Havenfall by Sara Holland

Author:Sara Holland [Holland, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2020-03-02T18:30:00+00:00

12

I usually love the rain—the gentle patter of it on rooftops and how it makes the light steady and unchanging from dawn to dusk. Like white noise, it quiets my always-racing mind, makes me feel cozy and protected. When it rains in Sterling, Dad never asks why I’m not going out with my friends. I can stay curled up under the covers, watch old movies and forget about everything else for a while, like the world has paused its turning just for me.

But it’s been raining so long and hard now that everyone at Havenfall is getting antsy, including me. Anxiety bubbles in my gut as I creep down the stairs, careful not to step on any of the spots I know to be creaky, though if the delegates can sleep through the rain pounding on the windowpanes, a loud stair step probably won’t disturb them. It isn’t yet dawn—when our hunting party will go out in search of the loose Solarian—but I’ve been awake since four, the machine-gun rattle of rain on the roof yanking me back every time I slipped toward sleep. I should have known it was a lost cause. It’s probably a good idea to get something in my stomach anyway before I go out in the woods after a monster. Even if my gut is already churning, I need all my strength.

All I want to do is turn around and run back upstairs and lock my door behind me, close the curtains and wait for someone braver, stronger, better to deal with the loose Solarian, the open door, the Heiress’s secrets—all of it. Every cell in my body screams to find a safe corner, curl up, and hide with my back to a wall and wait this all out. The natural thing to do when there’s a predator loose and you’re the prey.

While Graylin spent his spare hours yesterday pouring healing magic into Marcus, Willow was in the library, researching other ways we might try to close the door. But until she hits on something, all we can do is post more guards in the tunnels and, in the meantime, try to hunt down this beast before it starts hunting us. Graylin and Willow and Sal, the Silver Prince and Enetta, and the security staff will all be part of the hunting party. I can’t ask them to risk their lives and not go into the woods myself. We have to find the Solarian and end it. We can’t fail. I can only pray it’s still on the grounds—not gone down the mountain, not escaped into the world to kill someone else’s sister, someone else’s brother, shatter someone else’s life into irreparable shards.

Someone crosses by the stairwell a ways down from me and I freeze. It’s a middle-aged man with pale yellow hair and a furtive way of moving, coming from the direction of the front door and going toward the meeting rooms. He’s there and gone across the hall before I even fully register it, but something about him makes me stop walking.

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