“I wouldn’t have fought you then.”
And I wouldn’t have thought you betrayed us.
Nahteran takes a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t think I knew right away. Going to Solaria was kind of a snap decision.”
I feel cold inside, but … He didn’t give the armor to the Prince, I remind myself. He rescued Taya, then brought it here instead. Yet it sounds like it was a tough choice. Whose side is he really on?
Taya is looking hard at Nahteran, though he won’t meet her eyes. “How did the Prince know you had the armor?” Taya adds on. “If these guys”—she gestures across the desk at us—“were the only way to travel between the worlds except the portals at Havenfall, how did he find out? Unless … you told him?”
I look at her, surprised that she’s following all of this and that she’d challenge Nahteran. She meets my gaze with eyes that are steady, bordering on flinty. She’s changed a lot from the carefree girl I met at the start of the summer.
No, I internally correct myself. She was never carefree. But still, she’s changed. And I don’t know how to feel about it. Not that I should be worrying about Taya at all right now.
Nahteran glances between us. “The worlds only touch each other at certain places,” he says, looking to Taya to answer her question. “I had to travel a couple of miles to get to a spot where I could open a doorway to Solaria. Someone might have seen me on the way.”
To Marcus’s questioning look, he shrugs. “It’s complicated. I can show you the maps, once we figure out what to do about Sylvia. Plus,” he adds darkly, “this isn’t the only mirror pairing the Silver Prince has. He has eyes everywhere. I’m sure there were plenty of people at Winterkill to fill him in.”
My stomach sinks. The Silver Prince is even more dangerous than we thought. It makes me uneasy, too, how knowledgeable Nahteran is about these subjects. He’s clearly not new to traveling between the worlds. Even if the Silver Prince forbade him from coming back to Earth, how come he never even sent a message to Havenfall? Just to let Marcus and me know he was alive? I suddenly don’t buy my brother’s explanation that contact would put us in danger. A question bubbles out of my lips before I fully think it through.
“Why now?” I ask Nahteran. “Why turn against the Silver Prince now?”
Everyone goes dead silent. Nahteran just stares at me blankly at first, like it’s a dumb question. But then …
“Because of you,” he says at length, quietly. “Because I saw you and realized … that there was still hope, I guess.” The sentence ends sheepishly, with him looking down at his hands.
That’s not enough, a small voice in my head says. If he really missed me, missed us, so much, why didn’t he try to come back sooner?
I push away the nagging thought. That, too, is another problem for another day. The Silver Prince gave Nahteran three days to bring the armor to him in Oasis. So we have less than three days to figure out what to do.
If you’d asked me a week ago, I’d have gladly traded Mom’s life for any object in all the worlds, no matter how magical or precious. But we struck a blow to the soul trade by stealing the armor; now Cadius and his ilk can’t smuggle Solarian souls between worlds without going through Havenfall. We haven’t stopped it entirely. There are still Solarians being held captive in Fiordenkill. The enchanted objects clearly remain scattered around all the realms. And Havenfall isn’t a perfect fortress; my heart aches to think of all the soul fragments that have probably passed through here without us knowing. Still, we’re in a stronger position than we were.
And of course, acquiescing to the Silver Prince’s demand would basically be giving him a free pass to come in and cause whatever chaos he wants here on Earth. He wouldn’t be limited to Havenfall; the armor would protect him from sickness, like it protected me in Fiordenkill.
Knowing the Silver Prince is trapped in Oasis has been the only thing allowing me to sleep at night these past few weeks. I still have half-healed scars from fighting him. The idea that with the armor he could be anywhere, come at us from any direction, is terrifying to consider.
Suddenly, I’m not so sure if I can trade the armor for Mom. And the