Something in his voice is sharp, like a razor floating in honey.
“Marcus feels the same way,” I tell the Prince, defensive.
“Possibly,” he replies, eyes steady on mine over the bed and Marcus’s form. “But you must know that he is not practical like you. He looks for good where there is none. He used to believe the Solarians could be redeemed. Even when it risked the peace of the Adjacent Realms. Even when it put his family in harm’s way.”
I don’t understand what the Silver Prince is trying to tell me. I’ve never heard of Marcus looking kindly on Solarians. Why would he, after what happened to Mom and Nate?
“What do you mean, his family?”
“I mean the attack on your mother and brother,” the Silver Prince says, softly surprised. He looks down at Marcus, and now his eyes are cold. “Everyone knows it happened because your uncle invited a Solarian into the home. He tried to shelter it, and it killed your brother.”
My blood is icy water in my veins, and my voice comes out a hoarse whisper. “Where did you hear that?”
The Silver Prince dips his head, his eyes cutting to my uncle’s pale, blank face.
The ice water turns to ice itself. I can’t move, I can’t think. For an instant, I’m in the cupboard again, Nate’s scream searing into me and leaving a burning brand on my heart. Then—
“You’re wrong,” I choke out.
Sympathy looks odd on the Silver Prince’s face, unnatural. “Maddie, I’m sorry. I thought you knew—”
“I need to be alone right now,” I say.
I instantly regret it. The Prince is the most powerful person here, possibly the only person keeping us from total chaos, and I need him. But he doesn’t appear angry. He doesn’t move either.
I feel sick, feel emptied out as I stare down at Marcus. Even in sleep, his face is so familiar, so safe. Every summer, he’s come to pick me up at the crossroads, and when I saw him through the bus window and watched the smile break out over his face, that’s when I knew I was safe, I was home.
He is compassionate; he’s always thinking of others first. Is it possible that what the Silver Prince is telling me is true, and that his boundless kindness extended even to Solarians, the monsters who killed my brother?
There was the sound of breaking glass. There were a million shards sparkling on the linoleum kitchen floor. But thinking back now, I can’t remember if I heard the window break before Mom shoved me into the cupboard, when we were still just a normal family baking brownies, happy and together, or after, when the monster dragged Nate’s body through and into the night.
Could Marcus have let a Solarian in?
We were his family, Mom, Nate, Graylin, and me. We were supposed to come first.
But now Nate is dead and Mom is locked away from me forever, and he’s wasting away, and there’s a monster out there in the woods. If the Prince is telling the truth, Marcus’s foolish kindness has already demolished half our family, and might finish me and Graylin off any day now.
How could he have let the monster in?
“I’ll leave you be,” the Silver Prince says, snapping me back to the present. His voice is calm as a frozen landscape, without a touch of anger. “When you’re ready, come find me. We need to address the defection of the Fiorden delegates.”
“What can we do about it?” I ask, my voice raw. “They’re gone.”
“Exactly, and there must be repercussions.” His voice turns over from authoritative to gentle again. “This is the second time the Fiordens have betrayed Havenfall. Remember Brekken.”
“I remember,” I say, because I don’t want to hear more about Brekken from the Prince. I know he thought he was acting for a good cause, stealing my keys to investigate Marcus’s involvement in the magic black market, but it still stings fiercely that he didn’t tell me. That he didn’t trust me. That he left me.
“We all want to believe the best of intentions in others,” the Prince says. Sitting still as a statue, casting a shadow even taller and thinner than he is, he seems older, more the eerie, powerful magical being he is. “But it’s not always the truth.”
Even if he doesn’t know Brekken’s real motivations, he’s not wrong about me. I trust too easily, too soon, and now that flaw has put in danger not only me, but the whole inn and everyone in it. I feel frozen.
“What should we do?”
The Silver Prince’s lips pull up in a small, regretful smile of acknowledgment. “Fiordenkill must face sanctions,” he says. “They’ve disturbed the balance of the doorways, and the Solarian door has opened wider. My elemental soldiers have it blocked off with a barricade of iron, but if more Solarians come through, even that may not hold.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, seeming to see straight into my soul. “So what do you think is an appropriate price for the danger they have put us all in, Innkeeper?”
I close my eyes, trying to think. “There’s not much I can do. I can’t prohibit entry back into Havenfall or cut off trade. Not as long as they’re part of the alliance in the Accords.”
“Alliances can be changed.” He speaks quietly, but every word is clear on the still air. “Treaties can be changed.”
For a second, my heart seems to stop in my chest. “Cut Fiordenkill out? But the Three-Realm Alliance has stood for a hundred years.”
“A hundred years is not so very long a time to some of us,” the Prince says. “And what else can we do? Would you bring back the executions, which your great-great-grandmother used to impose upon traitors?”
My breath catches in my throat. I didn’t know my ancestors had killed people. I have a sudden vision of standing on the lawn with a sword in my hand, someone with copper penny hair kneeling before me with their head down, and my heart lurches so violently I have to lean forward and put my head in my hands for a second.
“I need time to think.”
He glides to his feet and to the door. “Time is scarce, Innkeeper.”
A shudder of mixed thrill and disgust goes through me at the word. “I will get you an answer soon. I swear.”
“Very well,” he says. But his eyes stay on me. “Don’t doubt yourself, Maddie. You have what Marcus doesn’t. You’re strong enough to make hard choices in service of a greater good.”
Then he’s gone.
I want to cry, but I can’t. The tears aren’t there, and they won’t come. It’s like someone’s scooped my insides out and left me empty except for dust and echoes.
I sit hunched over with my face in my hands, still except for my slowly beating heart and breathing that hurts with each inhale. That’s how Graylin finds me when he walks in, yawning, a few minutes later.
Graylin stops for a second when he sees me. Then his shoulders loosen, and he comes over and sits by Marcus. Graylin was supposed to be taking a nap, but he doesn’t look very well rested.
“How is he?” Graylin asks, running his fingers over the back of Marcus’s hand. The words, though, sound moot, not something he expects an answer to.
I can’t tell him what the Prince said about Marcus fostering Solarians. Not when Marcus isn’t awake to explain his side of the story. Graylin is already carrying so much; I can’t put this on him too.