Phoenix Flame - Sara Holland Page 0,69

isn’t the grand Havenfall welcome guests usually get.”

Taya has rounded the table to sit on the bench next to me, which I’m trying not to read too much into. She elbows me. Casual. Easy.

“I remember. But this is a lot better than getting dosed with forgetting-wine.”

I laugh. I can’t help it. “Sorry, rules are rules. But you’re a friend of the family now.”

I look at Nahteran. “Do you remember this place?”

I immediately regret the question for how it punctures the light mood. Taya’s giggle dies away and Nahteran looks contemplative, considering the kitchen around us.

“Did Sylvia take us here a lot?” he asks.

I swallow painfully. I shouldn’t expect him to still share my childhood memories, after going through so much in the intervening years. But it still hurts that he doesn’t remember. As does his calling Mom Sylvia. He didn’t back at Winterkill, so why here?

“Yeah. Yeah, she did.”

Taya looks between us, her brow furrowed. Then, she hesitates a moment. “You know,” she says gently, turning to Nahteran, “you can just call her your mom. I don’t even remember our … our bio-parents anyway. Sylvia adopted you.”

I smile at her, feeling grateful, and then surprised as her fingers graze my arm under the table. I think it’s supposed to be a comforting touch, but it sends an electric shiver up my wrist.

Nahteran’s eyes are downcast. “It just doesn’t feel right,” he murmurs. “It’s been so long. And then when we’re sitting around discussing her fate like this …”

His eyes meet mine for just half a second, and I think I understand. He doesn’t want to let himself get close again, when everything still hangs in the balance. When it could all fall apart.

I turn to Taya instead. “I still haven’t heard a thing about Solaria,” I say.

My tone is deliberately light, teasing, but inside I’m a knot of anxiety. What if Solaria was horrible? And it was my fault she was there. Well, not entirely, but if I hadn’t become friends with her—dragged her into things—maybe she would have just had a relaxing summer tending to the gardens and then gone back to her nice, normal life.

Maybe not, though. Taya is still a shapeshifter, and that would have been hard to hide no matter what.

A palette of subtle expressions plays across Taya’s face. Her eyes grow distant, and the corners of her mouth turn up. But there’s a solemnity there too, a wistfulness.

“I’ll tell you about it,” she says, voice dreamy. She glances at Nahteran. “I’ll tell you both. I promise. But not right now. It’s a long story, and a good one if I do say so myself. I want to tell it when there’s not an ax hanging over all our heads.” She catches my eye and smiles.

I smile back. It’s weird—it makes my chest ache a little, but not in a bad way. I know how it feels to have things you don’t want to talk about. Sometimes because it hurts too much, but other times because you just don’t have the words. For her, I hope it’s the latter.

“Fair enough.”

Nahteran picks at his food, shoulders hunched. Something occurs to me. Back in Marcus’s office, he didn’t really say much after relaying the Silver Prince’s message. But surely he has an opinion.

“Do you think we should take the deal, Nahteran?” I ask quietly. “Trade the armor in for Mom?”

He blinks, the only indication that he’s heard me. He’s scarcely touched his food, except for disassembling all the rolls, tearing the tortillas and meat and cheese into pieces, and piling them on opposite sides of his plate.

“Nahteran,” I press. I know he’s been through a lot. I know he doesn’t want to talk about it, but we only have two days left before the Silver Prince kills Mom. “You know the Prince better than any of us.”

He takes a long sip of the blue Byrnisian tea before finally answering.

“The Silver Prince is obsessed with finding a way between the worlds,” my brother says, his voice gone quiet and flat like it was at Winterkill, when he was telling me what happened to him. “The Silver Prince always has been, even before he tried to take over Havenfall, because he knew that might not work. But after you guys beat him back, he became even more obsessed with phoenix flame. He didn’t want to blow up the soul trade by stealing Cadius’s armor—he needs the trade to exist—but he wanted to make a suit of his own. He thinks