A new spark of hope caught inside her, kindling in her heart and pumping through her veins.
Maybe Alden could still heal himself.
If she could find a way to show him that he had nothing to feel guilty for, maybe whatever small part was left would find the strength to fight his way back.
She didn’t know if it was possible, but she had to try.
And she could think of one thing that could definitely erase Alden’s guilt.
If Grady was right about the Black Swan.
THIRTY-SIX
SOPHIE NEVER THOUGHT SHE’D WANT to be the creation of a band of murderers—but now she wished for it more than anything else she’d ever wished for.
So what if Mr. Forkle had cared?
That didn’t mean the rest of the Black Swan did. Grady was convinced they were evil, and she needed him to be right. She’d worry about what that meant for her life later.
All that mattered was bringing Alden back.
For that she’d need proof. Something she could show Alden to call him out of the darkness, seal the cracks in his mind, make him him again.
“Someone will need to alert the Council,” Alvar announced, appearing from nowhere.
Sophie clutched her chest, wondering how long he’d been standing there.
“I can go,” he offered, noticeably not looking at his father. “I believe the Councillors are in their offices right now.”
Tiergan held up his hand. “I think we should wait. We need to prepare a place in the house where Alden can comfortably stay. Otherwise they’ll want to move him to Exile.”
Sophie tried to block the image of Alden locked up in one of those cold, tiny rooms from her mind, but it wormed its way in anyway.
“But if they find out we kept this from them—” Alvar argued.
“They won’t. And even if they do, we can explain that we were giving it time to make sure nothing changed. I’m sure they’ll be especially accommodating in your father’s case. He was one of their best Emissaries.”
“But—”
“We’re going to wait a day!” Tiergan insisted. “I’ll take full responsibility if they’re unhappy.”
Alvar stepped into Tiergan’s personal space. “Since when have you had even the slightest concern for anyone in my family? In fact, shouldn’t you be celebrating right now?”
“I may have disagreed with your father on certain things—but I have never wished ill on him, or anyone else in your family. I am simply trying my best to help, and as the most senior official in this room, what I say will be what goes.”
Alvar’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t argue. “I guess I’ll go check on my sister, then,” he said as he stalked out of the room.
Tiergan rubbed his temples. “I’m probably not the best person to be assisting with this situation.”
“They’re going to need all the help they can get,” Elwin said sadly. Alden started to thrash again and Elwin forced more sedative down his throat. “It’s wearing off quicker and quicker.”
“Soon it won’t work at all. You can’t alter consciousness when there’s no consciousness to alter.”
“So there’s still some consciousness left?” Sophie asked, unable to hide the hope in her voice.
“Not the way you’re thinking, Sophie. When your sanity breaks, it continues to break, splintering into smaller and smaller pieces. In the beginning the shards are big enough to still react to certain things. But as they shatter further they’ll become completely unresponsive.”
“How long will that take?”
“It’s different with every person. With Prentice it was slow, because his mind was so strong.”
Alden’s mind was strong too—supposedly one of the strongest in their world. Hopefully that meant she had more time.
“You really think they should keep him here?” Elwin asked as he wiped the sweat off Alden’s forehead. “Won’t it be too hard?”
“It’s better than locking him away in Exile. I’ve been there, it’s . . .” Tiergan looked away.
“He’s right,” Sophie agreed—though she had another reason for not wanting Alden moved. Once she’d figured out how to fix him, the last thing she wanted was another trip to that horrible place.
Elwin sighed. “I guess I’d better talk to the gnomes. We’ll need to set him up somewhere he can’t hurt himself if he thrashes.”
“And somewhere they won’t be able to hear his wails.” Tiergan’s voice shook as he said it.
“I should probably go home,” Sophie mumbled. She was dreading telling Grady and Edaline the sad news, but she needed to start looking for the proof to save him.
“I’ll go with you,” Tiergan offered. “I should talk to Grady anyway.”
He didn’t say about what, and Sophie decided not to ask. She had enough to worry about.
She refused to look at Alden’s pale, unconscious form as she dug out her home crystal and reached for Tiergan’s hand.
This was only temporary. The next time she saw Alden she’d be bringing him the news to pull him back from the darkness.
FRIEND? SILVENY CALLED AS SHE spotted Sophie across the pastures. Friend! Come! Fly! Trust! Fly! Fly! Fly!
Silveny, not now—please, Sophie transmitted, rubbing her temples.
“What’s wrong? You’re not getting a headache, are you?” Tiergan asked.
“No. Silveny’s just calling for me, and it’s hard to concentrate because I can’t block her.”
His eyes widened and she realized she’d never told him about her unusual connection to the alicorn. “What do you think that means?” she asked when she was done explaining.
“I can’t even begin to guess. I’d long suspected the alicorn we had in the Sanctuary had a mind far superior to any creature we’d ever encountered before. But I never thought—”
“Tiergan? Is that you?” Grady called from the back door. “And, Sophie, you’re back from Everglen already? How’s Alden doing? I haven’t been able to get ahold of Della.”
Sophie tried to figure out how to respond, but she couldn’t find the right words.
“Why don’t you wait out here while I answer their questions?” Tiergan said quietly.
Sophie couldn’t begin to express how much she wanted to take him up on that offer. But she knew Grady and Edaline would need her. “No, it’s okay. I’ll tell them.”
Tiergan smiled sadly and offered her his hand. They’d walked several steps before Sophie realized how natural the gesture felt. Tiergan’s usual awkwardness around her seemed almost forgotten. Like he’d stepped into Alden’s role without even realizing it.
She was grateful for it. But it made her sad, too.
“What’s going on?” Grady asked as he got a closer look at their expressions. “Is Alden’s injury serious?”
“We have much to discuss,” Tiergan told him. “But I think we should be sitting down.”
GRADY WASN’T SAD. HE WAS furious—shouting hateful things about the Council, the Black Swan, memory breaks, even Alden. Edaline wasn’t sad either. She was worried—trying to force a dozen elixirs down Sophie’s throat, no matter how many times Sophie assured her she was fine. Tiergan ordered them both to drink a mild sedative and they finally calmed, sinking into their chairs.
“I’ll have to talk to Grady about the other matters tomorrow,” Tiergan said as they stared blankly into space. “Hopefully he’ll have accepted the news by then.”
Sophie hoped so.
“Maybe I should stay. I’d hate to have you here alone.”
“I’ll be okay. I have Sandor here with me.”
Tiergan nodded. “I must say, you’re handling this very bravely. Alden would be proud.”
Would he?
Or would he think she cared less than the others who kept falling apart?
“I suspect your upbringing helps you process grief better than the rest of us,” he added, like he knew what she’d been thinking. “Death and loss are so much more common for humans.”
“Then how come you’re not more affected?”
Tiergan fiddled with the edges of his sleeves. “I’ve known more loss than anyone. Anyway, if you’ll really be okay, then I should go. There is much to do before I go to the Council tomorrow. I’ll be back here in the morning.”
Sophie nodded.
Tiergan made her promise to hail him if she needed anything. Then he vanished into the light, leaving behind a silence so thick Sophie wondered if it would smother her.
Sandor helped her lead Grady and Edaline upstairs, and by the time they were settled into their enormous canopied bed, Sophie could barely stand. She turned to head to her room, but her body felt ready to collapse. Or maybe she did collapse, because the next thing she knew, Sandor was setting her gently down on her bed.
“I’m worried today’s events will give you nightmares, Miss Foster. Perhaps you should try some of that tea Elwin has suggested. Slumberberry?”
“No sedatives.”
Sandor sighed—a wheezy, squeaky sound that would’ve made her giggle any other time—but didn’t push her. Instead he untangled Ella from the blankets and handed her the familiar bright blue elephant.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, burying her face between Ella’s ears.
“If you need me, I’m right outside.” He clapped his hands, closing the drapes along her walls and leaving her in darkness.
Sophie closed her eyes, waiting for the exhaustion to pull her weary mind into unconsciousness. But sleep wouldn’t come.
Iggy’s wood chipper snore echoed through the silent room, which felt cold and empty. Sophie was tempted to ask Sandor to station himself inside for the night, but she pulled the blankets over her head, squeezed her eyes shut, and curled up as tight as she could.
The coldness was inside her, though. Shards of ice slicing her apart.
The shivers turned to heaving sobs that shook her so hard she wondered if she’d be bruised the next day, and cold tears soaked her pillow, mixed with snot and drool.
Friend?
Silveny’s soft call echoed through her mind, but Sophie was too lost in the grief to respond.
Friend! Silveny called again—more urgent this time.
When she still didn’t reply, a warm buzz filled Sophie’s mind, soft and sweet, like the crunch of fresh grass between her teeth or the rush of the wind on her feathered wings or the gentle touch of a slender blond girl, brushing her fingers through her mane.
Sophie’s eyes popped open.
Silveny must have opened some sort of channel between them and was filling her head with feelings and memories that weren’t hers. Panic and instinct told Sophie to shove the foreign thoughts away—but there was something so calming about the pure simplicity of the sensations. No grief. No worry. Just the easy pleasure of running at top speed through a dew-covered meadow, or soaring through a cloudless sky with the crisp breeze blowing in her face. But stronger than anything else were the images of her. Silveny shared memories of smiles and laughs that Sophie had felt rather than seen, and she could feel the downy fur of her nose being tickled by soft fingers. The gentle strokes sent tingles rippling all the way to the tips of her hooves—filling her heart with a warm burst of joy. Lightening a darkness and emptiness so deep inside that Sophie had never noticed she felt it—but she realized that was because it wasn’t hers.
It was Silveny’s.
Hundreds of years of running, flying, hiding anytime anyone came close. Until one day a soft voice entered her mind as she fled, and convinced her to stay.
Friend? Sophie transmitted, feeling the word circle and buzz in Silveny’s mind, sweeping away even more of the loneliness.
Friend, Silveny repeated. Calm.
The word carried authority, like Silveny was ordering her to relax, and Sophie couldn’t help smiling at the thought of being mothered by a glittery winged horse.
But Silveny took her job seriously. She filled Sophie’s mind with memories of vivid desert sunsets and moonlit beaches with silver-tipped waves and rich green meadows with flowers in every color of the rainbow. Cities and forests and islands and icy tundra. Empty, isolated places that felt like the world had forgotten them, and crowded, cluttered places where voices smiled and laughed as Silveny hid in the shadows, listening.
It was two or three lifetimes’ worth of memories, and Sophie’s last thought was to wonder how a single alicorn could possibly have been and seen and known so many places. Then her mind finally drifted off to sleep.
THIRTY-SEVEN
SORRY, DIDN’T MEAN TO WAKE you,” Grady said when her bedroom door creaked, jolting Sophie from her strange, alicorny dreams. “I just wanted to check on you.”
Sophie sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as Grady crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed. “I also wanted you to know how sorry Edaline and I are that we got so upset yesterday. We should’ve been comforting you—not the other way around.”
“It’s okay. It was hard news.”
He cleared the thickness from his throat. “I still can’t believe it. But I went to Everglen this morning and saw for myself how . . .”
He didn’t finish, and Sophie was grateful.
“Wait—what time is it?” She capped her hands to open her drapes. The sun blazed high in the sky, like it was almost midday. “How long did I sleep?”
“We didn’t want to wake you. Dex stopped by, but we told him we were letting you rest and you’d see him tomorrow. You’ve been through so much.”
She had. But still—how many hours had she lost?
“Edaline’s over at Everglen, trying to help Della figure everything out. Will you be okay if I leave you alone here?”
“Of course. Where are you going?”
His hand moved to the Ruewen crest clasping his jewel lined cape, and Sophie realized he was dressed in an embroidered tunic and fine linen pants, with his hair immaculately combed. He looked almost regal as he sighed and said, “I’m going with Tiergan to speak to the Council. Someone will need to take over Alden’s duties.”
Sophie frowned. “You’re agreeing to be an Emissary?” She was glad he’d finally come around, but . . . why was he willing to do it for Alden and not her?
“Alden did so much for us,” he said, reaching out and stroking Sophie’s cheek. “It’s the least I can do.”
His eyes brimmed with the tears, and Sophie felt her own well up too. She blinked back the sadness. She wasn’t going to cry for Alden—she was going to fix him. And if Grady and Edaline weren’t going to be home, she knew exactly where to start.
She hugged Grady goodbye and waited for the house to fall silent. Then she threw her covers off and ran for her bedroom door and . . .
Slammed into a wall of rock-hard goblin muscle.
“Ow, Sandor!” She rubbed her forehead. “What are you doing?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
She tried to move past him, but he blocked her with his beefy arms.
“Will you relax?” she asked. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“If you’re not going anywhere, then why won’t you tell me what you’re doing?”
“Aren’t I allowed to have any secrets?”
“Secrets hinder my ability to protect you.”
“I don’t need your protection for this.”
“You always need my protection.”
His stubbornness made her want to tear out her hair. She settled for tugging out an eyelash.
“Fine,” she said after several deep breaths. “I need to look around a room that Grady and Edaline don’t like me to go into, and since your job is to report everything I do—”
“That’s not my job,” Sandor interrupted. “If it were, I would’ve told them how you sneak out of bed to read by the light of the moon jars you keep in your desk.”
Her jaw fell slightly.
His thin lips twisted into what she assumed was a smile. “You didn’t really think I couldn’t hear you, did you? My senses detect everything.”
&n
bsp; Everything except the mysterious “visitor” who tried to take Silveny.
“My job is to protect you, Miss Foster,” he continued. “If you’re awake, so am I. But I’m not here to chaperone you. If something you do isn’t dangerous, there’s no reason for me to report on your behavior. So it would be easier for both of us if you would stop trying to hide things from me.”
Sophie studied his face, trying to decide if she could trust him—though she didn’t really have a choice, thanks to his super-goblin-hearing.
“Fine—if you must know, I need to look around Jolie’s room.”
“You’re trying to find out if she was murdered.” It wasn’t a question, so Sophie didn’t answer, and it proved once again how closely Sandor was paying attention.
“So will you let me by, or not?” she asked.
“On one condition. If this quest you’re on takes you beyond these walls, I will be coming with you—and you will not try to stop me.”
Sophie sighed. Having an enormous weapon-toting bodyguard on her tail was going to make the whole “stealth” part of investigating pretty impossible. But she doubted she’d really be able to sneak away. “As long as you don’t tell anyone what we’re doing until I’m ready.”
His eyes narrowed as he considered that. Then he extended his hand and they shook, cementing the deal.
He stepped aside to let her pass, but shadowed her down the stairs and through the quiet second floor hallway, stationing himself outside Jolie’s door.
“I’ll keep lookout, in case your family comes home,” he explained.
“I . . . Thanks.”
Maybe having Sandor on her side wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Especially since she had a feeling she was going to need all the help she could get.
SOPHIE TRIED NOT TO THINK as she rummaged through Jolie’s things. Then she didn’t have to feel bad about disturbing the careful peace of a dead girl’s bedroom. She was just a mindless force with a single purpose: find something.
Something to tell her . . . well . . . something.
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was all she had.
She checked all the obvious places first: under the bed, between the mattresses, in the desk. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—though it was strange how much Grady and Edaline had kept everything the same. Books were still marked to the page Jolie had been reading, tiny pots of lip color—long since dried up—were still carefully arranged on her dressing table, even a half-finished bottle of Youth still waited on the small table next to the bed.
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