That’s all it takes. Nessa’s sword flashes and blood flies; Sal cries out and stumbles back, clutching his shoulder.
The clatter of his baton on the stone floor opens the floodgates.
Everyone surges forward at once, and I grab on to the rough stone wall to avoid being pushed through the Fiorden doorway. Bodies shove past me, indistinguishable in the rush and the noise. People shout and scream in three languages. I yell at them to stop, but no one hears me; if it weren’t for the scrape in my throat and lungs I wouldn’t be sure I was speaking at all. I can’t move, can scarcely breathe. I don’t know what to do.
Then lightning—lightning—branches across the top of the tunnel, searing my vision, leaving a forked trail of light behind my eyes. Heat scalds my upturned face, and the boom an instant later resonates in my chest and sends dust raining down. The noise dies at once, as suddenly as if someone pressed a mute button; everyone turns to the top of the tunnel, where the Silver Prince stands silhouetted against the light of the upstairs hallway.
In the still and the silence, I notice that the crowd is thinner. Some people are on the ground; some people are hunched and trembling; some people are gone. In the panic, how many people went through to Fiordenkill?
“Enough,” the Silver Prince calls, and his voice echoes the thunder. His gaze finds me and he beckons. “Madeline.”
A part of me resents being summoned in my own inn, but I am too shell-shocked to do anything but obey. The delegates who remain in the tunnels, sweaty and pale and wide-eyed, separate wordlessly and I walk up, past Graylin and Taya, to stand by the Prince’s side. He lifts a hand and points, past the doors to Fiordenkill and Byrn, into the darkness toward Solaria.
“There is the enemy,” he says, voice dark and scary and commanding. “We suffered through a decade of war to learn this lesson, but it seems some have forgotten.” His eyes drill toward the Fiorden door, the delegates still lingering around it, frozen in the act of trying to get through. “As the Innkeeper’s niece has said, only in unity will we triumph over them. We must preserve the peace at any cost.”
That’s not precisely what I said, but I’m not about to argue. The delegates are listening to the Prince in a way they didn’t listen to me.
“If anyone else attempts to go through the doorways, they will be arrested,” he says. “My soldiers and I are working with Madeline Morrow to close the Solarian door. Rest assured that you will be protected in the meantime.”
He takes a step back, putting me at the forefront, exposed before the crowd. I feel so small, young, weak, but the Silver Prince continues.
“It bears repeating that you will all consider Madeline Morrow vested with the full duty and authority of the Innkeeper. She is the Innkeeper.”
The gaze of the crowd turns to me in the dark of the tunnel. I stand up straight and take it, but my eyes prickle with tears.
It’s what I always wanted to hear.
And it feels completely and utterly hollow.
17
The rising moon shines through Marcus’s window, the windowpanes casting cross-shaped shadows on the hardwood floor. The lamp on the bedside table seems dim and paltry by comparison. The mountains outside seem alien, cast in silver, like something out of a black-and-white photo. Marcus looks the same as he did this morning, his breathing shallow and quiet. But now, instead of Graylin, his visitors are me and the Silver Prince.
An hour has passed since the chaos in the tunnels. The staff and the delegates—at least the delegates that didn’t flee to Fiordenkill—are in their rooms, kept there by a curfew the Prince laid down. Leftover adrenaline still trickles in my veins, making my heart race and my limbs ache to jump, to move, to do something.
I’m aware of the Prince like I would be of a live wire in the room. He’s been sitting quietly with me, waiting for me to be ready to talk, but I don’t know how I can. I’m grateful that he stepped in earlier, I guess, or all the Fiorden delegates would have fled instead of just a third of them.
I couldn’t have stopped them. I know that. But I feel … diminished somehow, after seeing the Silver Prince step up and take charge. Yet I don’t feel any safer. It would be crazy of me to think of the Prince’s actions as a power grab … but I can’t help feeling that way. Taya’s words from when she found out about the realms bounce around in my head. What if he was wrong? Or lying?
I guess at the end of the day I don’t. But I do know that I need the Silver Prince on my side. Alone, I have no strength. No power.
“Have you ever seen someone recover their soul after a Solarian attack?” I ask, gesturing at Marcus’s almost-still form.
The Silver Prince shakes his head. “It’s strange. In all the other cases I’ve seen, the victims have either recovered by now or …” He trails off tactfully.
“He’ll wake up soon,” I say, the words slipping out in my exhaustion like a fevered prayer. “He’s the Innkeeper, not me.”
Because I need you … and I have questions.
The Silver Prince looks questioningly at me. On edge as I am, it catches me off guard, and I blurt, “What is it?”
He speaks slowly, measured, weighing each word carefully. “I had imagined you might aspire to the role yourself, permanently. Was I mistaken?”
My cheeks burn with a mixture of shame and hurt. If this were a fairy tale, maybe my not-so-secret ambition to be Innkeeper could have sent Marcus into his sleep. But this isn’t a fairy tale, and I always thought Marcus meant for me to take his place someday.
“Not now,” I say firmly. “And not like this. Not for years, not until he wanted to retire.”
My stomach churns as I remember what the Heiress told me, about Marcus’s involvement in the magic black market. Why didn’t he tell me? Was it because he didn’t trust me, or because there were things he didn’t want me to know? Or both?
“Even so …” The Prince’s words are quiet, but each one still lands heavy in the almost-silent room. “I think you’re underestimating yourself, Maddie. I think you could be a great Innkeeper. Maybe more than Marcus ever was.”
A harsh bark of laughter escapes me. It’s loud and makes me flinch, and I press a hand to my mouth, but of course Marcus doesn’t stir.
“Better than him?” I whisper incredulously, when I have control of my voice again. “I’ve been in charge for less than a week and everything’s falling apart.”
“Because of decisions that he made.” The Prince’s glittering eyes cut to Marcus. “He built a tower on sand. That it has now started to fall is no fault of yours.”
A trickle of cold goes down my spine, mirroring the edge of a chill that’s suddenly appeared in the Silver Prince’s voice.
“What do you mean?”
The Silver Prince turns on his chair to fully face me. The light of the lamp doesn’t seem to reach him; the moon reflects off his silvery skin and hair, catches the slight scale pattern ridging his cheeks.
“You love the inn for what it is, not for how it can profit you,” he says. “The magic, the possibilities, the doorways. This life has been cruel to you, and so you take comfort in the knowledge that other life is there, even if you cannot access it. Byrnisians are much the same.”