I take the handkerchief Graylin passes me, using it to blot the little bit of blood off my arm, and turn to face Enetta. “Princess, if that doesn’t work, you and your delegates can return home if you wish. But please, give me one more day to fix this. If we have your warriors’ help, I bet we can kill the monster in time for tomorrow’s ball.”
The flattery works. The princess nods. When I stand up, a ray-of-sunshine smile has broken through the clouds on Willow’s face. Graylin looks relieved, and the Silver Prince is watching me, looking thoughtful and faintly impressed.
Despite everything—the fear still running through me, the weight of responsibility, the awfulness of this whole situation—a quick thrill of pride blooms. Maybe I really can do this.
In the entrance hall, we part ways toward our respective rooms, the inn now quiet around us. The dancing is over, though the storm rages on outside. But as I start up the red-and-gold-carpeted staircase toward my room, wanting nothing more than to put my headphones on and drown out the world, someone lays a hand on my arm. The Silver Prince.
“Maddie,” he says. The first time he’s used my nickname. “Can I speak to you privately for a few moments?”
I blink. Did I make some mistake, some misstep in the tunnels? But then the Silver Prince smiles, a different kind of smile than the stately, gentle one I’ve seen on him so far. This one is small, subtle, maybe even a little conspiratorial.
“Of course,” I say, hiding my nervousness. A talk with the Prince is something you don’t turn down. “Where should we go?”
“Follow me,” he says without missing a beat.
We take the stairs up, a boyish spring in the Prince’s step. I’m tired to the bone, but he seems in good spirits, more animated than I’ve ever seen him.
“What are you so thrilled about?” I ask—quietly, so as not to wake the delegates in the rooms we pass. “We didn’t fix the doorway.”
“But it responded to your blood,” he shoots back, and his smile is huge and real. “We’re that much closer to closing the door for good.”
Somehow, we’ve reached the top of the stairs with me scarcely noticing. The glass-paneled door to the observatory is before us, and I hesitate, thinking suddenly of Brekken, but the Prince charges ahead. After a moment, I follow, feeling unmoored but light in his wake.
In the observatory, the sound of the rain drumming against the glass dome is loud, almost too loud to speak. The glass-enclosed space is uncharacteristically dark, the rain blocking any light that the enchanted glass could refract. Heavy fog wreathes the inn and the mountains, above and below and all around us. There’s no moon that I can see, and fat raindrops smear the windows and drip down.
But when the Silver Prince raises his hands, it all stops at once. The rain evaporates from outside the glass, and the clouds scoot away above our heads, leaving a small, perfect circle of clear night sky. Yet the rain continues everywhere else, forming opaque shimmering walls on every side. I feel like we’re in a tall, slender cathedral, a cathedral with fog for a floor and rain for the walls and a roof made of stars.
“How did you do that?” I whisper, awestruck in spite of myself. “I thought you had fire magic.”
The Silver Prince strolls to the wall and slips out of one of the scarcely visible doors there, stepping out onto the narrow balcony. I follow and feel another rush of wonder as I see—but don’t feel—the rain, stopping precisely a few feet away. The stone of the roof beneath us is wet and shining, but we are dry. Moonlight glitters on the Silver Prince’s scaled cheekbones.
“I am not content only to protect Oasis, to keep the storms away from the city walls. I want to create a world where Byrnisians can thrive,” he says. A shooting star winks over his head. “In ten thousand years, I want to be remembered as someone who plumbed the uncharted reaches of magic to save his people.”
I glance at him, surprised to hear his ambition stated so baldly. Yet it’s noble, isn’t it? A spark of recognition goes through me, quickly followed by the now-familiar guilt and sadness. A week ago, if you asked me, I might have said something similar about my someday-leadership of Havenfall. Ten thousand years might be a stretch, but in a hundred years I’d want whoever lives at the inn to remember my name.
But that dream is evaporated now. At this point, I’ll count myself lucky if we get through the summer without any more murders.
I lean out over the low wall surrounding the balcony, stretching my hand to try to touch the wall of rain. Too far—vertigo rears. Almost faster than I can see, the Silver Prince is at my side, his fire-warm hand closing around my shoulder and pulling me gently back. He gives me a small, sad smile, like he understands my desire to feel rain against my skin.
“Wait. Look.”
He reaches up and a little piece of storm cloud detaches from the mass and floats our way, rain gusting down. Bits of lightning flicker silently through it. In a moment, the water hits my palm, warm and urgent.
“What uncharted reaches do you have in mind?” I ask. I think of the silver in the Heiress’s room. I don’t know if the powers she referenced in her records are real or if she’s just scamming clueless humans, but what the Prince is doing right now is far beyond the scope of one element—suggesting that Marcus is at least somewhat mistaken about the limits of magic. The Silver Prince doesn’t answer for a moment. I look over at him to find him looking back, an odd, calm, curious expression on his face.
“I’m glad I could come to the peace summit at last,” he says. “I grow more and more convinced that magic is not something unique to each of our peoples, but a single force that flows through all the worlds.” He turns his hands palm up as they rest on the stone wall, and tosses more tiny bolts of lightning between them, like a cat playing with a ball of yarn. Sparks gather between his fingers. “Think of the solstice—a long day here, an eclipse in my city, an aurora in Fiordenkill. There is something that governs us all, that exists everywhere. We can tap into it in our natural-born ways, but perhaps there are other ways too.”
“Like objects?” I ask, faking casual. I’m not quite ready to tell him what I found in the Heiress’s room, if only because it shows how little control I really have over the inn. But maybe the Prince’s theory of the multiverse can still shed some light on her hoard of silver.
“Objects, yes.” He grins at me, the lightning from his hands reflected in his eyes. It’s so dark out here, yet he seems fully illuminated, like what moonlight and starlight there are have settled on his skin. “Or perhaps there’s a way for humans to access it. Or for anyone in any realm to travel safely, the way Solarians can.” His eyes flutter closed for a moment. “Don’t tell Enetta I said this, but I dearly wish to see the Fiorden aurora in my lifetime.”
I laugh, but beneath that, the Silver Prince’s words open a deep pit of longing in me. How many times have I wished for exactly that? To explore other realms, especially Fiordenkill? Brekken has told me so much of auroras, bridges carved of shining ice, great wolves that can run so fast they don’t break the surface of the snow. I always thought I would have to be content with seeing them via the pictures his words painted, and through my dreams. What if there were another way?