Those chosen tend to treat summers at Havenfall like one big exotic party, bringing wine and sweets to trade with the humans. This year is no exception.
Inside the staff lounge, worn velvet couches ring the wood-paneled room, filled now with mostly humans, but a few Fiorden and Byrnisian staff too. Several open bottles of wine balance precariously on side tables and armrests. Someone’s dragged in an old boxy TV, and a young Fiorden boy whose ears are adorned with jewels—showcasing the wealth of his family—laughs uproariously at Jeopardy!
The Boulder kids, a group of four college students who’ve come to work here every year for three years, have coaxed some new maids into a louche version of beer pong, played with Fiorden wooden goblets and Byrnisian purple wine. I’m surprised Marcus let them back for another summer, even if they can’t remember last year. One of them, Jayden, snuck into the caves and stepped through the door to Fiordenkill. The enforcers on the other side threw him back through the doorway, gasping and frostbitten, barely conscious. It’s only because of Graylin’s healing magic that Jayden still has all his fingers and toes. Marcus likes to remind me of that—that the magic of Havenfall isn’t just flowers and wine and music. It’s powerful and dangerous, a current that will drown you if you don’t keep a good head on your shoulders.
At a massive desk in one corner sits Willow, the beautiful Byrnisian woman who serves as Marcus’s chief of staff. She looks a bit like Amal Clooney, if Amal’s skin glittered in a distinctly scale-like pattern under certain lights. If the whispers I’ve heard are true, she was high up in Byrnisian circles before some sort of affair gone wrong drove her from Oasis, Byrn’s last habitable city-kingdom. If she resents being stuck here now, corralling frequently drunk humans into keeping Havenfall running, she doesn’t show it except by being ruthlessly effective.
She leaps out of her chair when she sees me, though, and hurries over to wrap me in a perfumed hug. She’s been here my whole life and is almost as much family as Marcus and Graylin. Everyone at Havenfall—all the delegates, at least—just accept me. It’s deeply weird to go from being the freak at home to everyone’s friend. I feel like they see me as a novelty, a sidekick, not an equal to Marcus. But this summer I’m ready to change that notion, ready to prove that I’m fit to move permanently to Havenfall when I turn eighteen—and take over as Marcus’s successor one day.
“Madeline,” she says warmly, holding me by my shoulders so she can appraise my appearance, a survey which leaves her looking, as usual, unimpressed. “You look a bit ragged.”
I feel a smile forming all the same. “I’m sorry. I was on a bus all day.”
“You can’t go to the ballroom like this.” Willow twirls a limp lock of my short hair around her finger.
“I won’t. I promise.” I turn to the side to look back at Taya, who’s lingering in the doorway, uncertain. “But first—I brought you another staff member. I know she’s late, but she’s all right. She gave me a ride here.”
I smile encouragingly at Taya and draw off to the side while Willow finds her name in her massive ledger. Soon, Taya has a job assignment—reporting to the groundskeeper to trim hedges at 8:00 a.m. sharp tomorrow—and a room key pressed into her palm.
Before she goes, Taya smiles at me. “Hey, Maddie, right?”
Surprised that she remembered my name after the wine, I nod.
“I’m Taya,” she says. “Thanks for the tour.”
Then she’s gone.
I swallow down the weirdness of that interaction and turn back to Willow, hoisting my smile back on. “How’s everything so far?” I ask her.
“Oh, chaos as usual,” Willow says, slashing a hand dismissively through the air. “We’ve already had a minor catastrophe, when Marcus realized we didn’t have enough wine for tonight, so I haven’t had time to catch up on Realms gossip. Do you think you could sniff some out to save me from dying of boredom in my office?”
She lays a hand over her heart in mock seriousness, and I grin, happiness shooting through me. With the chatter of voices all around and the buzz of the TVs and the bits of otherworldly music floating up from downstairs, I feel buoyed by sound and life. So different from Sterling, where the reigning noise is empty silence punctuated by the thunder of highway traffic rushing by. When I was a kid, when I had just moved in with my dad, there were names too—names flying like knives. Freak. Jailbird. On the playground, on the school bus, the few times I made the mistake of trying to play with kids in the neighborhood. Now I don’t get the names so much, just despising or pitying stares that always feel like they’re drilling holes in me.
“Where do you want me?” I ask Willow, pushing those thoughts away to get back to the present. Where I’m wanted, needed.
“I’ll put you at the bar. Get those delegates drunk and report back on what’s happening in my city.” Her eyes gleam, hungry for information.
Half an hour and a quick shower later—quick because for all Havenfall’s charms, the ancient pipes can never be relied upon to supply hot water—I plop down on the bed, wrapped in a fluffy blue bathrobe, and dial Dad’s number. To calm the anxiety that rumbles in my stomach as the phone rings, I look around my room, focusing on each of the familiar objects in turn to calm myself. The shelf loaded with impressive-looking tomes on Realms history, which I must have forgotten to return to the library last summer. The small window and the starry mountain-broken sky I can see through it. The quilt beneath me, made of interlocking diamonds of Byrn silk and Fiordenkill velvet; a gift from Marcus to my mom when I was born. Nate had one, too, but I don’t know where it is.
“Hello?” Dad’s voice breaks off the melancholy thought. “Maddie?”
I hear the muted hum of the TV in the background. I imagine him in our cramped living room, exhausted after a long day of fixing wiring and repairing power lines, kicked back on the recliner—but worried, now, because of me.
In a second, the wistfulness is gone and the nerves are back. “Hi, Dad.” I fiddle with the edge of the quilt. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” Dad sounds wary. He knows something is up. “Marla’s gone to pick up a pizza and we’re about to watch the game. How about you? Have you made it to your grandma’s yet?”
I know I should feel guilty about coming here behind his back. I should. But it’s hard to feel guilty when such a great relief is filling me up, lifting my spirits. I feel like I can breathe for the first time in months. But I try for a contrite tone when I say, “No. Dad, I … I went to Havenfall instead.”
The sound of the TV clicks off. There’s a long silence, and I twist the quilt between my fingers, trying to parse it. Is he angry? Disappointed?
When he speaks, though, it’s with resignation. “Maddie. You should have told me.”
“You didn’t want me here.” Even though I don’t mean to, I can hear that I sound defensive.
“No, I didn’t,” Dad replies. “I don’t think it’s good for you to be there. There’s a whole world for you to explore.”
There are whole worlds here too, I want to say. But I stay quiet, knowing Dad doesn’t know about the Adjacent Realms, about the magic. He’s visited the inn—I have a dim memory of the four of us, Mom, Dad, Nate, and me, visiting for Christmas when I was very small—but only in the winter when it was empty.