Now both Enetta and Lonan are scowling at me. They think I’m mocking them. I try to project a neutral expression, something appropriately contrite for keeping secrets from them, but not overly panicked. Something that says I’m sorry, but I know what I’m doing.
Judging from the level of emotion in the room, it doesn’t seem to be working. Where are Graylin and Willow? Why is Marcus still asleep? I need you, I think, willing him to hear me wherever he is.
The door to the hall slams behind us, and I turn around. It’s Taya.
“Maddie,” she says, ignoring the imperious glares of the delegates. “You’re needed at the infirmary.”
Marcus? “Is it Marcus?” I ask without meaning to.
Taya’s eyes flicker around to all the delegates, and my heart sinks. Whatever information she brings, she doesn’t want to say it in front of them. Not a great sign. I take a deep breath.
“Okay,” I say, and look back at the delegates and Lonan and Enetta. “We can—we will—talk more about this later,” I promise them. “Just please don’t do anything rash in the meantime. I swear to you I’ll fix this.”
The vow lands with a thud in the room. No one’s expression changes except for Princess Enetta’s, whose face hardens. And she’s right. I put her people in danger. That’s the worst part—that she’s right.
Taya doesn’t ask me what happened in the reception room as she leads me to the infirmary, and I don’t ask what’s waiting for us there. I know not talking won’t fix anything, but I need the respite. We use the twisty, narrow, back employee-only hallways, thankfully empty of delegates and staff. I have pretty much zero comfort to offer anyone.
But any shred of relief dissolves when we step into the infirmary. Graylin’s standing inside with a handful of other Fiorden healers. They are gathered around a form on the bed that seems very small. Too small. My stomach drops and my breath vanishes.
The crowd divides for a second as people shuffle around, and I see the patient—Max, a human, a busboy. Crap, he can’t be more than fifteen. He’s covered up with a white blanket, his face pale and breathing shallow.
“What happened?” I demand as I rush over, Taya a step behind me.
Graylin is the one who answers. He and the rest of the healers hover their hands over the boy’s body. Magic shimmers beneath them like distant rain.
“I don’t know,” he says hoarsely. “We found him on the grounds.”
I catch a glimpse of Taya’s face, and it’s a mirror of how I feel—confused, terrified. Horror curdles my insides.
“Is he going to be okay?”
Graylin’s mouth flattens. He pulls the blanket back for a moment, just enough for me to see the thick bandages wrapping Max’s thin, pallid torso.
“He’ll live, but it’s bad. This is a magic sleep, to help with the pain until we make more progress.”
“What do you think happened?” Taya asks quietly.
“The Solarian?” I guess.
Graylin considers, his lips pressed together. “Maybe. But his injuries are different from Marcus’s and yours, Taya. He’s been slashed.”
I open my mouth to say something else—I don’t know what—when the earth seems to shudder and groan beneath our feet. It’s over in a heartbeat, but everyone looks up at once and Graylin’s eyes fly wide.
“What the hell was that?” Taya asks in a low, husky voice that shows she’s scared.
Graylin looks at me. “The doorways.”
Graylin, Taya, and I rush down to find chaos in the tunnels. Fiorden and Byrnisian delegates swarm the juncture, the lamps on the walls barely enough to illuminate them, so it appears at first like just one seething ocean of bodies. Shouts echo off the stone, layering over each other until it’s all a jumbled mass of sound and panic. I want to hide away somewhere, curled up with my hands over my ears, until this is all over. But I can’t. I can’t.
“They’re going through! The Fiordens are going through!” someone screams when we stop in the entrance tunnel.
A knot of Fiordens at the front of the crowd has clustered around the tunnel mouth to their world, shouting at Sal, who they’ve pressed up against the stone wall. A few of the soldiers who joined yesterday’s hunt have gone farther down and formed a line across the hallway, weapons drawn, as if to catch anything that might come from around the bend of the tunnel and the Solarian door past it. Through the tangle of noise, words and phrases float to my ears.
You can’t keep us here.
Let us pass!
Graylin has his hand on my arm, protective, but I pull free and dart through the crowd, panic making my ears buzz, requiring that I move. I can’t hang back and watch this. I throw elbows until I’m at the front of the crowd and step up in the gap next to Sal, turning to face the Fiordens’ wrathful gazes. The door is not far behind us. An aching, cold, snow-scented breeze plays at my back, ghosting over the nape of my neck. Like it’s beckoning me through, inviting me to step across to a world where I might freeze to death in a matter of minutes, but at least that’s better than getting torn open by a Solarian’s claws and teeth. Or an angry crowd. I wonder where Brekken is now, somewhere in that cold universe.
I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I have to say something, because when I raise my hand, the crowd quiets all at once. I feel their eyes on me like heat-seeking missiles. Marcus would know what to do, what to say. But he isn’t here. Just Sal. And me.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Mads,” he says under his breath.
“Delegates,” I begin, willing my voice not to shake. Then I realize that wasn’t loud enough, so I try again. “Delegates. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the door to Solaria. I feared exactly this.”
Silence. I see Graylin’s face and Taya’s at the far end of the tunnel, but the crowd is pressed too tightly for them to come forward.
“I get that you’re scared,” I say. “I’m scared too. And with my uncle sick, I haven’t made all the right choices. But the last time Solarians threatened Havenfall, we beat them by coming together—”
“Not before the ice lovers allied with them!” someone shouts, using a derogatory Byrnisian nickname for Fiordens.
An angry ripple cuts through the crowd, and I see hostile glances shooting from face to face like wildfire, like infection. Tension churns in the air.
“That was over a century ago,” I say, trying for calm. “I know the Fiorden delegation is as committed to peace as any of us. Aren’t they?”
That last bit comes out with the hint of a challenge, directed at the Fiordens gathered around us as we block the door. The courtier Nessa is closest, and I hold her gaze, my head high. For a second I think I’ve convinced them, that I’ve won.
Then Nessa draws her sword—her pretty jeweled sword that I always thought was just ornamental—and lunges for the doorway.
Sal shoves me out of the way, his extender baton coming out just in time to meet the sword with a sharp crack. The people around us barge ahead, though, and when Sal spins one way to counter Nessa’s blow, a middle-aged delegate darts behind him.
The door ripples and there’s a fwoom sound like a drumbeat at the bottom of the range of human hearing, and a blast of icy air and starlight, and the delegate is gone.