26
When I slip into Marcus’s room, my heart leaps with joy before I fully process what I’m seeing.
Marcus is sitting up. His eyes are open.
A thousand emotions crash into me at once as I run over to the bedside. Graylin manages to jump out of the way just in time.
He’s been getting steadily better since the Solarian door closed. Still, he looks strange. There is a frantic color buzzing in his cheeks, and his eyes are unnaturally bright and yet slow to focus on me.
But I push the doubts down to make room for the utter joy, dizzying joy and relief that I have my uncle back. Whatever comes next, fighting the Silver Prince, putting Havenfall back together—we will figure it out. I’m not alone anymore.
“Hey there,” he says, his voice smoker-gravelly from lack of use.
I plop down on the side of his bed, looking up at Graylin to make sure I’m not dreaming. He nods at me with a strange, strained smile, but maybe I’m not seeing clearly because my eyes are filling with happy tears. I blink them away and turn back to Marcus.
His hand reaches out and touches my chin, his expression uncertain. “Sylvia?”
“I—” What he’s said takes a second to sink in.
Sylvia. Mom’s name.
“No, I—I’m Maddie.”
The song in my heart hiccups, but I try not to let it show on my face. He’s been out for a week. It’s probably normal to be a bit confused.
“What year is it?” I ask jokingly.
Marcus’s brow creases. “Why, it must be …”
Worry spikes in my heart. “Never mind.” I grab his hand and hold it between both of mine. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” he says, holding my gaze. “But warm. Too warm.”
I notice for the first time that it’s freezing in here. The window AC unit is cranked way up. But Marcus is sitting on top of the covers, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his face flushed like he’s in the tropics.
I slide off the bed and go over to the AC unit, but it’s already turned up to the max. Just standing near it makes goose bumps rise up and down my arms. I mess around with the dials for a second, trying to compose myself, when Graylin comes over.
“He’s been like this for half an hour,” Graylin says quietly. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t think how to tell you.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I ask, my voice coming out croaky.
Two hours ago, after the fight with the Prince and Taya vanishing and before Willow came to tell me that Marcus was awake, I felt empty, numb, my feelings quota for the day wiped out. But I guess there’s always room in my heart for more fear.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Graylin says, each word soft and careful. “But Willow has a theory.”
“I’m listening.”
Graylin takes a deep breath. “The silver-magic I used changed him.”
Guilt and panic stab through me. I was the one who told Graylin to use the enchanted objects.
“Changed him how?”
It takes Graylin a moment to answer. “I think they’ve made him not entirely human.”
For a moment, my mind is utterly blank.
That’s not possible, I want to say.
But after everything that’s happened in the last few days, nothing really seems impossible anymore.
There are so many things I need to ask Marcus. But now isn’t the time, not when Graylin just got his husband back and the delegates in the dining hall are all waiting to hear from their Innkeeper. So I settle for just one question. “Did you know Nate was a Solarian?”
Marcus blinks again, but not like before—his eyes go distant and I can tell he’s remembering. “I did,” he says quietly.
“And he didn’t die. Traders took him.” It spills out before I can stop it. Okay, more than one question.
He flinches, nods, and more guilt floods in. That was the worst night of Marcus’s life too—he effectively lost his sister and his adopted nephew and, I’m realizing just now, watched all his efforts to help one Solarian child burn to the ground.
But I put my hope down for so many years, and now it’s roared back with a vengeance. “If he’s alive, I’ll find him.”
“If he’s in this world,” Marcus says. He closes his eyes and presses the heels of his hands into them. Graylin comes over to drop a kiss on the top of his head.
I have more questions, but I swallow them. Before I can learn the whole truth about Nate—Nahteran—and Mom and the Solarians and the silver trade, I need to get through today. With the Prince gone and the immediate threat with him, I can take time to piece my life, piece Havenfall, back together.
Even if it’ll never be the same.
Back in the dining hall, I nibble halfheartedly at a slice of pizza as Graylin taps his fingers nervously beside me. He’s not totally sold on what I’m about to do. I can tell. But we need to find out the truth about the silver objects and the bound magic.
We need to find Taya and figure out what happened to Nate. And how to fix Marcus.
It all comes back to the same place. The same world. The same door.
Another omphalos.
I keep trying out words and phrases in my head, looking for the right combination that will ease everyone’s fears and bring back the authority and trust in me that the Silver Prince usurped. But my thoughts are scattered and slip quickly away. Images keep butting in, driving out organized thought: Brekken kneeling in his cell, trying to keep the light alive; the Silver Prince, coming toward me with rain and hail swirling at his fingertips; Marcus awake, delirious, asking for cold; Taya silhouetted in the Solarian doorway, broken and fierce and brave.
What would she tell me now?
I feel a smile creep onto my face, because I know the answer right away. Just do it. Don’t think too much. You’ve got this. I hope she—or at least the version of her in my head—is right.
No one’s been talking much, just a scant murmur of conversation across the tables, but even that quiets when I push my chair back and stand up. The half-empty hall feels hollow, and I’m momentarily seized by a childish urge to yell out just to hear the echo.
“Good evening,” I say.
Project, as Marcus would say, I remind myself. “Thank you for being here.”
A few scattered nods, but mostly just stares.
“Some of you have heard that I was attacked earlier today inside Havenfall,” I say haltingly. “And that the attacker fled. I’m sorry to have to tell you, officially, that the attacker was the Silver Prince of Byrn.”
They know this. I know they know. Yet somehow the silence seems to plummet even deeper when the words escape my lips. Like no one in the room is even breathing.
“There was a Solarian on the grounds of the inn—who returned to Solaria and closed the door to Haven—but she did not kill Bram or attack the staff member,” I go on, willing my voice not to shake, even though I couldn’t keep it steady even when I was just practicing in front of the mirror alone in my bedroom. “That, too, was the Prince.”
A few people around the room gasp.
“He blamed everything on the Solarian,” I say, my voice gaining strength as my anger reignites inside me. “He wanted to incite chaos so that he could assume control of Havenfall. It was the Solarian who saved us and forced the Prince to flee back to Byrn. I don’t know if he’ll return or try again. But I want to say … I want to say that I know things have been frightening lately, and I haven’t always made the right choices as Innkeeper. But we’re safe now, and I want to remind you that the principles Havenfall is built on—neutrality, nonviolence, cooperation—they still stand.”