“I know how important it is to stop the soul trade,” my uncle says gently. “I’ve been fighting it for years. But the Silver Prince is the more immediate threat. He almost killed you, Maddie.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
It’s hard to keep my voice even as the memory creeps in. But as scary as it is that the Silver Prince is now our enemy—and it’s extremely scary—that’s not what’s been weighing on me these past few days, not what’s been keeping me up at night.
Taya. Nate.
Graylin is the one to turn to me now. “What you’re saying makes sense, Maddie,” he says. “And I think we all agree that we must end the soul trade and save the captive Solarians. But we can’t do any of that if the Silver Prince takes over Havenfall.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. He’s right. They’re all right. I know this. But that doesn’t make it feel any less urgent. And I can’t shake the deep-down feeling that it’s all connected, the silver and the souls and the Silver Prince.
Without Havenfall, we won’t be able to save anyone. Yet I hate the idea of just hunkering down here, constantly on the defensive, with no way to learn more or do anything except build walls around us. In two weeks the delegates will be gone, and with them any chance of finding out what they know. It makes me feel trapped, makes me feel like a little kid again, my knees pressed against the cupboard door while my mother and brother fight for their lives outside.
“We’ll work on it, Maddie, I promise,” Marcus says softly. “We won’t let it go on forever. But first we need to deal with the Prince. We’ll make sure Havenfall is safe, and then we’ll take down the soul trade. Forever.” He holds my gaze. “Deal?”
I nod. “Deal.”
But I’m screaming inside, and it’s an effort not to bounce in my seat with nerves. Whenever I have a free moment, I resolve to myself—whenever Marcus doesn’t need me to strengthen our defenses against the Silver Prince—I’ll research the soul trade and make a plan, so that when the Prince is dealt with, we can strike immediately against the traders.
But … I don’t know where to start. I’m just one person. And even if I had all the resources of Havenfall at my disposal, even if the people here were willing to follow me like they do Marcus, I still couldn’t search the whole world. The only place I know to be frequented by the soul traders is the antique shop outside Havenfall where the Heiress used to meet up with her contacts. But I blew her cover by following her there and getting captured, so she’s out of commission as a double agent. And when Graylin, Willow, Sal, and the Heiress returned to the shop later to rescue Sura, the Solarian girl who was being held there, the traders were gone, the shop abandoned. They were just going to let her starve.
The next morning at breakfast, I fill a tray and bring it upstairs to Willow’s room, where Sura has been sleeping on the couch. When I knock and go in, Willow is gone—off to attend to the duties of a day at the peace summit—but the little Solarian girl is sitting quietly at the big desk by the window, working on a coloring book.
After the Silver Prince’s attack, we sent all the human staff home for their own safety. I worried that there was no one to watch Sura. Willow’s been swamped trying to manage the inn with a skeleton crew, and there are no extra hands on deck to babysit the kid who’s suddenly appeared in our midst. But she’s as quiet and well behaved as anyone could ask for, spending most of her time holed up here with picture books and crayons. I’ve tried to gently talk with her about what happened before we rescued her—hoping for some lead on the traders—but whenever I’ve asked, she’s clammed up, and I don’t want to push her.
She looks up and waves shyly as I come in.
“Hi, Sura!” I bring the tray over to her and set it down—full of toast with butter and strawberry jelly, chocolate milk, a couple of hard-boiled eggs. “Can I hang out with you for a sec?”
She smiles and nods, and I sink into the armchair in front of the dark fireplace. Outside of checking in on Sura, it’s just a relief to be up here in the quiet. Without the staff, I’ve been doing a lot more chores for Willow—grocery runs, coordinating delegates’ schedules, helping out with dinner. I don’t mind it at all, but the silence and stillness is nice too.
“What are you working on?” I ask her after I’ve had a few sips of my coffee.
She tilts up her coloring book and shows me. It’s a scene from that Disney Rapunzel movie, I think. The page shows a little girl in a poofy dress, holding hands with her mother, a dark-haired woman, as they look out the window of their tower.
Mom. Her face fills my mind like a lightning strike. With everything that’s been going on in the last few days, I’ve scarcely thought of her, painful as that is to admit. For ten years now, she’s been sitting in prison, only a nominal part of my life—and now she’s on death row, convicted of killing Nate. But she’s innocent. I always knew she didn’t kill him, but until a few days ago, I’d never known what actually happened or how mixed up she was in the soul trade. She was one of the safe houses for the enchanted artifacts Marcus smuggled out of Havenfall, away from the trade. She knew Nate was a Solarian, and she protected him. Until the day when she couldn’t.
“Sura,” Sura says, pointing to the figure of the girl that she’s colored to look like herself, with light-gold-toned skin and brown hair. She points next to the woman’s figure. “And Feya.”
I don’t know who Feya is, but I hope the coloring book doesn’t include the twist that the mother in the movie is the villain. Thoughts of Mom keep swirling around my head. Ever since that horrible night, since she’s been in jail, she’s tried to convince me that the public narrative is true; that she did kill my brother. Why would she do that? To protect me from the people who took him? To stop me from going and looking for him? She must know something.
And slowly, a plan forms in my mind. Something I can actually do.
4
At dinner, I ask Marcus to let me go visit my dad in Sterling, and Marcus agrees more readily than I expected. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. My excuse—that I didn’t check in with Dad while I was occupied with the Silver Prince—is true. And since Mom’s been in prison, Marcus has always been scrupulously careful to stay on Dad’s good side. We both know Dad doesn’t love the fact that I spend my summers at Havenfall rather than doing something normal or useful, like summer camp or a job in town. But even when I went to Havenfall this summer without clearing it with him first, he didn’t get angry with me. He and Marcus have both been careful not to tear our family apart any more than it already has been, and I’m grateful for it.
Tonight it’s a relief to skip the dancing. After we eat, I go up to my room to pack while the Elemental Orchestra’s music filters up from below. My heart beats fast in anticipation of movement, of seeing Dad. Then Mom.
Of course I didn’t tell Marcus the whole plan. I had already filled out the visitor form on my laptop in my room last night, hunched over the screen in the dark. Mom must have some information about the black market, and I need to tell her I finally know the truth about Nate. Maybe now she’ll finally open up to me. Maybe now the life will come back into her eyes.