this is my very good friend Kae.”
I shove down my nerves. After so many years, I’ve gotten used to Graylin and Brekken, and Ilya has such a warm presence. But now, meeting a new Fiorden, an automatic reaction goes off in my body, a tightening of my skin and speeding of my heart. Like a reminder that Kae’s not human, or that I am very, very far from home.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, and extend a hand.
Kae casts a curious glance, making me realize too late that they probably don’t shake hands here. But she’s reaching out, grasping my fingers briefly with her own icy cold ones.
“Likewise, Maddie Morrow,” she says, her voice faintly accented and ethereal. “What a wonder to see a Haven-dweller here. I often wished to attend the summit at Havenfall, but my work has kept me here.” Her fingers drift to my wrist, pushing up the hem of my sleeve. “Have you experienced any sickness or pain from being in our world?”
I shake my head. “Not that I’ve noticed.” I can hear the nervousness in my own voice.
Will she ask me to take the gauntlet off?
But she doesn’t, just dropping my hand and retreating to the table.
Graylin joins us while Brekken busies himself in the kitchen, and soon I’m drinking something steaming that tastes like a mix of tea and cider while Kae looks at the gauntlet, my arm stretched over the table, palm up.
She pries one tiny gold-carved leaf from the armor and holds it with iron tongs above a candle flame. She and Graylin converse in low Myr voices, while Brekken chats with his mother in the kitchen. Left out of the conversation, I can’t help but feel antsy and impatient. Every second spent here is a second we’re not at Winterkill. Not rooting out the traders.
Kae’s black eyes stay fixed on the leaf as it starts to soften in the flame, the tong tips sinking into the metal, the curled shape drooping. The leaf’s gold starts to change colors. But instead of turning a bright pinkish orange like I expect normal metal would, it darkens, changing from gold to rust to dark green and then black. Smoke lifts off it, getting thicker and thicker, and when Kae pulls the tongs away, the leaf has disappeared.
I stare. “What happened?”
From the doorway, I see Brekken is staring too, eyes wide.
“Phoenix flame,” Graylin whispers.
“What is that?” I look from face to face. “What are you talking about?”
“Never have I seen anything like this,” Kae says in a hushed tone. “I thought it only a myth.”
Graylin glances at me, eyes uneasy. “We have a story here,” he explains, “about a god who cried tears of metal. Metal that looked like this.”
“Okay …” I look back at my arm, uneasy. “What else?”
“It’s said to be magical,” Graylin goes on. “But that was only ever a story …”
“I feel like we can start assuming all the stories have a grain of truth,” I say wearily.
“Do you remember the story I told you?” Brekken says from across the room, his eyes meeting mine. “In the story, the gods cried for the knight and his lady, and he forged his armor out of their tears.”
He paces over to us in the silent room—silent except for the soft hiss of the candle flame.
“Do you think … did he really exist? Him and his armor?” I’d waved the story away as wishful thinking, no more relevant to real life than the storybooks Mom used to read to me.
Another stretch of silence.
Then Graylin speaks. “Fiordenkill is different from your world in many ways. Our gods are closer to earth here.”
“And our past is not so far from our present. We know that our stories are shaped around a heart of truth,” Kae adds.
I glance at Brekken, confused. “What does that mean?”
Kae’s eyes are fixed on the gauntlet, a mixture in her expression of wonder, of avarice, and of fear. “The armor was said to carry the knight to the world of the gods.”
“A world,” Graylin says, “that is now believed to be another Realm, like Haven and Byrn and Solaria. Now closed off, but another Realm. Which implies …”
I let my eyes fall to the gauntlet. What they’re telling me—it implies that it’s true what the pictures of Mom and the Fiorden lord seemed to suggest. That this gauntlet, and the suit of armor it’s part of, could carry me—not just here to Fiordenkill—but wherever I wish.
“But there’s something else,” Kae says, an