Phoenix Flame - Sara Holland Page 0,79

the inn passing by around me. The first floor, the dormitories, meandering delegates, the staff quarters. All the way up to the top floor, the glass-walled room where a lifetime ago I had a heart-to-heart with the Silver Prince.

The problems I faced then—Marcus unconscious, knowing the delegates thought I was out of my depth as a substitute, what I thought was a monster on the grounds—felt so overwhelming then. So simple now. But somehow I feel like it’ll be easier to think if I’m high up. If I can see everything around me.

Nahteran follows me wordlessly, and I’m grateful. It’s nice to be trusted by someone, even if I don’t entirely trust myself.

A few moments after we reach the glass room and close the door behind us, it opens again. I whip around to see Taya in the doorway. She looks from Nahteran to me, her brow creased in concern.

“Sorry,” she says. “I just saw you guys across the hall downstairs. You looked upset, so I thought …” She trails off, her eyes wide as she looks around.

I suppose that the view must be breathtaking. I can’t really see it, can’t focus on the real world. My mind’s eye is filled up with a memory of the Silver Prince, his handsome face and metallic eyes, the machinations that were always churning behind them.

“Come in, then,” Nahteran says.

Distantly, I hear him relay to Taya the conversation in Marcus’s office, the decision our uncle made on everyone’s behalf. I hear that he’s angry.

“You know the Silver Prince best, Nahteran,” I say when he’s finished, turning to them. The adrenaline sparking through my body has faded a bit, replaced by cold, consuming determination. “What are his weak spots?”

But it’s Taya who answers first. “Pride,” she says after a long silence.

She looks at me. At Nahteran. At me again. “Right?”

Nahteran nods wordlessly.

“So we lean on his pride,” I say, testing the words out. “We let him think he’s won … How?”

“Fake armor,” Taya suggests, as easily as if she’s had the answer all along. “We make fake armor and trade it to him for your mom.”

Nahteran and I both stare at her. My blood is racing.

There has to be a way we can get Mom back without handing over the phoenix flame armor. And maybe, just maybe, Taya’s hit on it.

20

The plan comes together quickly, all three of us fired up by the possibility of actually doing something. I know, and I think Nahteran and Taya do too, that this is a hell of a long shot. But at least we have a chance.

We pause at the top of the stairs. We each have separate jobs to do, but I don’t want to part ways just yet. Being with Taya and Nahteran like this gives me hope for what seems like the first time in forever. Maybe everything will be okay.

But we don’t have time to waste. We head downstairs silently. Nahteran peels off first, on the fourth floor that serves as the staff quarters. While Willow and Marcus and everyone else is at dinner, he’s going to steal the original phoenix flame armor from the three safes. We’ll need it to create the reproduction. And then to open a doorway between here and Oasis.

Taya heads off to the kitchen. In one of her jacket pockets is my key ring, the Innkeeper’s keys that will get her into the locked closet in the kitchen, where Willow keeps the gold plates and cutlery we use to celebrate the start of the summit. We need gold—not enough to recreate the entire suit of phoenix flame armor, but enough to gild its surface so that when we hand it over to the Silver Prince, it’ll look close enough to the real thing.

I continue downstairs and walk past the dining room on the first floor where the delegates are having dinner, quick and silent, hoping no one notices me. Past Marcus and Graylin’s door, even more quickly.

As far as my uncle knows, I agreed to his plan of saying no to the Silver Prince and dealing with the consequences for my mom, whatever they may be. Nahteran and I both did. But now that I’ve got a plan of my own, I don’t know that I could keep the pretense up if I faced Marcus again. So I continue on to the armory, and unlock it with the one key I slipped off the Innkeeper’s key ring before I gave it to Taya.

There’s one high, narrow window on