Phoenix Flame Read online

  “Another drink, Sir Cancarnette?” I ask with a bright tone. “Willow and I are trying out new recipes.”

  Let him think, let them all think, that now that Marcus is recovered I’m back to my previous role, sidelined, a child with nothing to do with the real affairs of Havenfall. It will make it easier to find the truth.

  Cancarnette doesn’t hesitate to accept one of the spiked glasses. As soon as he does, one of the staff materializes and whisks the tray away, leaving my hands free. I clink my own serum-free glass against Cancarnette’s and increase the wattage of my smile.

  “To the new peace treaty.”

  The lord hesitates a moment, his brow wrinkling in confusion or concern, I’m not sure. But then he returns my toast and echoes my words. “To the treaty.”

  So he’s not completely prejudiced against Solarians, then. That’s good. I was afraid that the delegates might flat-out refuse to acknowledge the treaty, even as ineffectual as it is now. That gives me hope enough to ask my next question, once Cancarnette’s throat has moved to swallow the wine—and the truth serum—down.

  “That’s a lovely pendant,” I say after I’ve tilted my own glass back. I gesture to the ornament hanging on Cancarnette’s chest, a delicate figurine of a bird of prey, an eagle, carved out of pale, marble-like stone, white with blue veins. “Is it a family heirloom?”

  I know he is a lover of jewels and precious things, or at least a connoisseur. When Marcus was comatose, one of the first Innkeeper duties I carried out in my uncle’s stead was overseeing a trade negotiation between Cancarnette and a Byrnisian merchant—Fiorden furs in exchange for Byrnisian jewels. Most of their talk went right over my head, as scared and overwhelmed as I was. But I remember the hunger in Cancarnette’s eyes when he looked over Mima’s spread of jewels.

  The lord reaches up to trace the amulet with long fingers. “Indeed.” Pride colors his voice. “It belonged to my mother before me, and her father before her. Furs are my father’s trade, but my mother and grandfather raised eagles for a living.”

  I’m momentarily distracted as I imagine a Fiorden eagle. All the animals in the great forest of Myr—the Fiordenkill country on the other side of the door—are many times larger than their counterparts on Earth. What must it be like, to face down an eagle with a wingspan as long as a car? To know that it’ll come when you call?

  “The piece is beautiful,” I say admiringly. “You know, Brekken told me a story once about a knight whose beloved gave him a pendant enchanted with her healing magic. And after that, no matter what opponents he crossed or how they wounded him, the pendant healed him and sustained him so that as long as he wore it, he would never fall.”

  I lift my hand up as if to touch Cancarnette’s pendant, and then let it go, weaving wistfulness into my voice. “Do you think such a thing could ever be?”

  Cancarnette smiles. “Magic belongs to people, Miss Morrow. The wild gods granted it to us; it runs through our blood. To enchant a lifeless object, no matter how beautiful, would be blasphemy.”

  My heart speeds, as I notice that he’s said it’s wrong, not that it can’t be done. “Of course. Naturally.”

  “I remember that story,” Cancarnette goes on. “But perhaps your soldier left out the part about how while the knight was adventuring, his lover fell ill. Having poured all her magic into the pendant, she had none left for herself and died alone.”

  I feel myself flinch. “I hadn’t heard that part.” He’s right, Brekken never told me.

  “Even had the knight returned the pendant to her, it wouldn’t have saved her,” Cancarnette goes on, his raised voice showing annoyance. “Once magic is torn from you, it cannot be reintegrated, not in the same way. Of course, that doesn’t stop the magpies.”

  He takes a sip of wine, his eyes bright and hazy. I edge closer as the dance swirls all around us, my heart beating fast. Even cloaked in riddles and fables, this is more than I’ve gotten out of any of the other delegates. “Magpies?”

  “Collectors,” Cancarnette clarifies, the scorn clear in his voice. “There are some who hoard such objects, believing themselves above the corruption.”

  “Like who?” I ask eagerly.

  The haziness clears for a second from Cancarnette’s eyes, and he looks me over skeptically.

  “No one you need concern yourself with,” he says with a scoff. “Princess Enetta would never grant them a token to come to Havenfall.”

  “But—” I bite my tongue, frustration mounting. “If binding magic is blasphemous, where do the objects come from?”

  I should have phrased it in a more diplomatic, less pointed way, but I sense the Fiorden lord is growing bored with me, with this conversation. My time is running out. And if he knows something …

  But I’ve let myself be sidetracked. There are plenty of people from whom I might learn something about the soul trade, but I need Cancarnette’s signature on the treaty. I fumble to take it out with the hand not holding my glass, too flustered to think of a smooth transition. “Could I get your signature on the treaty?” I ask, hoping I at least sound winning.

  Cancarnette takes the folio. I can see his eyes roving, searching for loopholes or catches.

  When he’s done, Cancarnette arches one eyebrow. “Isn’t that a little premature?” His eyes skate around the room. “How are we to execute a treaty between four parties, when only three are present?”

  I resist the urge to remind him that we talked about this in the meetings, if he had bothered to attend. Instead, I point to the line on the page where it says Solaria will become part of the Adjacent Realms if its people should wish it. “Marcus accounted for that.”

  “Well, if the Innkeeper says so.” He takes my pen and smiles indulgently as he signs. As he passes the treaty back to me—his signature bold and looping at the bottom—I’m bothered by the sense he isn’t taking this, taking me, seriously.

  At least he didn’t refuse outright. I feared that might be the case, seeing as lots of the Fiorden and Byrnisian delegates probably still hate Solarians. They’re governed—as I was until recently—by stories of soul-devouring, shapeshifter monsters, fiery-eyed and sharp-clawed creatures who would tear you limb from limb just for the joy of it. Two weeks ago, we were hunting my friend Taya in the woods with knives and guns. But she saved me … us … Havenfall from the Silver Prince. I admit I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm from Cancarnette.

  Still, Cancarnette isn’t wrong. This is a hollow treaty, tonight a hollow celebration, seeing as we don’t have any actual Solarians here. Not since Taya disappeared into the golden light of the Solarian doorway and the door sealed closed behind her, leaving only a blank wall of stone.

  I have no way to reach her, no way to know if she’s even alive. There’s nothing I can do to help her—nothing at all, except to do my best to make this world safe for when she comes back.

  She has to come back, right?

  I can’t think about that now, or I’ll lose heart. I blink and focus on my surroundings, trying to get the image of her face in my mind—her radiant, powerful expression in the moment before she slipped through the door to Solaria—to recede.

  But it doesn’t, and I feel suddenly claustrophobic, suffocated. Everything is color and music and light and laughter now, but suddenly I feel the aches and pains left over in my muscles from the fight with the Silver Prince. The Prince himself might be gone, but he’s taken with him the unconditional trust and happiness I once felt within these walls. Now I know it’s possible for enemies to enter here, and everything feels a little warped, a little off, tainted.

  It’s impossible to know for sure that everyone in this room means us well. I learned my lesson about blind trust, and it came at a cost.

  2

  The night has only just started, but I need a breather. Before I can think too much about it, I hurry from the ballroom, walking fast but aimlessly down the hall until the noise from the dancing recedes. A moment ago I was nervous but confident; now I feel raw, panick
ed, like the task facing me is impossible. And the last thing I need is for the delegates to see me freak out. I don’t want to go all the way back up to my room, but I think I need to be alone. Fortunately, Marcus gave me a copy of all the inn’s keys.

  In the small, secure room that Marcus calls the armory, silver glitters all around me, and I feel the weight of souls in the air. A tiny window set close to the ceiling lets in orange sunset light, but only a little. The air is chilly and smells like pine, and it’s blissfully silent.

  But as soon as the door closes behind me, I realize I chose the wrong place to calm my nerves. It’s usually empty in here, but now silver objects stacked on shelves all around me catch and refract the sunlight, turning it strange and cold.

  Jewelry—rings and necklaces and bracelets, earrings dripping with jewels, goblets and coins, vases and candlesticks and any other small precious thing you could think of—all of it is here. Once, I would have thought the pearlescent silver beautiful. It still is, but I can never look at the pieces the same way again, now that I know what they’re used for. Now that I know the truth beneath the surface … that they’re black market soul-silver. I can’t look at any of it without feeling an overwhelming knot of guilt and dread in my stomach.

  I only learned about the silver trade—the soul trade—a few weeks ago. I’d always been taught the same thing about the Adjacent Realms that Cancarnette said a few minutes ago—that only people can possess magic, not objects. But it turns out that isn’t entirely true. Someone has been capturing Solarians and binding slivers of their souls, like pieces of string, to silver. The metal can then become enchanted with bits of magic—like Fiorden healing magic, or Byrnisian fire-wielding powers.

  It seems silly now that I thought I could find anything out about the soul trade with a few indirect questions tossed casually to the delegates. While we know of some of the human buyers—the Heiress got their names when she was working with them and pretending to be one of them—there are no records of who brought the objects in or out of the other Realms.

  Turning around in this small room, I meet the worried gaze of a hundred warped reflections. I want to believe that my beloved Havenfall wasn’t the focal point, that the stolen souls didn’t pass through here. But if the traders come from Fiordenkill or Byrn, the inn is the only place they can exist outside of their own respective worlds. Byrnisians and Fiordens have been known to leave the safety of the inn’s walls and walk into the town of Haven for short periods of time, but they can’t go farther than that without getting sick. If the soul traders aren’t smuggling silver through the inn or town, they must have access to the Realms somewhere else in order to smuggle the magic between worlds.

  Could it really be possible? That there are other ways to enter other Realms? Marcus thinks that the world used to have more doorways, that Havenfall wasn’t always the only one. When I was a kid, that possibility seemed wondrous, and I often wished that I would stumble upon a doorway in a janitor’s closet at school or in the fallow fields behind my mom’s house. But now the idea makes me sick with worry. There’s just so much, and we don’t know about all of it.

  Music drifts in through the closed door. The Elemental Orchestra has started playing a merry jaunt. I should be headed back already. I have a job to do tonight. I can’t let myself get derailed so easily going forward.

  I take a deep breath and remind myself that this, what I’m doing, is in service to the captive souls. We need to know how the objects are being made, how they are getting into Havenfall, and who’s doing it. Maybe it’s someone in the ballroom right now.

  I reach up to touch a silver vase, not really for courage, more as a reminder of what I have to do. Why tonight is important. Why I have to succeed.

  Then I arrange my face into a smile and slip from the armory, pulling my shoulders back as I stride down the hall and back toward the ballroom.

  The first thing I notice upon reentering is that Brekken is here. He stands by the entrance just inside the ballroom, as if he is waiting for me. I witness the moment he notices me, watch the sweet, startled smile unfurl across his face.

  Seeing him is strange—it quiets and amplifies my nerves at the same time. Makes my heart feel light, but also makes it beat faster and unevenly. He looks amazing in a short velvet cape hanging smartly off his sharply angled shoulders—finery he hasn’t worn since that first night he arrived at Havenfall. His copper hair is combed back to accentuate his handsome face and brilliant blue eyes.

  He smiles softly at me as I get close, pushing away from the wall. “I was just looking for you. I thought you’d be here by now.” He must see something off in my expression, because his brow creases in concern. “You all right?”

  I nod. “Just needed a minute.” Looking into the ballroom, though, I don’t know if my few minutes in the armory with the silver objects has helped or hurt my calm. The responsibility—both to execute the peace treaty and to do everything I can to free the Solarians trapped in the silver—feels all the heavier now.

  Brekken’s hand finds mine. “You can do this.”

  Startled, I look up at him. “I don’t know.” The words fall out unbidden.

  Brekken steps closer to me. Something has shifted between us in the days since he came back from Fiordenkill, where he’d fled after witnessing the Silver Prince murder his own servant, Bram—the chain of events that set everything off, all the ill events of this summer. I had been angry with Brekken, not knowing where he went or why, even harboring a suspicion—before the Silver Prince’s guilt came to light—that Brekken was the traitor. Even though we’re safe now and I know the truth that he was trying to help, the weight of that suspicion hasn’t entirely dissipated.

  Brekken has been careful with me, not like the easy familiarity we had as kids. But the way he’s holding my hand—well, that’s different from how we were as kids too. He looks at me like he has utter faith in me. It’s almost enough to give me faith in myself. Almost.

  “Just be your charming self,” Brekken says now, raising my hand to brush my knuckles with his lips.

  It’s a courtly gesture, one that probably means nothing to him, but it still makes my pulse even more erratic.

  “Charming, yeah, that’s me,” I say jokingly, but I don’t think the sarcasm comes across with my voice all breathy and trembly.

  Brekken squeezes my hand gently before letting it fall. “Shall we?”

  I nod, and we make our way side by side deeper into the ballroom. The high spirits of the party guests sweep us up right away. It feels easier to be a part of it, now that Brekken is by my side. I retrieve my tray of spiked wine from the credenza where it was stashed and throw myself back into the politicking.

  With Brekken near, his presence drawing me out, I feel bolder approaching two Byrnisian delegates, Lonan and Mima. They break off their conversation—gossip about who was rumored to be slipping into the gardens with whom and which buyers are angling for which bargains—and listen curiously as I give my pitch.

  They agree to sign as well, but like Cancarnette, seem to regard it as some kind of amusement. Not real, not binding. But that doesn’t matter. All that matters is the signatures on the page.

  Three down. Then four, five. The more signatures I get, the easier it is to obtain each successive one, as the delegates see their peers are willing to align with Solarians again.

  They’ll understand the importance of it once Solarians return to Havenfall, once we start taking down the soul trade. It’s been just a few weeks since everything at Havenfall has both turned upside down and clicked into place, hardly any time at all. I feel ashamed that I ever thought Solarians were evil—now that I know they’re just people, and many are victims, hunted for their ability to capture magic in exchange for pieces of their soul. The delegates haven’t seen the things I’ve seen.

  They don’t truly know Solarians like Taya or Nate.

  Nate … My brother’s face flashes across my mind, but I push it away. Last week, I realized everyt
hing I thought I knew about Nate was untrue. The boy I thought was my biological brother was actually a Solarian, rescued from the soul trade by Marcus and raised by my mom as one of us. Nate was—is?—Taya’s blood brother. And he was not killed by my mother or an intruder ten years ago. He was kidnapped, presumably into the silver trade.

  This is another reason why I must find out more about the traders. There’s no guarantee Nate’s still alive after all these years. I have only seen the tiniest corner of the soul trade, and I don’t know how survivable it is. But knowing that he was taken, when I was sure beyond a doubt he was dead, is enough to plant the seed of hope.

  He could be out there.

  I could find him.

  And if there’s any way to find him, it will surely be through the soul trade—following the corruption as deep and wide as it goes. Hoping that it hasn’t destroyed my brother.

  But while I’m occupied scanning the room for another suitably influential delegate to go after, Brekken suddenly leans down and kisses my cheek.

  I look up, surprised, to see his face abnormally bright and open, flushed in a way I’ve almost never seen him. Not since a few weeks ago in the hayloft, his body against mine, his face inches from mine, millimeters … I feel heat flood my own face at the memory.

  “Brekken,” I say, startled, and that’s when I see a tumbler of fruity wine in his hand that matches the others on my tray—my tray that I realize now is one glass lighter. Crap. I never told him about the wine.

  “I just wanted to dance with you,” he says with a grin.

  Any other time I’d be thrilled at the prospect, but I have signatures to gather. And I feel bad that he accidentally drank the truth serum. And yet … His eyes are shining. And I feel both frustration and worry melt away, bubbly excitement rising in me like champagne. Surely one song couldn’t hurt.

  I let him sweep me into a dance as the next song starts. It’s easy, since his movements are so graceful and self-assured. I let him lead me. Let the fears swirl in my wake like so many dead leaves at the end of the summer.