But all I can focus on is the smell of blood, the blue stains on the floor. The violence of it. I keep my back straight and my chin high, but I need to get away. From the Prince, from the Solarian, from everything. Why is it that the whole scene disgusts me? That the sight of the Solarian is burned behind my eyelids? Why can I imagine its gaze boring into mine?
People pass me, smiling and laughing more than I’ve seen in days, on their way to see the Solarian. I hoist a smile onto my face, but I keep my eyes to the ground and walk faster so no one stops me.
When I see Willow on the other end of a hall, I take a sharp left, weaving through the staff halls instead. I can’t face her. I can’t face anyone. I dearly wish Taya were here. I feel like she’d get it if anyone would—but she’s not here. I drove her away. Where was she even going? Did she get there safely? It causes a stab of pain to think that after everything, I didn’t even get her freaking number.
When it’s finally quiet and I allow myself to look up, I find myself in the Solarian wing. I glance over my shoulder to see the stairwell entrance with its hastily made covering, the one pine board that always hung loose lying in the dust. I don’t even remember taking it down. The floral wallpaper around me is peeling with age, revealing warped oak beneath, and the light filtering down from the skylights above is choked with dust.
I look ahead again, afraid to go any farther, but something stops me from turning back.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I whisper to myself, like that’ll help. The Solarian is caught; we’ll figure out a way to reseal the door; Havenfall is safe. I should be happy. It shouldn’t matter that it was the Silver Prince who brought the monster down. I’m not that vain to prioritize my own pride over everyone’s safety. I can’t be.
No. There’s something else, something deeper and ugly. Something I’m afraid to look at too closely.
Pity. Pity for the Solarian, caged and bleeding.
I push a breath out through my teeth, disgusted with myself. That beast almost killed me. It took a bite out of Taya’s shoulder; it’s the same kind of monster that killed Nate. Yet it still turned my stomach to see it caught.
No one knew how dangerous they were, the Heiress said.
Marcus didn’t. But I do.
I’ve never liked it up here in the abandoned wing. The air feels thick with ghosts, and I almost imagine I can still smell the blood that was spilled all those years ago. This hall’s floor plan is the same as the one where I live a floor below, but the doors are taller to account for occupants’ beast forms. The doors are all closed, but I can imagine Solarian guests waiting just behind them.
My eyes are drawn to the door that sits above my own. The carpet of dust in front of it is thick, perfect—no one’s been inside for years, maybe decades. I’m sure Willow doesn’t know how dusty it is up here, that she just takes the staff at their word that they’ve cleaned.
The dust reminds me of Nate. When we were little kids and the first snow would fall, we would scramble over each other in our effort to be the first out the door, the first one to mark the clean spread of white with our footprints.
Without really meaning to, I turn the knob. The door isn’t locked. It creaks and opens under my touch into shadowy dimness.
I go inside, feeling like someone is pulling puppet strings attached to my limbs. I don’t know what I was expecting as my eyes adjust. It’s just a bedroom, the same as mine, but without all the trappings of a life, the desk and books, scattered clothes and blankets that make my room mine, the documentation of me.
It’s weird to think of a Solarian living here. I know they spent most of their time at Havenfall in their human forms, but I can’t picture that, just the beast I saw in the woods and in the cage. I can’t imagine such a creature choosing instead to look human, moving through these small rooms and narrow halls, knowing all the while that the power of claws and teeth is living inside them. It makes me wonder if maybe there’s a grain of truth in what Taya said before they left. That maybe the Solarians were just like everyone else; that maybe they only wanted to be left alone.
But that doesn’t explain what happened to Nate or the gruesome incident that caused the door to Solaria to be sealed in the first place.
I sink down on the bed, the dark blue coverlet dusty but neatly tucked in. The floorboards creak exactly the same way as they do in my room below. And suddenly, something occurs to me.
There is a small space in the back of my closet, an alcove created by some oddity of the plumbing, too small for any real storage but big enough to hold—and hide—whatever my secret treasures were each summer. Books stolen from the Sterling public library, punk rock CDs passed down from Marcus and an old Walkman from Dad, shiny black stones from Fiordenkill that Brekken gave me. Nate’s jacks, pretty leaves, and Brekken’s poems. I get up to see if this room has it too.
The closet is empty, but I can see that the same floorboard hangs crookedly, secured by one loose nail. I pull my canvas jacket sleeve over my fingers and use it to grab the nail and wiggle it free.
And then I stifle a gasp.
A five-sided box sits in the hiding space in the floor, its lid covered with ornate carvings. It’s formed from something that looks like wood except for its rich dark purple color, kept away from the dust and still shining.
Moving fully on autopilot now, I carry the box over to the bed. It’s heavy. I set it down, the mattress sinking beneath it with a small puff of dust.
It opens with only a soft protest. Inside, a thick silver bangle rests on a bed of velvet. I take it out and turn it over. It’s beautiful, simple, with a subtle braided pattern in the pearlescent Haven silver.
Then I see the note. A small envelope of fine cream paper, tucked into the fold of the velvet.
Guilt trickles through me as I reach for it, but I push the feeling away. Whatever this is, it belonged to a Solarian. They lived here and they killed people. That is their legacy. Whoever—whatever creature—left this, I don’t owe them any privacy.
But the handwriting I unfold looks human. Old-fashioned, the paper yellowed, the script hurried and slanted, almost running off the page.
Annabelle,
You were right to want the do or closed. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. Keep this safe; a part of me is bound to it. It may be the last bit of me to survive.
There’s no signature. But—Annabelle.
That’s my great-great-grandmother’s name.
A part of me is bound to it.
It hits me all at once, so suddenly it’s like someone told me the truth long ago and I just forgot it up until now.
It’s not some long-lost people who have the power to bind magic to silver.
It’s Solarians.
Shock wipes my mind blank as I stagger from the room and force my way out of the Solarian wing, stumbling down the hidden staircase at the back of the hall. I’ve lost time wandering the Solarian rooms. Soon, the Heiress will be meeting with her contact, Whit, in town. I have to let her know what I’ve found.
As I burst into the cool evening air, heading to the stables for my bike, I feel the weight of the bangle around my wrist, the broken talisman that lets me through the Silver Prince’s perimeter stuffed in my pocket. The silver seems to thrum with power, sending electric tingles into my bones and up my arm. Maybe I shouldn’t have put it on.