“Marcus looks a little better,” I say, too brightly, but it’s true. Some of the color has returned to my uncle’s face, and the rise and fall of his chest is deeper and steadier than it was yesterday.
“If you say so,” Graylin mutters, not looking at me. He looks even worse than I feel. There is a sallow undertone to his skin and bags under his eyes.
Willow, circling back to me with a cup of coffee from the Keurig on the dresser, leans in and whispers in my ear. “Graylin hasn’t slept at all. I tried to get him to take a break, but maybe you’ll have better luck.”
I nod my understanding and step forward cautiously. “Graylin …”
He shakes his head, still not meeting my eyes. “I know what you’re going to ask. Answer’s still no. He’s been out too long. I’m here until he wakes up.”
“Graylin.” My stomach twists. Fiordens can go for longer than humans without sleep, but not indefinitely. “He would want you to get some rest.”
At that, Graylin finally looks up. His expression is awful, hollowed out and heartsick and somehow—guilty. Does he feel to blame for what happened? Don’t, I want to tell him. If this was anyone’s fault, it was mine. Mine, for letting Brekken trick me. I still don’t understand what he and the Heiress have to do with the door to Solaria opening, but it can’t be a coincidence that it all happened on the same night.
Before I can put my thoughts into words, a knock at the door makes all three of us jump. I’m the closest, so I shrug and go to the door, but I can’t help but hold my mug tighter. As if a monster like the one who killed my brother would knock. As if a face full of coffee would stop it.
But it’s just a girl, one of the Boulder college kids on staff. Kimmy, I think her name is. She looks worried.
“Hi, sorry, is Marcus around?”
The bed is around a corner, but I still position my body so she can’t see deeper into the room. “Not right now, but what’s up? I might be able to help.”
Please let this be something normal and silly. A clogged toilet or bickering delegates or wine spilled on white carpet …
“Jayden found a dead deer in the woods.” Kimmy chews her lip. “We went out there last night to, um …” She trails off, reddening.
“Never mind about that.” I don’t mean to snap at her, but worry pushes the words out fast and sharp. “As long as you didn’t go out of the grounds, that’s fine. But what happened to the deer?”
“It looks like a mountain lion got it. It was half-eaten.” She shudders. “But there were these weird footprints around it. Like …” She holds her hand out palm up, fingers stretched out. “They were huge, and had claws, but something like thumbs too. Been a long time since I was a Girl Scout, but I don’t think mountain lions have thumbs.”
My skin tightens. “Yeah, no.” Okay, Maddie, I tell myself. Stay calm. This doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means.
“A bear, maybe?” I hear myself say. “They have five toes.” I fight an insane urge to laugh.
Kimmy scrunches her eyebrows. “Maybe …”
I can tell she doesn’t believe it any more than I do.
“I’ll send people to check it out,” I tell her. “In the meantime, maybe hold off on the wandering alone in the woods.”
Kimmy nods.
“And tell the others too—stay inside, if you can.”
Once Kimmy leaves, I turn back into the apartment. Graylin’s and Willow’s dark expressions echo the feeling in my chest. The tight, churning fear. That we didn’t try hard enough to close the Solarian door. Because now, even though we put guards in the tunnels, something else has gotten through.
“I’m going down to the tunnel to check on things,” I say. “If I’m not back in half an hour, call the cops.”
It’s a bad joke, and neither of them laughs. Willow rises to her feet, and Graylin a second later.
“Marcus will be fine without us for a few minutes,” he says to my questioning look. “You’re not going down there alone.”
Sal and six guards—a different team from yesterday; Sal has them rotating out to keep eyes in the tunnel 24/7—meet us at the juncture and accompany us down to the Solarian tunnel. None of them saw anything unusual, and though none of us say it, I wonder if the others are thinking, as I am, about the Solarians’ ability to shapeshift. How far does it go—could a Solarian disguise itself as a rat, a moth, a speck of dust? How can we guard against a threat when we don’t know what form it will take?
The only sound in the tunnel, besides our footsteps and breathing, is the usual muted howl of wind through the stone labyrinth—the icy whistle of Fiordenkill’s arctic breeze, and the hot, wild roar of Byrn’s tempestuous gales. None of us says anything. We just walk faster into the darkness—Graylin and Willow first, side by side, then me, the guards flanking us.
When we round the corner, there’s nothing but air and darkness. The crack in the Solarian door is wider still, and a terrifying orange light shows through. I think I can hear howling on the other side—whether it’s the howling of wind or beasts, I can’t tell.
And—goose bumps break out all over me as I see it—there are more scratch marks than before. The long, pale, curved slashes look like wounds in the stone.
My eyes follow the slashes around the crack in the door. Into the hallway. Fading just before they reach my feet. There’s no mistaking the implications this time.
A Solarian beast is in Havenfall.
11
That evening, I’m crouched in front of the fireplace in the reception room, trying to focus on taking deep breaths. The distant strains of the Elemental Orchestra float through the halls from the ballroom, but the music is nearly drowned out by the clatter of hail on the skylight, so heavy and loud that I’m sure at any moment the glass will break and rain down on me.
After what we saw in the tunnels this morning, I spoke to the Silver Prince and Princess Enetta, letting them know that there was almost certainly a Solarian somewhere on the grounds and that we had to keep everyone inside. The Silver Prince offered Byrnisian magic to buy me time. The storm he spun has been raging all day, rattling the windows and making the light dim and dull. Now it’s dark, but the storm is slow to fade. My heart stutters every time lightning lines the windows in red, or thunder sounds in the distance. It’s the first time I’ve been alone all day, and the dread that I’ve managed to push down through today’s meetings is fighting its way back up. Making my pulse race and my ribs feel too tight, like my heart and lungs are fighting for space inside me. Sweat drips down my back, but I still feel cold, even holding my hands close to the flames. Tendrils of panic have worked their way into the edges of my mind and they’re pulling, pulling, pulling.
There’s a Solarian somewhere near. It could be literally anywhere.
No. I can’t go there. Graylin told me after the tunnels that their shapeshifting ability only goes so far. That from what he can tell from the history, most Solarians can only cycle between two or three forms that manifest over their lifetime. They can’t take one glance at a person and mimic their appearance, or shrink themselves down to nothing. We’ll know it when we see it. I don’t need to be afraid of Kimmy hurrying by in the hall, silver meal tray in her hands; or the moth I can see on the glass of the west window, seemingly unbothered by the rain, slowly beating its wings.