Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 3)

by Shannon Messenger

  Sophie hung her head. “I’m—”

  “I know you’re sorry,” Alden interrupted. “I even know why you did it. I just hope you understand that this is one dilemma I will not be able to protect you from. Not only will King Dimitar insist that there be consequences, but our people need to see you punished as well. Most of the public sees you as a dangerous experiment run amok, and today’s drama essentially confirmed it. The Council is going to have to devise a punishment that will satisfy King Dimitar and prove to everyone that you are being sufficiently controlled.”

  Sophie swallowed, and it felt like choking down an entire bucket of sharp ice. “Any idea what the punishment will be?”

  “It could be any number of things. But if I had to guess, it’ll be some sort of mandatory public service assignment that you’ll be expected to do every day after school. That way our people will see you humbled, and know that you’re being supervised more thoroughly. And since it’s essentially equivalent to an ogre work camp sentence, King Dimitar should be satisfied.”

  Grady and Tiergan both nodded, like they’d been thinking the same thing, and Sophie felt her heart rate start to slow down to normal.

  “What kind of public service?” Edaline asked, looking just as relieved as Sophie felt.

  Alden glanced at Grady again before he answered. “I’d assume they’d send her to the Sanctuary, since Sophie’s skills with Silveny would be most useful to us there—but before you go smiling too widely, Sophie,” he added, and Sophie’s face fell immediately, “know that it will be hard, filthy work, probably involving a large amount of animal feces—most of which will not be sparkly. And you will likely serve there for the rest of the school year. Perhaps longer.”

  “It’s better than an ogre work camp,” Sophie told him.

  “It is, indeed.”

  “But let us hope it is still awful enough to deter you from doing anything like this ever again,” Sandor added, gripping the handle of his weapon like he was wishing he could shred her with it.

  “Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson,” Sophie promised, staring at the stain where the King had spit on her, vowing to throw away the dress.

  “I’m not sure you have, so you can count on us spending a lot of time reviewing the laws of telepathy,” Tiergan warned her. “We clearly also need to discuss the differences between our minds, and the minds of the other intelligent creatures. You’re very lucky you were spared the pain of the grusom-daj. Fitz, Biana, and Keefe weren’t so fortunate.”

  Sophie shut her eyes, wishing she could shut out the memory of her three friends collapsing in agony. “What’s a grusom-daj?”

  “An ogre mind trick,” Alden said quietly. “They’re not telepathic, but their minds can transmit a single high-pitched frequency that feels like a tuning fork is being rammed into our brain. You really couldn’t hear it?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Another gift from the Black Swan,” Tiergan murmured, and Sophie couldn’t tell if he thought that was good or bad. “Could you hear anything in his mind when you probed it?”

  “No, it was totally silent—and weirdly soft. I felt like I was trying to push my way though a fluffy blanket.”

  “Wait—his mind felt soft?” Tiergan asked.

  Sophie nodded. “Was it not supposed to?”

  “‘Supposed’ is the wrong word,” Alden said after an uncomfortably long pause. “It is different from what others have experienced—which is admittedly a very small number of elves. They described an ogre’s mind as a bed of needles. The fact that it felt soft to you suggests you might have come closer to breaching their defenses—which shouldn’t surprise us at this point, given all we’ve seen when it comes to your abilities. But it’s still interesting.”

  “Not interesting enough that we ever want you to try it again,” Tiergan clarified.

  “Indeed,” Alden agreed. “Trying to invade an ogre’s mind is like a fly trying to dance on a spider’s web. Nothing gets past their detection. Not even you.”

  Sophie shrank lower in her chair.

  “I still think King Dimitar was looking for something to cause a scene over,” Edaline said quietly.

  “Of course he was,” Sandor agreed. “That’s why he came here today. I’m sure the ogres know we found their homing device, and the best defense is always a strong offense. Then Sophie handed it to him on a silver platter.”

  He slashed the air with his blade and Sophie shrank even further, wishing the plush cushions could swallow her whole.

  Especially when Alden said, “This does tie the Council’s hands. They can’t accuse King Dimitar of not exercising enough control over his populace when one of our own just broke a fundamental rule—at a public ceremony, no less.”

  “So I made it worse,” Sophie mumbled miserably.

  “Sadly . . . yes,” Alden admitted. He took her hand, waiting for her to look at him. “I know you want to catch these Neverseen—and believe me, I do too. But we’re going to have to be patient. Our Council is incomplete. Our people are scared and divided. And now we have the ogres on high alert, ready for a fight. It is not the time for investigating leads and demanding answers about their involvement. It’s the time to focus on restoring peace. And you must work extra hard to prove to our world—and the Council—that you are not the out-of-control problem they fear. Then we can seek the justice that you, and Dex, and Prentice, and Kenric and anyone else the rebels have hurt, deserve. Okay?”

  Sophie nodded, even though she didn’t really have a choice.

  She’d messed up too huge this time. Nothing could change until it was fixed.

  That didn’t mean she was going to stop investigating, though. She’d just have to keep her focus on the Black Swan. Use the empty days to uncover their leak.

  “I guess I’d better get going,” Alden said, pulling Sophie close for a hug. “I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to help smooth over the Council before they decide on your punishment.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Tiergan told him, sounding anything but happy about it.

  Grady promised he’d join them soon, once he’d dealt with a few other things—and the edge to his voice left no doubt that Sophie had more punishments to come.

  Alden and Tiergan both gave her sympathetic smiles as they leaped away.

  “Let me guess,” Sophie said after another painful silence. “I’m grounded for the rest of eternity?”

  “I’m considering it,” Grady said, taking the place next to her on the couch now that Alden had vacated it. “But . . . I know your heart was in the right place—even if your brain had clearly gone on vacation for the afternoon.”

  The words were too true to be insulting.

  “Plus, I have no doubt that with Bronte on the Council, whatever punishment they settle on will be as miserable as possible. So I won’t add much to it. Only this: It’s time to brush Verdi’s teeth again, and I think that should be your job. And watch out—she spits.”

  Sophie cringed, but didn’t argue.

  Besides, after ogre spit, she doubted T. rex spit could be any worse.

  “Also, since you don’t have school right now, I’m going to make it your job to get my office clean and organized,” Edaline added. “You’re not done until every single thing is either cleared out or put away.”

  Sandor snorted. “You’re both far too soft. If she were my child, she’d be locked in her room for the rest of her life, for her own protection.”

  “That would definitely be easier,” Grady said, hugging Sophie so tightly she coughed. “But I’ll settle for the rest of the night, and a promise to keep the war starting to a minimum from now on? What do you say?”

  Sophie responded by tightening her hold.

  Edaline joined the hug, and Sophie lost track of how long they sat there clinging to one another. But by the time she let go, the sun was alread
y starting to set.

  She spent the rest of the night in her room, examining Jolie’s mirrored compact for clues, which turned out to be a more miserable punishment than anything Grady and Edaline could’ve given her.

  No matter which way she squinted at it, twisted it, or tried to use it, the mirrors never did anything except reflect two slightly different versions of herself—both of which looked like a girl who was far better at getting herself into trouble than she was at getting out of it.

  Which meant Fitz’s plan—whatever it was—was officially her only option at the moment.

  She hoped it was a good one.

  FORTY-FIVE

  I WASN’T SURE IF GRADY and Edaline would let me see you,” Fitz said as he settled on the flowered carpet of Sophie’s bedroom. “Aren’t you grounded?”

  “Surprisingly, no,” Sophie told him, resisting the urge to check her reflection and see how disastrous she looked. “But Grady always finds more interesting ways to punish me.”

  “Is that why you smell like T. rex breath?” Fitz asked, laughing when she blushed.

  She’d just finished brushing Verdi’s teeth when Fitz showed up, and she could still feel a slimy blob of dinosaur drool crawling down her back like a cold, sticky slug. It really wasn’t fair that Fitz got to look like a teen model in his tailored blue jerkin with gray pants and a gray satchel slung across his shoulders, while she got to look—and apparently smell—like The Thing A Dinosaur’s Been Chewing On.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you yesterday,” Sophie mumbled, crossing her arms, trying to hide the fang-size holes scattered along her tunic sleeves. “I know you tried to stop me.”

  “I probably should’ve tried harder. It just happened so fast. But I wasn’t going to let him take you. I’d transmitted to Keefe that if the ground started to open up I was going to tackle the king and he should grab you and leap you somewhere safe.”

  Sophie smiled, trying to imagine that. “What did Keefe say?”

  “That I was crazier than you, and that I couldn’t even tackle my little sister without getting pinned. But I told him I was still going to try. And I really thought I was going to have to. At least half of the Councillors were nodding along as King Dimitar was talking. If Lady Cadence hadn’t stepped in, I don’t know what would’ve happened.”

  “Really?” Sophie whispered.

  She knew she didn’t have the full support of the Council, but . . . half ?

  “Yeah. It was pretty scary.”

  “Seriously.”

  She pulled at the edges of one of the holes in her sleeve, stretching it wider. “You must think I’m a total idiot.”

  “Nah. I am starting to wonder if you’re trying to beat Keefe’s record for biggest interspeciesial episode—and if you are, I’m pretty sure you’ve won. The Great Gulon Incident was epic, but it didn’t almost spark a war.” His voice hitched on the last word. “I do get why you did it, though,” he added quietly. “And I’m guessing you didn’t learn anything?”

  “Only that I’ve made it even harder for the Council to investigate what’s going on with the ogres. Your dad said we’d have to wait until my punishment is delivered and things hopefully go back to normal.”

  Fitz sighed. “Well, my dad said the punishment wouldn’t be that severe.”

  “I hope he’s right. But it’s up to the Council, so . . .”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but Fitz must’ve guessed what she was thinking, because he asked, “Who do you think the new Councillor will be?”

  “I have no idea. Hopefully someone who likes me.”

  “Yeah. I was hoping for Sir Tiergan, but my dad said the ‘no kids’ rule applies to him, even though his son is adopted.”

  “Who does your dad think it will be?”

  “Master Leto from the Silver Tower. I guess he’s had the most nominations. Do you know him?”

  “Only a little. He’s kind of weird.” But he’d been nice to her the last few times she’d seen him, so he might be an okay choice. “Who are the other nominees?”

  “A bunch of ancient guys I’ve never met. Oh, and Lady Cadence. She’s kind of a long shot, considering how many years she’s been away. But after she smoothed things over yesterday, she got a lot of people nominating her.”

  She also seemed to despise Sophie, but, maybe she was getting over it. She had come to Sophie’s defense.

  Then again, she’d also talked quite a lot about Sophie being punished . . .

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” Fitz promised. “And in the meantime, I brought something to cheer you up. You have no idea how hard it was sneaking this out past Biana. She wanted to come with me today, but . . .”

  He opened his satchel and pulled out a fluffy red stuffed animal that reminded Sophie of a lizard, but with short fur and a bushy red-and-white tail.

  “Mr. Snuggles!”

  Fitz turned as red as his stuffed dragon.

  Especially when she said, “You didn’t tell me he was sparkly.”

  “Yeah. Um. Dragons have a sheen on their fur—plus Elwin picked him, not me.”

  “Sparkles also make everything better. Well, except alicorn poop.”

  “I don’t know. I think sparkly poop is way better than regular poop.”

  “That’s because you’ve never fallen into a pile of it.”

  “You’re right about that.” His smile faded. “You don’t think he’s stupid?”

  “Mr. Snuggles? He’s adorable. He might even be better than Ella.”

  They both turned to look at the bright blue elephant propped among the pillows on her bed.

  “Well, maybe it’s a tie,” Sophie decided.

  Fitz laughed and set Mr. Snuggles down next to him—with a quick pat to the head—before he reached into his bag again.

  “So, um, there was another reason I didn’t want Biana to come with me today too,” he said, pulling out a silver memory log with a jeweled Vacker crest on the cover. “I’ve been working on Tiergan’s assignment, recording everything I remember from the day of the fire. And it’s been taking a while, since you sent me a lot of star maps when were bottling the quintessence.”

  She’d forgotten about that. “I bet you can skip them. I doubt the Council’s going to need to see any of those. It’s all information they can find anywhere.”

  “I wasn’t sure, so I thought I’d try.” He opened the memory log, flipping through page after page of black sky and carefully labeled stars. “And I thought it was weird how clear the memories are. They’re so much more detailed than my usual projections.”

  He flipped to the beginning of the memory log, showing her a scene he’d recorded of a dark-haired girl. She looked like Biana, but the features of her face were slightly off. Her nose was too broad and her eyes were too far apart.

  “I recorded this in my telepathy session last year to test the accuracy of my memories. I was supposed to project an image of someone in my family and see how close it comes to the reality. Obviously I messed a few things up.”

  “It’s not perfect. But I still knew who it was.”

  “Exactly. And my Mentor said that’s normal for those of us without photographic memories. Our minds hold onto an overall impression, not an exact re-creation. Except for these.” He flipped to the star maps again. “In these, I remember every. Single. Star.”

  “Right. But I shared that memory with you, so I’m the one who remembered those details.”

  “But it would still be my memory of your memory—or it’s supposed to be. And I would never be able to remember it so perfectly. Not unless it came from you.”

  “But it did come from me.”

  “Yeah, but what I’m saying is, I think you sent it to me differently. If you’d transmitted it, the memory would’ve flashed through my mind just long enough for me to make my own record of it, whic
h wouldn’t have been as detailed. Only if you’d implanted it would the memory stay perfectly intact.”

  “Implanted?”

  The word made Sophie think of microchips and alien probes and needles poking through skin.

  “It’s where you stick the memory in someone’s mind—like shoving a book on someone else’s bookshelf, and leaving it there for them to reference later,” Fitz explained, which at least sounded less creepy than what she’d been imagining. Or it was until he said, “I’m sure that’s how the Black Swan put their secrets in your head. Otherwise you would’ve known the memories were there. You can implant something without the person ever really looking at it.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Sophie said slowly, her brain struggling to keep up. “So is implanting bad?”

  “Of course not. It’s just a super-hard skill only a few people can really pull off—but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised anymore. You can pretty much do anything.”

  He grinned at her, and Sophie wanted to take it as a compliment. But she wasn’t sure she liked that she’d done it without even realizing.

  “Did I implant anything else?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’ve been searching my mind for anything that seems sharper and more detailed than my other memories. And I found this.”

  He flipped over a few more pages and showed her an image of a formula so complex it might as well have been written in gibberish. Still, each number, line, and squiggle was exactly where it should be.

  “That’s how they make frissyn,” Sophie said, remembering when she’d projected the classified formula in her memory log a few months back. “Why would I have sent you that?”

  “Maybe it was on your mind, since that’s what we were gathering the quintessence for.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.” But the explanation sounded as empty as she felt. “Did you find anything else?”

  Fitz flipped through more pages, settling on another star map.

  Most of the stars weren’t labeled. But there were five dark splotches with names:

  Lucilliant

  Phosforien