But she wasn’t going to let him scare her away. Have you met any other members of the order?
A couple—but they wear cloaks and use code names, and barely say two words to me when we train, so I can’t tell you anything about them.
Wait—you’re training with them? Does that mean there’s another Shade?
No. I don’t know what these guys can do. Or maybe they’re female. I can’t tell. Lady Gisela keeps me alone in a corner, practicing from Umber’s journals.
A shiver rippled down Sophie’s spine. Umber had journals?
Lots of them. And I have to work through all of her exercises.
Well… that was terrifying.
What kind of exercises? Sophie asked—and when he hesitated, she added, Shadowflux training, right?
Obviously.
The response bothered her more than a single word should—but it was the icy confidence behind it.
The Tam she knew had been reluctant to train in the dark element. Almost afraid of its strange power. And now he sounded… proud.
You need to be careful, she warned him. You don’t know how Umber’s training will affect you. She was one of the creepiest people I’ve ever met.
The bones in her hand throbbed, remembering the way Umber had shattered them one by one.
I AM being careful, Tam assured her. But the training is unavoidable.
Then tell me what they’re having you do so I can figure out what they’re planning and get you out of there. You’re already going to be in trouble for talking to me, right? Why not make it worth it?
Uh, because they can make their punishments WAY worse.
Don’t worry—Linh’s safe. Tiergan’s added a ton of security to his house to make sure of it.
You and I both know that doesn’t mean anything. And even if she IS okay right now, they have plenty of ways they can punish ME.
Sophie was certain they did. And she hated putting him in that position. But leaving him with the Neverseen was feeling beyond scary. She had to find a way to get him out of there, before they made him do something terrifying.
Please, she begged. You know what’s at stake—especially if you’re studying Umber’s journals.
I DO know what’s at stake. My sister’s LIFE.
The coldness wrapping each thought sank all the way to her bones. We’ll protect her.
Yeah. I’ve seen how well that protection works. I can’t take that risk.
So… what? You’ll just do whatever creepy things the Neverseen tell you to do and hang the consequences?
I don’t know.
That’s not good enough!
Well, it’s going to have to be!
Sophie locked her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. I can already feel a change in you, Tam. Just from your mind. I think Umber’s training is affecting you.
I can handle it.
You know Keefe said the same thing, right? Sophie asked.
She’d hoped that would knock some sense into him, given the strange animosity between the two boys. But Tam’s thoughts were frozen claws as he said, I guess I get where he was coming from now.
Tam—
No—just stop! You’re making everything worse. Leave me alone. His thoughts stirred like an arctic flurry.
I can’t do that.
Well, you’re going to have to. If you try reaching out to me again, I’ll run straight to Gethen so he can hear everything you say. I can’t put Linh at risk.
Meanwhile, you’re putting Linh’s safety ahead of everyone else’s—do you really think she wants you to do that?
I don’t care. I’m her twin. Protecting her is my job. And I think you’re forgetting that I also saved Silveny and Greyfell—and their babies—by agreeing to cooperate.
I could’ve saved them another way.
How? I’m sure you’ve spent the last couple of weeks replaying what happened over and over—can you honestly tell me you’ve thought of anything else that would’ve cured them in time?
She hadn’t.
But she couldn’t admit that.
You’ve seen the kind of cruelty the Neverseen are capable of, Tam. You really want to be a part of that?
The mental flurry picked up speed, hurling each word at her. I don’t have a choice!
There’s always a choice!
Well, right now, I’m choosing to be done with this conversation.
Tam—
No, it’s time for you to leave me alone, Sophie. Get out of my head—or I’ll make you go away.
Tam, please—
The flurry spun into a hurricane—a black storm crashing into her brain. And Tam’s booming voice was thunder amid the tempest.
I’M SORRY—I DIDN’T MEAN ANY OF THAT. I HAD TO PUT ON A GOOD SHOW SO GETHEN WON’T GET SUSPICIOUS WHEN HE CHECKS MY MEMORIES LATER. AND I NEEDED TIME TO GATHER THE SHADOWFLUX I’M USING TO SHROUD THIS THOUGHT, SO HE CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING I’M SAYING. HE’LL PROBABLY STILL BE ABLE TO SEE THAT I SENT SOMETHING, SO I CAN’T TELL YOU MUCH—AND YOU CAN’T REACH OUT TO ME LIKE THIS AGAIN. IT’S WAY TOO DANGEROUS FOR EVERYONE. JUST… TRUST ME TO HANDLE THIS. I HAVE THINGS UNDER CONTROL—OR I WILL, IF YOU DO ONE FAVOR FOR ME. I NEED YOU TO KEEP KEEFE AWAY UNTIL THIS IS OVER. IF YOU CAN’T CONVINCE HIM TO COOPERATE, MAKE UP A FAKE PROJECT TO DISTRACT HIM. OR LOCK HIM UP SOMEWHERE IF YOU HAVE TO. I DON’T CARE. JUST DON’T LET HIM GET NEAR THE NEVERSEEN—AND DEFINITELY DON’T LET HIM GET NEAR ME.
Why not? Sophie asked, struggling to pick his words out of the frozen chaos. Her heart was pounding as hard as her head, drowning out everything with the thump! thump! thump!
But she still managed to catch when Tam said, BECAUSE HIS MOM ORDERED ME TO KILL HIM.
THREE
WHAT? SOPHIE TRANSMITTED—though she should’ve asked, WHEN?
Or, HOW?
Actually, the best question would’ve been, WHY? But it didn’t matter.
The storm faded from her mind, and her connection to Tam vanished with it. Only a few wisps of shadow remained, swirling around her brain like icy smoke. But instead of dissipating, the inky threads coiled together, twisting and tangling with glimmers of darkness she’d thought were long since buried and gone. Morphing into something black and shivery and much too familiar.
Sophie shook her head—hard—and ripped her eyes open, hoping the burning light could sear away the darkness before it took over. She’d spent months haunted by an eerie shadow beast—her mind’s way of processing the lingering echoes from the shadowflux she’d been exposed to during Umber’s attack. And there was no way she was letting that terrifying monster come back to life.
But the shadows sharpened and stretched. Growing claws and fangs.
“Flori!” she shouted, never so grateful to have the loyal gnome stationed outside of her doorway.
“What’s wrong?” Flori asked as she rushed to Sophie’s side.
Sophie curled into a ball, hugging Ella—the bright blue Hawaiian-shirt-wearing stuffed elephant she’d brought with her from her human life. “I need you to sing that song you wrote to quiet the echoes.”
Flori clearly had lots of questions, but said nothing as she reached for Sophie’s face, brushing her fingers softly down Sophie’s cheeks and humming the first notes of the melody. She sang the lyrics in an ancient, earthy language that slipped under Sophie’s skin, turning warm and wonderful as each verse sank into her mind and heart. And as the air thickened with a sweet floral perfume, it felt like the sun rose inside her, melting the cold darkness and flooding her with tingly light.
“Did that help?” Flori whispered, studying Sophie with worried gray eyes.
“I… think so.” Sophie flexed the fingers on her right hand to test for pain, breathing a sigh of relief when there wasn’t any—and the weakness didn’t feel like it had worsened. But as the last of the song’s warmth faded, a bone-deep weariness nestled in, making her wish she could burrow under her blankets and soak up the sweet, heady scent from the flowers growing across her canopy for the rest of
the day. Each of the four types of blossoms had inspired part of the lyrics for the healing verses, and the vines had grown much more fragrant with Flori’s singing.
But Tam’s message had left a different type of echo—the kind where the words kept crashing around in her head, knocking loose stabbing slivers of worry. And while her brain wanted to rebel—wanted to scream that there had to be some horrible misunderstanding—it also kept repeating what Mr. Forkle had said about Tam earlier.
They’re going to use him to strike at you where you’re most vulnerable.
“Easy,” Flori warned as Sophie stumbled to her feet.
“What’s going on?” Sandor demanded, catching Sophie by her shoulders to hold her steady.
“Nothing,” she assured him.
“That wasn’t nothing,” Flori said gently. “Something stirred your echoes.”
“Yeah, but you fixed me.” She flashed a grateful smile, and Flori gave her a green-toothed grin in return.
But Sandor stopped her from pulling away. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need to talk to Keefe.”
His jaw locked with a furious click. “What has that boy done now?”
“Nothing.” All of her bodyguards looked dubious—which was fair, considering the amount of chaos that Keefe had caused over the years. “I’m serious.”
“You were perfectly fine—and then you started doing your Telepath tricks, and suddenly you were begging for Flori’s help,” Sandor argued. “Don’t expect me to believe the two have no connection.”
“They are connected,” Sophie admitted. “But I wasn’t talking to Keefe.”
“Then who were you talking to?” Bo called from the doorway.
Sophie sighed, knowing the truth would cost her precious time. But when she tried to pull free again, Sandor was much too strong. “I… reached out to Tam.”
Sandor’s grip tightened and he leaned back, studying her from head to toe like he was searching for injuries. “What did that traitor do to you?”
“Nothing!”
“Stop using that word as your answer for everything!” he snapped.
“But it’s true! And he’s not a traitor!” She twisted free of his grasp—anger bringing back her strength. “You know Tam. How can you call him that?”
And yet, even as she asked the question, she could hear Mr. Forkle telling her, There are very few things Mr. Tam wouldn’t do to protect his sister.
And that didn’t even take into consideration how the shadowflux might influence him.
She wasn’t going to forget the sharpness of his thoughts—or the chill—for a very long time.
“As your bodyguard, I must view anyone choosing to live with the enemy as a traitor,” Sandor insisted. “And what he did to you today proves why that distinction is necessary.”
“He didn’t do anything,” she argued, clinging to the reminder with an iron grasp. “He used shadowflux to pass along an important warning—at huge risk to himself. And I guess whatever’s left of my echoes reacted to it. It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s a very big deal,” Sandor argued. “He should’ve known that would happen and—”
“Well, he didn’t,” she interrupted. “Or… maybe he did and figured it was worth the risk—which is the same thing I did when I reached out to him telepathically.”
She was trying very hard not to think about what the Neverseen might do to punish Tam for their conversation. Hopefully the show Tam put on would convince Gethen that he’d remained loyal.
“And it’s a good thing we talked,” she added, “because Mr. Forkle was right. The Neverseen are planning to use Tam for something. That’s why I have to talk to Keefe.”
Sandor blocked her as she headed for the door. “You can hail Mr. Sencen on your Imparter if you’d like. But you’re staying here. And you’re getting back into bed.”
Sophie shook her head.
This wasn’t the kind of conversation she could have through a tiny handheld screen. She needed to be there in person, to make sure that Keefe was really listening—and so he couldn’t turn off his Imparter if they ended up arguing.
And to give him a good long hug if he needed it too.
“I’ll rest when I get back,” she promised.
“Perhaps we should see how your mother feels about that plan,” Sandor countered, blocking her again. “Do you really think she’d want you leaving this room after how close you came to a major setback to your recovery?”
He had a point.
But Sophie couldn’t afford to be babied right now. “I know my limits. I wouldn’t go if I couldn’t handle it.”
Sandor snorted. “Right, because you never push yourself too hard.”
“Maybe it would help if you explained what’s so urgent,” Flori suggested when Sandor blocked Sophie yet again—and she seriously considered kicking him in the shin. “What do you need to tell Mr. Sencen that can’t wait until morning?”
Tam’s horrible warning lodged in Sophie’s throat, and she knew she wouldn’t have the energy to repeat the words more than once. So she reached for her temples, pretending to feel faint, and waited until Sandor moved to steady her—then launched past him with a spin move that was shockingly graceful, given her general clumsiness.
“See?” she called over her shoulder. “I’m fine!”
Bo raised his arms to barricade the door, but Sophie ducked underneath, earning herself lots of growls as she raced up the stairs to Havenfield’s gleaming fourth-floor cupola, which existed mostly to house the large sparkling orb hanging from the ceiling, made up of hundreds of small round crystals dangling off nearly invisible cords.
The Leapmaster 500.
None of the crystals would take Sophie where she needed to go, but they weren’t the reason she’d headed there.
“Absolutely not!” Sandor bellowed as she made her way to the largest window and flipped the latch to open the glass. “You’re not jumping off of any towers today.”
“I wasn’t planning on jumping.”
The fourth floor probably wasn’t tall enough to give her the momentum she’d need to teleport, so she was going to have to levitate higher first. Usually she leaped off of one of the cliffs at the edge of the property, but this was closer and faster—or it would’ve been, if she didn’t have two gorilla-size bodyguards shoving their way in front of her and forming a wall of impenetrable muscle.
“Tell. Me. What’s. Going. On!” Sandor demanded.
“You’ll find out when we get there.” A hint of a smirk curled her lips when his scowl softened. “What? You thought I wasn’t going to take you with me?”
“Past experience has shown that to be your preference,” he noted.
“Yeah, well, I’ve learned to pick my battles. So can we go now? Or do you want to keep wasting time and being super annoying?” She offered him her left hand.
Bo grabbed it first.
“We’re just going to Keefe’s house,” Sophie reminded him, trying to wriggle free without losing her glove. “I don’t need to bring the whole cavalry.”
“Nowhere is safe,” Bo argued.
She couldn’t necessarily disagree, considering all the “safe” places where she’d ended up getting attacked over the last few years. But that didn’t change the basic physics of their situation. “My levitating’s only strong enough to carry one of you.”
“Then you should bring me,” Bo insisted. “My senses are far superior. As are my fighting techniques.”
Sandor snorted a squeaky laugh.
“If you go,” Sophie jumped in before she had to suffer through another round of the ogres-versus-goblins debate, “I’m sure Keefe will make you listen to more of The Ballad of Bo and Ro.”
Bo’s lips curled back, revealing his pointed teeth.
His relationship with Keefe’s ogre-princess bodyguard was equal parts tumultuous and complicated, a fact that Keefe never missed an opportunity to torment the two of them about—generally in the form of an ep
ic poem that kept getting mushier with each new stanza. And Sophie couldn’t blame Keefe for the teasing. Not only did Bo’s and Ro’s names rhyme, but it turned out that they were also secretly married, thanks to a betrothal arranged by Ro’s father—King Dimitar—in an attempt to protect them when his time as king was over. The ogre seat of power was earned instead of inherited, and Dimitar didn’t want either of his top warriors fighting against each other in the battles-to-the-death that would follow his surrender or demise—not when they would be so much more powerful ruling together. So he made them marry, hoping the alliance would spur one of them to back down whenever the time came.
Instead, they seemed even more intent on killing each other.
“The last verse I heard Keefe working on had a lot of Bo-Ro snuggling,” Sophie added when Bo didn’t let go. “Pretty sure there was some kissing, too.”
Bo muttered an impressive string of ogre curses as he released her arm. “Fine. I’ll remain behind—but tell Romhilda she needs to get better control of her charge!”
“Oh sure, I’ll get right on that.” She said it with enough sarcasm to make it clear that he didn’t exactly have a lot of control over his charge either. “Ready?” she asked Sandor.
He reluctantly took her hand. “I can’t decide how I feel about the strong-willed teenager you’re becoming.”
“Neither can I,” Sophie admitted. Sometimes she felt so much braver than the wide-eyed girl she’d been when Fitz first brought her to the Lost Cities. But deep down, she was just as terrified. Maybe more so, now that she understood what she was up against.
“I trust you’ll begin the evening patrols while we’re gone?” Sandor asked Bo—though it was more of an order than a request.
Bo nodded. “I expect a full report when you return.”
“Of course.” Sandor turned to Flori. “And will you let Lady Ruewen know where we’ve gone, so she doesn’t worry?”
Flori dipped into a quick bow and turned to head down the stairs.
“Wait!” Sophie called after her as the much more pressing worry hit her, and she wanted to smack herself for letting the echoes and Tam’s warning distract her. “I need you to give her an urgent message. Tell her that Gethen probed Tam’s memories the first day they took him.”
Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 8) Page 5