we enter. “Maddie! And …”
His voice trails off in confusion as he looks at Taya, then back at me, and rises from his chair. He’s striking, over six feet tall with dark skin and light brown eyes, and despite spending so many years with Marcus on this side of the divide, he still has an otherworldly air about him. He’s a scholar of the Realms and still visits Fiordenkill every so often to give lectures. His walk is fast but light-footed, like he could pass through the woods in winter without leaving footprints in the snow. And even though he’s basically family, I still feel an instinctive rush of awe and unease, as I always do meeting anyone from the Realms. But the embrace he wraps me in is familiar, if a little sharp and bony.
“So good to see you,” Graylin rumbles in his deep, faintly accented voice. Then he pulls back, his brow creasing. “But I thought you weren’t coming this year.”
I guess Marcus didn’t get my texts, then. “I changed my mind,” I say, aiming for breezy. “Hope that’s okay.”
“Of course.”
Graylin studies me, blinking, and the soft look in his eyes makes me realize he probably knows about Mom and the death penalty. There’s nothing in all the worlds I want less to talk about, so I speak quickly, beckoning Taya forward.