“What kind of accident?” Sophie asked.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“But it was something you guys did?” Sophie pushed.
“Actually, it was something that just . . . happened. And when it did, I was called in to help. And then things got complicated.”
“Because you gave me Limbium and I turned out to be deathly allergic to it?” Sophie guessed.
Livvy shuddered. “If I’d known it was possible for you to have such a severe reaction, I wouldn’t have suggested trying it. But I’d never seen an allergy before. Luckily the human doctors were much more familiar with what was happening and were able to fix what I couldn’t. And that’s truly all I can say. Anything more might trigger the memory—and with all the emotional stress you’re dealing with at the moment, that wouldn’t be a good idea. Trust me.”
“It’s kinda hard to trust someone who’s hiding things,” Amy told her.
“I know. And I wish I had something better to offer than: Someday you’ll understand.”
“Ugh, I hate when adults say that,” Sophie grumbled.
“Same here,” Amy agreed. “Can’t you use that mind-reading thing to find out what she’s hiding?”
“Not without violating the rules of telepathy,” Alden jumped in.
“But it’s not against those rules to steal someone’s memories?” Amy countered.
“It is,” Quinlin said. “Though it can be allowed in certain instances.”
“And this is one of those instances,” Livvy assured them. “When the time is right, I promise all will be revealed. In the meantime, try to keep in mind that the missing moment has zero relevance to anything you’re currently facing. I know the mystery of it all gives the moment a sense of importance, but what happened back then was . . . a blip. It was a problem that popped up and was dealt with, and has nothing to do with the Neverseen.”
Amy glanced at Sophie. “Are you really okay with this?”
“No,” Sophie told her. “But I’ve been trying to get them to give me this memory back for months, so . . .”
She closed her eyes, wishing all the new bits of information would sink in and trigger the memory on its own.
“Wow,” Livvy said. “Those are some unhappy faces. And I get it. I really do. So let’s try this. Amy? Think about the portion of the memory that you’ve managed to recover, and ask yourself: Were you afraid of me that day?”
“No,” Amy said slowly. “I thought you were nice—but that was probably because you had candy. And sparkles.”
“Sparkles do make everything better,” Livvy agreed. “And mood candy is delicious—I wish I had some with me now because it would help me make my point. Most people don’t realize that emotions can’t be erased—even if the memory of what caused them is taken away. So if I’d done something to you that day, you’d still have all the feelings that went with it. Understand?”
“Sorta?” Amy said.
“It’s murky, I know,” Livvy told her. “But think about what you’re feeling right now—and I don’t mean all the stress of this conversation. I mean something deeper—is there anything that feels like a gut instinct, telling you to be afraid of me?”
Amy thought long and hard. “I guess not.”
“Then can’t we build on that? Yes, there’s a secret between us. But it’s not a harmful secret. It’s one that’s being kept for your protection. And Sophie—I know you’re probably tired of hearing that—but does it help at all to remember that the person who decided to erase that memory was Mr. Forkle? He was adamant that we wait for the right circumstances before we gave it back. And now isn’t the time.”
“She’s talking about our old neighbor, right?” Amy asked. “The guy who was always outside mumbling to his gnome statues? Didn’t you tell me he was an elf and that the Neverseen killed him?”
Sophie nodded, her mind already back in Lumenaria, watching Mr. Forkle take his final breaths.
He’d promised her in that moment—even when he had so little energy left—that she would get the answers he owed her.
But he didn’t say how or when.
So maybe she owed it to him to be patient.
She glanced at her sister. “Will you feel okay living here, knowing all of this?”
“Do I have a choice?” Amy asked.
“Yes,” Alden assured her. “If you’re not comfortable, I’ll find an alternative situation. Same goes for if you decide to try it, and then feel it isn’t working out.”
“If I might add something,” Quinlin jumped in. “I know you don’t know my wife very well—or me for that matter. But everyone in this room is on your side. We have our flaws. And we come with strange baggage. But no one will fight harder to make this right and get your parents back.”
Amy reached for her eyelashes, giving them a good, hard tug—then winced. “Ugh, Sophie, how can you stand that?”
Sophie smiled. “We all have our things.”
“Well, yours is weird,” Amy told her. “And your world is even weirder. But . . . I’ll deal—if you guys promise me something.”
She waited for all of the adults to nod before she said, “I want your word that no one is going to erase any memories again without my permission.”
Amy would never be able to hold Alden to her demand—and Alden had to know that.
And yet, Sophie believed him when he said, “You have my word.”
It was a dim, flickering hope—but Sophie clung to it as tightly as Amy clung to her hand.
Maybe something good would come from all of this panic and ugliness.
Maybe she really could have her family back in her life.
It would be confusing and complicated—and probably change a ton of things for everyone.
But it would be worth it.
And she wanted it. More than anything.
Seven
THE DOORS IN this wing are all decoys,” Livvy explained as they continued with the tour. “That way if someone did manage to find their way up here, they’d only be able to see what we want them to see. The real paths are all camouflaged. See?”
She pressed her palm against the shimmering surface, and Amy gasped as Livvy’s fingers sank deep into the crystal.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Sophie promised as Livvy shoved the rest of her body through the wall. “It’s like walking through cold sand.”
Amy needed a deep breath before she was willing to try—and she dragged Sophie with her. Together they pushed into the crystal, letting the tiny, shimmering grains brush their skin before they emerged into a library with floor-to-ceiling books and gleaming silver ladders.
“That’s a lot of books,” Amy noted.
“It is,” Quinlin agreed as he joined them, followed by Alden and Sandor. “This is my research—recorded in code to ensure no unwanted eyes can access it without my permission.”
“Even me,” Alden noted with a tinge of sadness.
“I share anything important,” Quinlin promised. But Alden didn’t look convinced.
“The only book you need to know is this one,” Livvy said, striding to one of the shelves and reaching for a red-and-gold spine. She waited until everyone had crowded close before she tilted the book to a thirty-degree angle.
A burst of air shot up from under their feet and launched their group like a cannon blast, straight through the crystal ceiling and into a small room lined with colorful shelves.
“Welcome to the pantry!” Livvy told them. “Arguably my favorite room in this whole apartment—especially when I’ve been the one doing the shopping.”
“That’s a lot of Prattles,” Sophie said, pointing to a shelf that had to be holding at least a hundred boxes of the buttery, nutty candy known best for the collectible pins inside.
“Candy is essential,” Livvy said, handing Amy a box of Prattles before she led them through an actual door this time, into a sleek silver kitchen. “Warning: This next passage takes a little trust.”
She pointed to a wide firep
lace flickering with blue and yellow flames.
Sophie could tell the fire was a hologram—but that didn’t stop her from holding her breath as Livvy dropped to her knees and crawled straight into the blaze.
After all the infernos she’d survived, Sophie couldn’t bring herself to look until Livvy called, “See? It’s all an illusion!”
And when Sophie’s vision focused again, she realized her sister was staring just as dazedly at the flames. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Amy mumbled. “I just haven’t seen fire since the huge arson attack that happened a few months back. We had to evacuate our house and go to this overcrowded shelter—and then the winds changed and even the shelter was in danger. All the roads were closed, and there was another fire in the opposite direction, so there were a few hours where we thought we might be trapped.”
Sophie’s heart turned a whole lot heavier.
She knew exactly which arson attack her sister meant. In fact, she’d watched her family huddle together on the floor of the shelter through the unregistered Spyball the Black Swan had given her—right before she’d decided to break a bunch of elvin laws so that she could prove the fires were Everblaze and force the Council to step in and extinguish the flames.
She’d been kidnapped right after—and then her abilities had broken, and Alden’s sanity collapsed, and Silveny was attacked, and Kenric was murdered, and the Council turned against her, and she was banished along with all of her friends, and the gnomish plague was unleashed, and Keefe ran off, and Lumenaria fell, and so many other devastating and distracting things had happened that Sophie had never stopped to wonder . . .
Had there been a larger purpose behind those fires?
And if there had been, were they already too late to stop it?
Eight
DID YOU MONITOR the Everblaze fires like you did with the white fires in San Diego?” Sophie asked Quinlin, sending a silent plea into the void that there was still time for her to be asking this question.
The white fires had been the Neverseen’s attempt to flush Sophie out of her human hiding place, because they knew she’d been living somewhere in the area. They’d even shaped the fire line into the sign of the swan to force the Black Swan into action. So Sophie had assumed their goal had been similar with the Everblaze—that the fires had been the Neverseen’s way of testing the moonlark, to see what she’d do under that kind of pressure. Brant had even implied as much after he kidnapped her, during his searing interrogation.
But what if there’d been more to it than that?
Sophie’s whole focus had been on figuring out who sparked the flames, and stopping that person from burning anything again. But after seeing what happened with Lumenaria—how the Neverseen could play a long, intricate game to achieve their goals—that might’ve been a tremendous mistake.
“I kept an eye on them as much as I could,” Quinlin said. “Why?”
Sophie ignored the question, asking him to send any notes he’d made to Havenfield, along with a map plotted with the location of every fire he knew of.
What if there’d been a pattern to the fires?
Or what if they’d been designed to destroy something important?
Or what if it had all been some giant distraction, while the Neverseen did something even more terrifying?
The possibilities whirled around her mind, making Sophie dizzy.
“Do you guys always watch things going on with humans?” Amy asked. “Or did that arson attack have to do with the Neverseen?”
“The answer is yes to both,” Alden told her. “The Council’s official policy is to leave humans to their own devices—for many complicated reasons. But Quinlin keeps an eye on things, just to be safe. As do I. As do the Black Swan. And in the case of those fires, we now know that they were set by Pyrokinetics. But the blazes were thoroughly investigated,” he added, focusing on Sophie.
“So was Gethen,” she reminded him. “The Black Swan held him prisoner for months, and questioned him multiple times before they handed him over to the Council, who also interrogated him. And still, none of us realized he’d let himself be arrested for a reason—even when he out-and-out told us he wanted to be in Lumenaria.”
“I know,” Alden said. “But the important thing to remember is, he was still in our custody. The Everblaze was extinguished months ago and the damage has been repaired and rebuilt. And it was all relatively minor. The fires mostly scorched empty land and small neighborhoods—which was still devastating for the humans, of course. But it’s not the kind of damage that sends a larger message. If the Neverseen had been making a point, they would’ve taken out important human landmarks.”
“Then why did they spark the fires?” Sophie asked, hating how little sense it made, now that she was finally questioning it. “They had to know that unleashing a storm of Everblaze would lead to Fintan’s arrest, and then to his mind being shattered in a memory break—and yeah, I ended up healing him. But they didn’t know I could do that back when they set the fires. I didn’t even know I could do that. So it doesn’t make sense that they would risk all of that just to get the Black Swan’s attention—especially since I’m sure they could’ve done that another way. Do you really think they’d sacrifice so much without a very good reason?”
None of the adults wanted to answer.
“I hope I’m overreacting,” she said, feeling like her stomach was turning inside out. “But in case I’m not, we need to reinvestigate and make sure the fires weren’t the start of something—or a cover-up for something—and we missed it.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” Alden told her. “But I’d also hate to have this sidetrack you from the much more important search you should be spending your energy on.”
Sophie had started to nod when realization punched her in the chest.
Was that why the Neverseen took her parents?
To keep her so frantic and distracted that she’d keep missing the other, much more dangerous plans already in action?
A scene took shape in her mind, straight out of the action movies she’d watched growing up:
The villain taunting the hero with an impossible choice—the people they loved in mortal danger on one side, and the rest of the world on the other.
And no way to save them both.
“You okay?” Amy asked, nudging Sophie’s arm until Sophie looked at her. “You’re shaking.”
Was she?
Sophie forced air into her lungs.
She couldn’t bring herself to voice her newest worries—couldn’t risk having her sister think she wouldn’t be giving 100 percent of herself to rescuing her parents.
But if she was right, then the one-problem-at-a-time approach she’d relied on in the past was never going to work—and maybe it never had.
Maybe that was why the Neverseen kept winning.
They were toying with everyone, keeping eyes trained on the wrong dangers, like evil magicians who’d perfected their illusions.
But if that was true—how could Sophie fight back when she was already so many steps behind?
The solution drifted to the surface of her mind after a few long seconds—sharp and sour, but also incredibly clear.
The Neverseen had tipped their hand several weeks back, giving a hint of what they needed.
They’d kidnapped Prentice’s son, Wylie, and interrogated him about his mom’s murder. But he’d managed to escape before they could learn anything. And now the Black Swan had him hidden away while he recovered from the trauma, under such heavy guard that the Neverseen would never be able to get to him again.
So, if Sophie could find out what they had been trying to learn, she’d have a bargaining chip of her own—and maybe a much better insight into what they were planning. And she was also pretty sure she could learn what she needed from the same person she’d already been planning to turn to.
Keefe’s mom had to know more about why the Neverseen were looking into Cyrah’s death.
After all, s
he’d been the one to murder her.
Nine
ANYONE PLANNING ON joining me over here?” Livvy called from the other side of the fireplace.
Amy kept her eyes trained on Sophie. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Just some theories I need to think through,” Sophie told her, tugging out an itchy eyelash. “I promise I’ll tell you if I’m right about any of them.”
“If it helps,” Alden said when Amy’s frown twisted into a scowl, “she often makes the same excuse with my children. And me, for that matter.”
“It’s not an excuse,” Sophie argued. “I just don’t like to freak people out until I’ve had time to look into things. Why worry everyone when there’s a chance I’m wrong?”
“Fine,” her sister said, turning to Quinlin, “then I’ll look into it too. I want a copy of anything you’re going to send to Sophie.”
“But you don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Sophie reminded her.
“I’m sure I can figure it out. Just because I don’t have fancy powers doesn’t mean I’m useless.”
“Oh, I like her,” Livvy called through the flames. “Tell you what, Feisty Girl—I’ll make sure Quinlin gets you that info and we’ll go through it together.”
Amy smirked at Sophie.
“I never said you were useless,” Sophie told her as Amy moved closer to the fire.
“You didn’t have to,” Amy said. “I know I’m not an elf—but this problem isn’t just about your world. Those fires were in my world. So I might notice something you don’t.”
“She has a point,” Alden agreed.
Amy flashed Sophie an especially smug smile, but it faded when she turned back to the flames.
“Problem?” Sophie asked as Amy shakily dropped to her knees.
“I know it’s an illusion, but I . . . hate fire.”
Sophie kneeled beside her and offered her hand.
Amy still needed a couple of long breaths before they both crawled into the flames together, each squeezing their eyes tight until Livvy told them, “You’re clear.”
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