Yet I don’t feel safe, not yet. Looking down at the ballroom, at the people laughing and dancing, my skin feels itchy, my heart unsettled. This place, the omphalos, represents so much: the peace summit that’s happened every summer for centuries; safety for people from every world; and a home for me. A future.
“Peace at Havenfall,” I whisper to myself, trying to inject confidence into the words I don’t really feel. That’s the goal. That’s why I need to succeed tonight. It’s been a long couple of days of meetings with the delegates of Fiordenkill and Byrn, nailing down the language of the peace treaty which will bring Solaria—at least officially—into the fold with the other allied Adjacent Realms. It took a lot of talking and frustration, but we finally landed on language that everyone could agree to. Then Marcus wrote it all out in his elegant handwriting on a sheet of creamy, gilt-edged paper. That paper is now tucked into a velvet folio in a slim leather case at my side. All it needs is signatures, twenty delegates each from Fiordenkill and Byrn.
Ideally, we’d be getting Solarian signatures too—any Solarian input at all, really. But there are no Solarians here, except for Sura, the girl we rescued from the antique shop, who’s only a child. And of course the dead Solarian, Bram—if that was even his real name—buried out in the woods beyond the glittering windows. We had Taya up until a few days ago, but by the time she figured out that she wasn’t human, the Silver Prince had captured her. And now she’s gone, in Solaria.
But I push away that line of thinking before it can drag me down. The Fiorden and Byrnisian delegates have agreed, at least in theory, to make peace with Solaria. Even if the treaty isn’t perfect or complete without being able to contact Solaria, it’s necessary—Marcus and I will need all the delegates’ support once we start making moves against the soul trade in order to save the Solarians victimized by it.
I pull the folio from my bag and open it to read the words of the treaty. Although the last few days of meetings have drilled them well enough into my memory, it’s reassuring to read them again.
Byrn, Fiordenkill, Haven, and Solaria, if its people should wish it, with this instrument enter together in accord. The previous Accords, presided over by Annabelle of Havenfall and signed by the representatives of Byrn and Fiordenkill, is hereby revoked.
Let it be known that the people of Solaria are once again welcome at the Inn, and that Solaria is to be considered a peaceful Adjacent Realm alongside Byrn, Fiordenkill, Haven, and any other peace-seeking world as may yet be discovered.
It’s time.
As my foot steps off the staircase, the noise and warmth of the ballroom immediately wraps around me, waking up my senses, pulling me in. Even without two-thirds of the summer workers—we sent the humans home after the Silver Prince’s attack, dosed with forgetting-wine, for their own safety, in case he struck again—the ballroom is sparkling clean, and the Fiorden and Byrnisian staff is darting around proffering platters of hors d’oeuvres and refilling goblets.
Everyone is wearing their very finest clothes—the Byrnisians in light, airy creations of silk and metal, baring skin in inventive places; while the Fiordens wear angular jackets or sweeping cloaks, rich velvet accented with fur and lace. Willow even talked me into wearing a dress, and I have to admit it’s gorgeous—midnight blue satin, with a skirt that hits at my knees in the front and dips low in the back. It swishes, smooth against my legs as I finally gather my courage and head down the stairs, feeling grateful that I insisted on wearing high-heeled boots rather than the strappy heels Willow tried to foist on me.
And jewelry. Everyone wears jewelry, from the traditional gems that the Fiordens stack in the shells of their ears—a unique color sequence for each family—to the Byrnisians’ stacked bangles and dangling necklaces of iron, gold, obsidian. Silver. It all flashes around me as I ease into the heat and press of the crowd, like the stars outside have sunk down and settled on our skin.
Which reminds me of my other mission, the one I haven’t told even Marcus about. Though I know my first order of business has to be the treaty, tonight also seems like the perfect opportunity to fish for leads about the soul trade, while the delegates are in a good mood fueled by liquor and relief. Relief to be free of the Silver Prince, and to be done with negotiations about the new treaty. Maybe they’ll be loose—maybe someone will let something slip.
I weave through the crowd, walking fast and with purpose so no one stops me. Until I find the Heiress waiting at our prearranged spot, beneath the huge antique mirror that spans one whole wall of the ballroom. She grins at me as I approach, drawing something out of the pocket of her black velvet gown.
As usual, she looks regal, like a queen of some far country who is only deigning to grace us with her presence here for the night. She is one of the few people—alongside Marcus and Graylin, Willow, and our head of security, Sal—who is in permanent residence at Havenfall. I’m not even sure what Realm she’s from—she doesn’t have the scaled cheekbones of a Byrnisian, or the willowy build typical of Fiordens. But I can’t imagine she’s human either, seeing as she never seems to age. For most of my life, I thought her merely an eccentric historian. She told everyone that she was at Havenfall to write a history of the Realms that never seemed to materialize.
But now I know there’s more to her. She unearthed evidence of the soul trade all on her own, and she decided to fight it. There were gaps in her knowledge, yes—she thought the enchanted silver objects circulating through the Realms contained only stolen magic, not stolen souls—but she saw that Havenfall was in danger and took steps to fight the threat, even though she thought it meant going up against Marcus. She even recruited Brekken to help her. She was the one who approached me with a plan for tonight—the idea to squeeze more information out of the delegates. Now she’s giving me the means to do so.
“You look lovely tonight, dear,” she says, putting a soft hand to my cheek and nodding approvingly. “You ought to let Willow take a crack at you more often.”
I blush. “Yeah, I know.” But impatience gnaws at my insides. Normally, I’d love to bask in her compliments, but right now isn’t the time. “Do you have it?”
The Heiress nods, her hands dropping down to mine so she can press something into my palm. I look down to see a small crystalline vial, stoppered with a cork and containing a clear liquid tinted the faint green of grass. A kind of truth serum, the Heiress told me, an old kind of magic from Tural, one of the former Adjacent Realms whose doorway closed long ago. I haven’t the faintest idea how the Heiress came to have this, and she wouldn’t tell me. Only how to use it.
“It’s not perfect,” she tells me now, withdrawing her hand from mine, leaving the vial in my palm. “It will simply make those who partake of it more forthcoming, and they will find it more difficult to construct a lie. But it will not cause them to offer up what they would otherwise keep to themselves. You still need to ask the right questions and coax them to share.”
She must see the trepidation on my face, because she pats my shoulder. “You’ll do fine. The delegates respect you.”
Do they, though? After the fiasco that was Havenfall under my watch, I wouldn’t count on that. I held on to the inn, but just barely. I guess the fact that the Silver Prince didn’t take over can be counted as a victory, but in the meantime I let half the Fiorden delegation return to their realm early, destabilizing the doors; I heightened tensions between Fiordenkill and Byrn.