Taya clears her throat, snapping me back to the present. “What’s up?”
I blink, willing the heat on my cheeks to fade away. “Shouldn’t you be resting?” I ask, crossing the room toward her.
Taya lifts her right hand from the book, stretching her arm out in front of her and rotating it. “No need. This magic stuff is pretty cool.” She meets my eyes. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
I shake my head and perch on the arm of the couch. I look down at the book she’s reading—something that looks Byrnisian and relatively recent, with shiny ivory filigree spreading over the brown cover. It’s called The Silver Prince.
I laugh in surprise. It’s startling to think that the Silver Prince I’ve met—the man who I think, I hope, is starting to see me as more than Marcus’s little niece, as someone to respect—is the subject of whole books. Though of course it makes sense; he’s impressive enough.
“Anything in there I should know about?” I joke.
But Taya’s not laughing. Her brows draw together as she glances between me and the book. “Guess I was just curious, after I had the honor of meeting him in the woods today,” she says quietly. Her eyes flicker up. “Maddie, doesn’t something feel … off to you?”
“About …”
“Just—him. The Prince.” She shakes the book.
“Um …” I remember last night, how the Prince took me to the observatory and told me his theories about magic in the calm heart of the storm. “Not really? I mean, he’s intense, but …” I think of the shooting stars flashing over his head. “I think he means well.”
“He said something about you, something weird. ‘She’s perfect. She’ll save us.’ ”
My face heats with a mixture of pride, surprise, and discomfort. “That sounds like a compliment, honestly.”
It feels good to know that at least one person at Havenfall other than Graylin has faith in me. Especially now that, more and more, I don’t have faith in me—to find the beast, close the door, stop the Heiress’s smuggling, fix everything. Keep Havenfall safe. But I don’t like the direction this conversation is going.
“What? Don’t you agree?” I mean for it to sound teasing, but it comes out weighty and breathless, almost pleading.
“You know I do. It’s just … the way he said it.” Taya seems to grope for words for a moment, then sighs and looks down, setting the book aside. “Sorry, it’s nothing. So why are you awake?”
I feel strangely hurt and defensive. “Nothing. Just nightmares, the usual.”
“I get that,” she says, gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I’m about to shake my head, but something stops me. My usual answer to that question is hell no, but if anyone would understand, it’s Taya. I take a breath, trying to get past the feeling that something is sitting on my chest, cinching my ribs, stopping me from a full inhale.
“I told you that a Solarian killed my brother, right?”
Taya nods, looking not surprised, but troubled. “And you saw it.”
“Sort of.” I look down at my hands twisted in my lap. “I was home with my mom and Nate one night when I was five and he was eight. We were baking brownies.”
I rub my eyes, as if that will chase away the memories flashing behind them. But it doesn’t. I see the scene so clearly: Nate in a red kid’s apron, pouring brownie batter into a pan with the utmost serious concentration. I remember stirring the batter of another bowl, sneaking licks of the spoon while Mom’s back was turned as she checked the oven.
“But then we heard a window break.” I speak slowly at first, careful, but with Taya’s silent attention on me, the words come faster and faster. It feels good to talk, good to be listened to. When I was with Brekken, he was an open book, he told me everything and I told him everything. We knew everything about each other. It’s weird, now, to try to explain something so massive to someone new. The dark wound that my whole life has grown around, healed over, but which still festers deep under my skin.
“Mom put me in a cupboard, but there wasn’t enough room for both of us. I guess the Solarian got there before Mom could find another hiding spot. I … I heard it attack Nate and I just froze.” This is where I would choke up, usually, but right now I feel hollow, empty. Like there’s a pit in my chest instead of a heart and lungs. Maybe the nightmare wrung the last bit of feeling from me. “If I’d left the cupboard earlier, if I’d tried to distract it …”
But there’s no if, only after. After, my memories become fragmented, scattered moments as sharp as loose razor blades: our front yard washed with red and blue police lights, a funeral without a casket and without Mom. Sitting in the front row between Dad and Marcus, too numb to cry. The stares and whispers at school, the sitting alone on the swing set, watching the other kids run around with their friends and sisters and brothers. After, every good memory I have of Nate comes with a counterweight, the memory of his scream.
“You were a kid; it wasn’t your fault,” Taya says. “But …” She casts her eyes down, uncertain. “You didn’t see any of it? How did you know it was a Solarian?”
My stomach drops. “I saw a little through the doors. Blue fur and orange eyes.”
“And your mom didn’t say anything?”
I shake my head. Now the grief is starting to creep back in, the shadow elephant. “Our neighbors called the police, but they didn’t get there until after Nate and the monster were gone. When they did get there, Mom told them she killed Nate. And she’s been saying it ever since.”
Her eyes widen. “Why? Even if the police wouldn’t believe that the killer was a monster from another world, why would she say she did it?”
“We’ve never talked about it, but I think …” A lump forms in my throat and it’s hard to talk. “I think she was trying to protect Havenfall. She was afraid that someone would believe her. And the secret of the realms and the doorways would get out.”
Taya looks horrified. She tries to school her face into neutrality, but her voice shakes when she says, “That’s noble, I guess.” She doesn’t look like she believes it.
“But it meant I lost her too,” I whisper. “And now that’s been the party line for so long, I think even she’s forgotten it’s not the truth.”
No remorse. That’s the phrase that kept coming up in the trial and on the news. From the outside, the case looked murky—no body, no history of violence, no explanation. If Mom had fought back, said she was innocent, maybe people would find some other explanation. Even if she shouted from the rooftops that it was a Solarian, an insanity ruling would keep her off death row.
But instead she stuck by the first and most important lesson Nate and I got as children. Havenfall is our secret. You both must always protect it.
Soon, she’ll give her life to protect that secret. And sometimes I feel like she’s already given her soul.
14
Eventually, morning comes. I wake up in my room exhausted from the witching-hour heart-to-heart with Taya, with a lump of dread already fully formed in my chest about the task ahead of me.