sets me off. I step back from him. “You don’t understand,” I hiss. “You’ve always had a family. You’ve never been alone.”
“Maddie.” Brekken’s voice is soft, like he’s trying to comfort me, but it’s not working. “I understand you’ve been lonely. But you’ve got to see what’s right in front of your eyes—”
“My eyes are open,” I retort. “What I see, what I think, is that every step of the way this summer, we’ve found out that the rabbit hole goes deeper than we realize.”
I take a deep breath. I’m angry, and I don’t want to cry. I can’t believe that my best friend, the boy I love, thinks the worst of my brother. I can’t let Brekken talk me into believing it too. I’ve lost faith in so much that I used to hold sacred. If I lose hope for Nahteran, I think I might crumble into dust.
Something shifts in Brekken’s face, and I see sympathy creeping in. He comes close, wraps his arms around me, and pulls me into his chest. I stand still, not moving to embrace him in return. I feel emptied out.
“Nothing that happens now will change your memories,” he says softly. “You’ll always have those. He can’t touch them.”
“I know,” I murmur. But it’s more of an auto-response than anything else. Because I don’t care about the memories, not really. Those are behind me, already tarnished by years of lies and silence. What I want now is to have my brother back, whatever that will look like. A small voice inside reminds me that my brother doesn’t exactly want to stay.
“I didn’t even come here to talk about Nahteran,” Brekken says. “It’s not about him at all. It’s about you. I might not trust him, but he’s your brother and I shouldn’t have asked you to turn away from him. So, I’m sorry.”
“Okay …” I bite the inside of my cheek. “Apology accepted, I guess.”
“Thank you.” He steps away from me, but I can tell he’s still holding something back.
We’re still in the gardens, on the outskirts now, and the air is heavy with the scent of late summer flowers. But the color and life seems to have faded from my surroundings, replaced by a sense of menace.
“I wanted to talk to you for another reason,” he says. “We’ve received a message from Fiordenkill.” He closes his eyes for a second as if he really doesn’t want to say what he’s about to say. But then he opens them again and goes on.
“Back in Winterkill, when we used the armor to create a doorway back to Haven … Apparently it continued to grow and swallowed half of Cadius’s castle before Nahteran took the armor out of range and it closed up again.”
“Good,” I say. “I wish it swallowed the whole thing.”
Even though that’s kind of scary to hear, seeing as that same armor is currently sitting inside Havenfall.
Brekken doesn’t smile. “Cadius is bringing charges against us for the destruction of his castle and the theft of the armor. Myr ordered that someone in our company return to stand trial for it.”
I almost laugh out of relief. Out of all the consequences we could have faced for our excursion into Winterkill—Cadius being mad at us is one I’m completely okay with.
“Is that all? Too bad, then. It’s not like they can come into Havenfall and drag us back.”
“No,” Brekken replies. His face and voice are somber. “But it will disrupt the peace with Fiordenkill if we don’t.”
“Can’t Princess Enetta help us?” I point out. “She helped us get into Fiordenkill. She’s on our side.”
“Graylin is talking to her now,” he says. “But I doubt it. She’s only one royal out of the whole family. The rest, as I understand it, are sympathetic to Winterkill. Besides …”
Brekken’s soldier posture breaks down a little, his head hanging down. He looks … defeated.
“People died, Maddie,” he says heavily. “Guests at the party. Servants. And much of the soul-silver was lost.”
That steals the breath out of my lungs. I don’t care much about the guests, to be honest. They knew what Cadius was doing and decided to party with him anyway. But the servants had no choice in being there. They were trapped. Just like the Solarian souls bound up in the hoard of silver.
“Someone should be accountable for that,” Brekken says.
I struggle to catch my breath. I don’t know that I disagree, but I don’t know what to say. Except … “What should we do?”
Brekken looks down. “I’m