“I’m learning things here too,” I tell Dad. “Marcus is teaching me about the business side of the inn, how to balance a checkbook and stuff.”
That’s a stretch, but I want it to be true. This summer, I’m going to focus on learning, on being a help, so that Marcus will let me stay full-time after I graduate next year. What Dad doesn’t get is that Havenfall isn’t about hiding away from the world. I’m creating a life for myself in the one place I can really make a difference. I failed Mom and Nate years ago, and Havenfall is all that’s left of our family. I won’t run away from that.
“I had to, Dad,” I say, emotion leaking into my voice in spite of my best efforts. “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.” He sighs. “I know you’ve had a hard year, what with … the news about your mother. And you’re almost an adult; you’re old enough to be making your own choices. But I want you to study for your SAT while you’re there. You hear me?”
Tears gather at the edges of my eyes. “I will. And I’ll tell Grandma.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” he says wearily. “I’ll call her. Right after I call your uncle and tell him to keep an eye on you.”
I swipe the tears off my cheeks. “Thanks.”
“Be safe, Maddie.” His voice goes a little quieter, concern entering it. “I worry about you, you know.”
“I know.”
And I do. I grip the blanket, sitting with the guilt. I know Dad cares about me; I know he only wants what’s best for me. We just have different ideas of what that is. He doesn’t deserve my lies.
But I remember being a little kid and telling him about doorways and magic, and the way he grinned and ruffled my hair and told me never to lose that imagination. At some point, I started to understand why Mom never told him it was all real. The lie isn’t hurting anyone, and telling the truth would mean a coin toss between upending everything Dad knows about the world and having him think I’m crazy. The image of my face in Mirror Lake lingers behind my eyes as I tell him I love him and hang up, feeling guilt and relief in equal measure.
After coaxing my short, messy hair into something resembling a style, I open the closet, considering the bright array of Byrn- and Fiordenkill-inspired clothes that have waited patiently for me since last summer. My usual jeans–Doc Martens–canvas jacket combo won’t cut it in the ballroom, so I pull on velvet riding breeches and my favorite Byrnisian jacket. It’s dark blue linen with gold buttons and panels of black shining scales marching down the sleeves. Then to balance that out—Marcus always says I should take care not to seem partial to one Realm—I stack jewels in my ears in the Fiorden style. Brekken and I made the piercings the summer we were both twelve, hiding in my room with a needle and candle. It could have been a disaster, but he did careful work, two even lines of piercings along the edges of my ears.
I choose three jewels for each ear—blue, green, and silver, the colors that symbolize peace between the last three Adjacent Realms. I swipe gray powder over my eyelids and mauve over my lips, and for the first time in a long time I look in the mirror and smile.
My bedroom is at the end of the Fiordenkill wing, a big room with a dormer window facing west. The view of the sunset over the mountains is the best in Havenfall, and as a bonus, there’s a shortcut—a narrow, out-of-the-way staircase used mostly by the staff, but which takes me past the hallway where the Solarian guest rooms used to be.
Now the hallway is sealed off with pine boards, since no one else wants to sleep in those rooms. It would be cowardly to take the long way around just to avoid passing a covered-up doorway, so I rarely do, but just walking past it on the landing always makes ice cascade down my spine. There’s something about the idea that Solarians used to sleep in rooms just like mine, with cedar eaves and windows looking out over the mountains.
The wooden boards have warped with age, opening up cracks between each wide enough to see through. After the Solarians were banished, my great-great-grandmother painted the walls and ceiling in that part of the dormitory a pleasing light blue, scrubbed the floors to a high shine that still glints underneath the cobwebs, but no one was willing to stay there. Annabelle couldn’t erase the memories of rough places where claws gouged the walls, bloodstains on the floor.
As kids, Brekken and I once dared each other to peek through the cracks and see what we could see. But when I knelt and pressed my face to the wood, a shadow scurrying across the floor scared me so bad I jolted back and almost fell down the stairs. Brekken caught me and held me to his chest until I stopped shaking, already chivalrous at ten. After that, I looked up what happened in the library. Back when Havenfall’s tunnels opened up to three worlds instead of two, back when guards surrounded the grounds both to keep humans out and Solarians in—because unlike the rest of us, they can travel throughout the worlds without getting sick—a political disagreement ended when a Solarian delegate murdered a Byrnisian princess and ate her heart right out of her chest.
After the war that followed, the door to Solaria in the tunnels beneath was closed, and the Solarians’ old guest rooms have stood empty ever since. Too many bad memories and mojo. Even the human cleaners, who don’t know what happened, are put off by this part of the inn, as evidenced by the thick layer of dust on the floor of the stairwell, thick enough that as I walk past, I leave footprints behind me. The Solarians are gone, I remind myself.
But they aren’t, not entirely. One killed my brother in Sterling eleven years ago. It might still be out there. Who knows how many more might have slipped through the dragnets.
We don’t talk about such things at Havenfall, though. The guests would be horrified if they knew how Nathan died, why my mother ended up in Sterling Correctional when, despite all her flaws, she didn’t kill my brother. I’ve never told anyone except Brekken and Marcus about that, because the important part of the story is something that would threaten the very peace that was brokered here so many years ago, the reason for the summit every year. Marcus just told the rest of the delegates that his nephew had died and his sister had moved away. It wasn’t technically a lie.
Marcus always told me the purpose of the summit is to remember the Accord that allied Byrn, Fiordenkill, and Haven. But if you drill down deeper, if you read the Accord, the real reason behind it is darker. It’s Solaria.
I shake the dark thoughts away. Now isn’t the time to get dragged into a dark mood. I have a job to do. And someone to see.
When I come down the stairs, the ballroom is filled with people. They’re spread out below me, and even though I’ve seen this tableau so many times before, I stop for a second and drink it all in.
Havenfall. At last.
The peace summit officially begins tomorrow, but it looks like most of the delegates have already arrived. The denizens of the three worlds practically glitter, the crystal chandelier shedding light on their bright hair, feathery hats, and silk scarves. Staff, human and otherwise, flit between them with trays of prettily arranged snacks and bubbly drinks. Voices and laughter in three languages rise up to me. A handful of guards—mostly humans who report to Sal Fernandez, Marcus’s trusty head of security—are stationed at intervals along the mirrored walls. More a formality than anything—Havenfall hasn’t needed defending since before I was born—but their presence makes me feel safer.