Sophie nodded, telling herself to be glad they had a way to wipe away anything painful from her parents’ minds. But . . .
“This only works if you erase me again,” she whispered.
“You were thinking we wouldn’t,” Mr. Forkle said. It wasn’t a question—but somehow, it felt like an answer, snuffing out that tiny hope she’d been carrying.
“I thought they’d be safer if they knew they were in danger,” Sophie admitted. “And I figured, if they knew that . . . then maybe they could also know me—not to live with them,” she added, glancing at her adoptive parents. “Just . . . to visit, occasionally. I knew it’d be super complicated, but . . .”
Grady and Edaline tightened their hug.
“We’d love for you to have that,” they both assured her, and Sophie’s eyes burned.
But it didn’t matter.
She’d do whatever it took to spare her parents from trauma.
“Hey,” Edaline said, wiping tears off Sophie’s cheeks. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? We don’t know how any of this is going to work out.”
“Exactly,” Livvy told her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Gisela said that to distract you from the slip she made, mentioning the efflorescence.”
“Me too,” Biana agreed. “Didn’t you hear how nervous she sounded after she said it?”
“She should be,” Mr. Forkle added. “She all but admitted the Neverseen planted those flowers. So now we need to figure out why. Just as we need to learn more about this soporidine. Mr. Sencen sent over the report you requested a little while ago”—he held up a crunched-looking scroll—“and I’ll admit, it feels like we’re missing something.”
He was right, both of those were probably related to much bigger problems they should be tackling.
And yet, she found herself asking, “Shouldn’t we be planning our raid of Nightfall?”
“We have been,” Mr. Forkle assured her. “A group will be heading to the facility late tonight, while anyone there is hopefully asleep, and you’ll have the best chance of sneaking in and out without detection.”
“I still think we should try to capture anyone from the Neverseen while we’re there,” Fitz muttered.
“I know. And I understand the inclination,” Mr. Forkle told him. “It’s the same difficult decision I faced when I rescued Miss Foster and Mr. Dizznee. But the more you complicate a mission, the more it reduces your chances of success. And the most important goal is to recover Sophie’s parents.”
Sophie wasn’t sure if that was true—but she couldn’t bring herself to argue. Even if it was selfish. Even if it was playing into the Neverseen’s game.
After Lady Gisela’s warning, she had to get her parents out of there.
“When do we leave?” she asked.
“We’re aiming for midnight,” Mr. Forkle said, “assuming we can gather the ash you’ll need.”
“And finalize who’s going,” Edaline added.
“I am!” Fitz, Biana, Grady, Grizel, and Sandor all said at the same time.
“In case you were wondering,” Tam told Sophie, “they’ve been fighting over this pretty much the whole time you’ve been sitting there. The only things they agree on are that Forkle can’t go because the Neverseen would find out he’s still alive, and that I should be there. I guess we’re taking on mutant beasts?”
“Which is why I should be going,” Grady jumped in. “I’ve tamed all of these creatures in our pastures.”
“It sounds like these beasts can’t be tamed,” Sandor argued. “Which is why you need someone trained to hunt.”
“But that person also needs to be stealthy,” Grizel corrected.
“This is the part where Biana reminds everyone that she can turn invisible,” Tam added. “And then Fitz will snap back that vanishing only protects her, and that he can give you extra mental energy if you need it. And then Grady jumps in saying that if he’s there, he can mesmerize any threat, in case Keefe’s mom is lying. And Sandor reminds everyone that you’re his charge and his responsibility and round and round they go.”
“Not this time,” Biana said, turning to Sophie. “I think I can prove why I’m the best choice—but only if Sophie feels up to enhancing me.”
Sophie wasn’t sure where Biana was going with that, but she pulled off one of her gloves and offered her hand.
“Wow,” Biana breathed, disappearing the second their fingers touched. “I forgot how liquid the light feels. I don’t even have to try to let it pour through me.”
“Okay, but how does this make you so important?” Fitz asked.
“I’m getting to that.” Biana’s grip tightened on Sophie’s hand.
Seconds crawled by—enough for Sophie’s palm to turn clammy. Then Biana’s vanishing spread across Sophie like invisible paint.
“Careful,” Biana said as Sophie jumped to her feet—which she could no longer see. Her whole body was just . . . gone. “It’s super easy to trip or bump into stuff, since you can’t see where you are.”
Tam snorted. “Good thing Sophie’s not clumsy at all.”
“I’ll keep her steady,” Biana promised. “And hang on—I want to try one more thing.”
She must’ve grabbed Fitz’s hand, because he faded out of sight a few seconds later.
“See?” Biana said. “I can hide two of us—plus myself. And Tam can hide in the shadows. So once we dull our scent with ash, our whole group will be totally undetectable.”
“Can you really maintain the effect the whole time?” Edaline asked.
“I think so. Now that I know how to do it, it almost feels automatic.”
“But you still don’t know if the ash is going to affect your ability,” Fitz’s disembodied voice reminded her.
“Okay, so let’s get the ash we need for tonight and test it,” Biana countered, letting go and making both him and Sophie reappear.
“A wise idea,” Mr. Forkle agreed, removing a blue-crystalled pathfinder from his pocket. “Think you’re up to visiting a fire site, Miss Foster?”
“I’m sure she is,” Livvy jumped in. “But you’re not. And neither are you.” She pointed to Sandor and Grizel before pulling out a blue pathfinder of her own. “We need a group that’s more discreet—and Grady’s ability should more than cover us. Everyone take off your capes. It’s not going to take us all day to gather some ash, so I’m sending us on a detour. Let’s see if we can figure out why the Neverseen have taken up gardening.”
Thirty-nine
THIS IS AMAZING,” Biana breathed as their group trekked toward the rolling hills of color. It looked like someone had taken buckets of paint and splattered them across the narrow valley—and huge crowds had turned up to take pictures of the spectacle.
But gorgeous as the scenery was, it was all familiar flowers—nothing that stood out as special.
“Maybe they did something to the soil,” Livvy said as she dug several vials from her satchel and filled them with the dusty earth. “I’m taking samples for the gnomes. And I think we should walk around a bit, make sure we’re not missing anything.”
“I wish the gnomes could come here,” Grady murmured. “But there are way too many humans.”
“Seriously. I’ve never seen so many camera flashes. Speaking of which, I don’t suppose there’s any way you guys can be less attractive for the next few minutes?” Livvy asked. “You’re drawing almost as much attention as the efflorescence.”
Fitz grinned—and a girl who’d been watching him tripped over her own feet.
“You guys have plenty of admirers too,” Sophie had to point out, nudging her chin toward several adults who were snapping pictures of Grady and Livvy as if they thought they were celebrities.
“I think Tam’s causing the biggest stir,” Biana said, tilting her head toward an entire busload of schoolgirls who were shamelessly gawking.
“Great,” Tam grumbled, pulling his bangs lower over his eyes—which only seemed to make the group swoon more.
“B
e glad Keefe’s not here,” Fitz told him as they strode deeper into the field. “He’d be calling them over and making you pose for photos.”
“Why isn’t Keefe here?” Grady jumped in.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing, especially since he sent over that scroll,” Tam said.
Sophie turned away, examining a patch of poppies as she whispered enough gruesome details about Keefe’s injuries to hopefully end the subject.
“Okay,” Tam said, “but this is Keefe. I can’t see him actually sticking with bed rest. Especially when his mom’s sending us off to play with her freaky pets.”
“He doesn’t know about the gorgodons,” Sophie admitted, very aware of how closely Grady was listening. “And nobody’s going to tell him, okay? Elwin said he’d have permanent nerve damage if he doesn’t give himself time to recover.”
“But Keefe knows you contacted his mom, right?” Tam pressed. “Or does he think you’re waiting for him?”
“He knows I don’t need him right now.”
She kept her eyes on the vivid blue butterfly fluttering by, wondering if the flowers were meant to draw some sort of special insect, like how the splendors attracted the flitterwings.
But if that was the case, wouldn’t all the flowers be the same?
And wouldn’t there be a whole lot more bugs buzzing around?
“There’s more to that story than what you’re giving us,” Tam pressed.
Fitz shrugged. “With Keefe there’s always more to the story.”
“Seems like you got the full-length version,” Tam noted.
“That’s because Fitz rushed over to Havenfield last night after Sophie got home,” Biana told him. “And I didn’t sneak along, in case you guys were wondering. I saw him packing up another special present and figured I could skip the mushiness.”
Sophie’s cheeks burned and she tried to blame it on the scorching sun. But Fitz’s gift had been especially sweet. He’d brought her a box of something he’d called pudding puffs—fudgey squares that tasted like warm apple pie mixed with melted vanilla ice cream.
And he’d baked them himself.
If her life wasn’t such a mess, she probably would’ve been up all night replaying the look in his eyes when he’d given it to her—a mix of pride and concern and something she couldn’t quite put her finger on that had made it very hard to breathe.
But now wasn’t the time to be thinking about things like that.
“Where’s Dex, by the way?” Grady asked.
“I don’t know. He’s being weird,” Biana admitted. “I tried hailing him yesterday, to see if he wanted to come over and work on the caches without the triplets around, but he said he wanted to be alone. Has anyone else talked to him?”
“Not since Forkle’s planting,” Fitz said.
Tam nodded.
Sophie became very interested in another butterfly.
“Iggy’s green now,” Biana said slowly. “I remember noticing that while you were talking to Lady Gisela.”
“Dex did that when he came over the other night, didn’t he?” Grady asked.
Sophie nodded, and tried to get them all back to talking about the flowers. But Biana didn’t take the bait.
“Why did Dex come over?”
“He . . . brought something for me.”
“I’m not an Empath,” Tam said. “But I’m pretty sure there are some weird feelings going on right now.”
“Me too.” Biana leaned in to whisper to Sophie. “Did you and Dex get into a fight? He said he probably won’t be around until school starts.”
“Did he?” Sophie asked, fighting the urge to tug on her eyelashes.
Biana glanced at Fitz. “Am I the only one who feels like I missed something?”
“Nope,” Fitz, Tam, and Grady all said in unison.
“It’s nothing,” Sophie promised, picking up her pace. “Dex is just working through some stuff. He asked me not to say more than that. Sorry.”
Livvy came to her rescue. “Linh’s missing today too. Is she with Wylie?”
“Again?” Fitz asked when Tam nodded. “She spent the whole day with him yesterday.”
“Does that mean you guys didn’t meet up to search Candleshade?” Sophie had to ask.
“Nope—they dumped that on us,” Biana told her, pointing to herself and Tam. “Not that we found anything.”
“Except proof that Keefe’s dad is even more ridiculous than my father,” Tam added. “Do you know he has an entire room dedicated to himself, complete with a life-size statue made of lumenite? It glows, guys. I’m going to have nightmares about it.”
“So did Keefe.” He’d told Sophie he used to dream it was going to come alive and eat him. “Did Linh say how Wylie’s doing?”
“Much better,” Tam said. “I guess he was actually making jokes, and adding light tricks to her water tricks. And she said it looked like his dad was watching them.”
“Prentice has seemed almost lucid,” Livvy agreed. “If he holds this way for a few more weeks, I’ll hopefully be able to convince the rest of the Collective to approve the healing.”
“Weeks?” Sophie whined. “I thought you said soon.”
“I know it doesn’t feel like it,” Livvy told her, “but that is soon considering how long Prentice has been waiting.”
Sophie sighed.
“So what did you do yesterday?” Tam asked Fitz.
“Besides bake for Sophie?” he asked with a far-too-adorable smile that made it hard to focus on the more important part of his answer. “Oralie sent over the names of the goblins who used to work at Lumenaria, and two of them are still stationed in the Lost Cities. So my dad took me to meet with them, but all they could tell us is that they were given permission to use lethal force—which was never allowed with any other prisoners. My dad was going to head to Gildingham today to see if he could track down the others. I’ll let you know what he finds out.”
“Thanks,” Sophie mumbled, wondering how they could be working on so many projects and somehow not making progress on any of them.
Maybe that was what happened when they didn’t focus on one thing.
Or maybe the Neverseen were too far ahead.
“Is something wrong?” Grady asked, and it took Sophie a moment to realize he was talking to Livvy, who was studying a scorched bush.
Livvy pointed to the bright purple berries dotted among the blackened leaves. They were shriveled like raisins and didn’t seem familiar until Livvy said, “These are slumberberries.”
Forty
THESE ARE WHAT you use to make slumberberry tea?” Sophie asked, plucking one of the berries and giving it a tentative sniff.
Livvy nodded, tearing off a branch and adding it to her satchel. “This bush must’ve been planted several months before the fires to grow this large.”
“And humans don’t grow them?” Biana asked.
“No. The gnomes hybridized them,” Livvy said, glancing at the sun to check the time. “So we should search a few more efflorescence sites to see if we find any.”
She led them deeper into the valley, until they had enough privacy to leap to the next site, which was less crowded—probably because it was much colder.
The icy soil crunched under their feet and a biting wind nipped at their ears as they searched the plains of vibrant flowers for slumberberries.
No one found any—but Sophie did discover the charred remnants of thick vines with singed, spiky teal flowers.
“These look like dreamlilies,” she said, careful not to touch the petals. The caretaker at the Sanctuary had used them to sedate Silveny, and he’d warned her that the slightest touch of their pollen could knock her out.
“They are dreamlilies,” Livvy said, plucking some of the blackened blossoms by the stem and adding them to her samples. “And they’re another gnomish plant that shouldn’t be here.”
The next leap brought them to a forest of towering evergreens, with hilly meadows of flowers trailing into the trees. And t
ucked among the blackened trunks, Livvy found the remnants of dark red flowers she called aethrials. It took Sophie a second to realize she’d heard of the plant from Calla, when she’d explained how she’d cross-pollinated several plants to make a special vine for Sophie’s bedroom, to give Sophie better dreams.
Calla had used dreamlilies for that too.
And they found the third flower Calla had used—lacy pink blossoms called sweetshades—at the final efflorescence site they checked, in a marshy area that made their feet squish with every step.
“So . . . they grew different plants in different environments and then burned them,” Tam said as Livvy collected more samples. “And they all have something to do with sleep.”
“It almost feels like an experiment,” Fitz added. “Doesn’t it?”
“But for what?” Biana asked. “To make a more powerful sedative?”
“I’ve made a lot of sedatives in my day,” Livvy told them, “and fire has never played a role. And it doesn’t explain why all these other flowers have popped up.”
“Unless what they really did was change the soil,” Grady said. “Or maybe it was about the ash, since that’s what they gathered.”
“Maybe. Or they could’ve been trying to get rid of any evidence.” Livvy checked the sky. “I wish we had time to search more sites. But we still need to gather the Everblaze ash for tonight.”
“Right,” Sophie said, dragging out the word. “Tonight.”
“You focus on Nightfall,” Livvy told her. “I’ll focus on this. I’ll even let your sister help me test some of the samples to keep her involved with everything.”
“Why does that pathfinder have paths to all of the fire sites?” Tam asked as Livvy adjusted the crystal again.
“Because my husband has investigated far more than I ever realized.” Livvy’s eyes looked sad as she held the blue crystal up to the light, revealing thousands of glinting facets.
Fitz whistled. “Pretty sure even my dad’s blue pathfinder isn’t that complicated.”
“I doubt it is. But your father was often limited in his assignments, because he had a family to consider. Quinlin only had me—and I was never a concern. Not that it matters.” She cleared her throat. “Is everyone ready?”
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