That’s a joke between us ever since I was a little kid. I’d bring her some Haven food to try, and she’d pretend not to like it. But I’m in no mood for games right now, nostalgic or not.
“How long has this been going on?” I demand.
The Heiress’s face stays placid. The unshakable calmness in her voice somehow angers me even more. “I don’t know. Before either of us was born. As long as people have been crossing through the doorways, I expect.”
“And you’re trying to put a stop to it. By buying the objects back up …”
“And returning them to the Adjacent Realms where they belong,” she finishes for me. “Yes, that’s the idea. I’ve used their magic to get past the barrier on the grounds.”
“Then why didn’t you tell Marcus a long time ago?”
For the first time in our exchange, a flicker of emotion shows. The Heiress’s face falls, only slightly, and only for a second. But I don’t miss it.
“Madeline,” she says slowly. “I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to want to believe it, but you must. It’s true.”
Dread fills my insides, heavy, cold. “What is it?”
She looks me straight in the eyes. “Your uncle knows about the trade,” she says. “He is the seller.”
I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Even after we return to the inn, when the Heiress brings me back to her room and shows me papers with Marcus’s handwriting on them, I can’t believe it.
And yet … there’s no other explanation. No other reason I can think of that would explain the existence of letters in my uncle’s distinctive slanted handwriting, promising buyers riches beyond imagining, Havenfall silver infused with magic. Long lists of names and mailing addresses, each one noted next to what they purchased, when, and for how much. The records go back decades, since before I was born, since Marcus took over Havenfall from my great-great-grandmother. There are copies of receipts for silver objects passing hand to hand. This time I can’t deny the Heiress’s claim. She was buying. And my uncle—my uncle who I trust more than anyone else in the world—was, is, selling.
The Heiress sits patiently and pours us tea while I go through the papers, watching me steadily. My gut churns. My body is slow to accept the truth even as my mind is forced to.
“So that is what your big fight was about,” I say finally, letting the papers flutter from my hands onto the desk. “You were trying to get the objects back, and Marcus—he was—”
“Selling them,” the Heiress fills in, when my voice breaks. “Yes.” There’s no satisfaction in the words. Just a quiet sadness.
“And that’s why you left.”
The Heiress nods again. “For a while. But …” She looks out the window at the mountains, the wrinkles deepening around her eyes. “I came to realize that Havenfall, and the sanctity of the magic within it, was more important than my pride. That it would be better to let Marcus think I’d made my peace with his doings, and then do what I could myself to remedy them.”
I look down, blinking hard. How could he do this? Havenfall is home—that’s even truer for him than it is for me. Marcus spends all year on these grounds. I can’t remember the last time he left.
That you know of.
Because if these papers are to be believed, he’s been traveling all over the country, selling off Havenfall silver bound with the magic of the Adjacent Realms. There are names of drivers, people he trusted enough to make shipments. But sometimes, when he was dealing with a particularly rare magical object—a vase that bore Byrnisian tide-magic, or a watch carrying the Fiorden ability to manipulate emotions—he would make the trip himself. To Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, Minneapolis. Even farther afield sometimes, New York, Vancouver, Mexico City. There are flight receipts, itineraries. Marcus is nothing if not meticulous.
“How did you get all this?” I ask the Heiress in a hoarse whisper.
I don’t really want to know, don’t really care how these records ended up in the Heiress’s desk drawers, but it’s an easier question to put into words than the ones really weighing on my mind. Namely, why, why, why, and why didn’t he tell me?
The Heiress doesn’t answer my question, but counters it with a demand of her own. “Before I tell you anything more, Maddie, I need your word that you won’t divulge any of this to your uncle.”
“I couldn’t tell him if I wanted to.” I’m not thinking. The words just spill out. “He’s still unconscious.”
While the Heiress’s expression softens a little, her gaze stays on me, waiting, expectant. “When he wakes up, then. You mustn’t tell Graylin or Willow either. They don’t know about this. They don’t need to.”
I want to argue. I want to tell her that he’s my uncle—how could I promise her that? But the papers seem to whisper to me from where they rest uneasily in my lap. Telling me that Marcus was keeping secrets, dangerous ones, from me and from everyone else. Maybe he doesn’t deserve my loyalty.
He’s my family, one of the last people I have. Dad doesn’t know about half my life, Nate is dead, and Mom’s soon to follow.
But Marcus lied.
“Okay,” I say, and though my voice is shaky, I mean it.
The Heiress must see the truth in that word, because after a long moment of looking at me, she nods. “All right, then,” she says heavily. “There’s one more thing I need to tell you. Brekken of Myr stole these papers from Marcus’s office.”
The name hits me like a fist of ice to my chest. When my voice comes out, a beat too late, it sounds like I’ve been punched too. “Brekken?”
The Heiress nods. “He was helping me.” Her voice gentles. “I know you two are close. He loves this place as much as you do, and he would do anything to save it.”
“What happened to him?” I whisper. “Where is he?”
The Heiress looks down at her hands in surrender, like an old, defeated queen. “I don’t know,” she says. “He fled back to Fiordenkill, but why, I can’t say.”
That night comes flooding back to me. His kiss. I remember the heat of his lips on mine. His skin was cool, but his lips were warm, as if touching me set something ablaze in his soul.
So is this why Brekken was down in the tunnels that night, to go through Marcus’s office and steal these papers? If what the Heiress is saying is true, he had nothing to do with the Solarian door opening. The Silver Prince was wrong; Brekken is innocent. That should be a comfort to me, but I can’t forget that even if Brekken’s cause was noble, he still used me. I thought he always told me everything, that I knew him better than anyone. Instead, he had this whole plot, a secret life I hadn’t an inkling of. He took me to the stables, kissed me stupid, and stole my keys.
I push the thought away. I have plenty of more important things to worry about, like where Brekken is now. Maybe he crossed paths with the first Solarian in the tunnels and fled back to Fiordenkill for safety? Or maybe—my stomach clenches—Marcus caught Brekken snooping before the Solarian showed up, and Brekken had to run. In any case, the Heiress doesn’t know about the open door to Solaria—hopefully she believes the beast on the grounds wandered in from outside—and I don’t trust her enough to tell her. Quickly, I look back down at the desk, so she won’t read anything on my face. The papers take up fully half of the polished wood of the desktop, the rest taken up by a jumble of silver objects.