She knew he had to be important because she had a blurry memory of him vanishing when she was five, years before Fitz found her and showed her she was an elf. And she could remember him wearing a blue bramble jersey, a game only elves played. It was also right around the time Mr. Forkle triggered her telepathy, so there had to be a connection.
But the Black Swan had torn the pages out of her journal and wiped the memory out of her mind, save for the few vague details she’d managed to recover.
“He stood right here,” she said, moving closer to the sycamore and running her fingers along a branch.
He must’ve been taller than she’d realized. Not really a boy at all. More like a teenager. And there was something else—a detail so close she could feel it prickling her consciousness. But no matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn’t reach it.
“Hey, no need to punish the innocent plant life,” Keefe said as she kicked the tree. “I’m sure the Black Swan will tell you everything soon.”
Sophie wished she could believe him. She’d thought the Black Swan would be working with her now, especially since she’d risked her life to let them heal her abilities. But two weeks had passed since she’d fled their hideout during the rebels’ attack, and she hadn’t heard a peep. Not a note. Not a clue. Not even the slightest sign that they were still watching her.
She turned to the pale blue house next door, where Mr. Forkle used to sit every day, looking bloated and wrinkled in his ruckleberry-induced disguise. He spent twelve years sitting in the middle of his lawn, playing with his silly gnomes, so he could keep an eye on her. Now all that was left were a few weathered figures, peeking through the weeds with their tiny, ugly faces.
“What are those supposed to be?” Keefe asked as he followed her over to the planter.
“Garden gnomes.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You should see what humans think elves look like. They give us bells on our shoes and pointy ears—though I guess they’re right about the ears.”
Sophie still wasn’t thrilled that her ears would grow points as she aged. But at least she wouldn’t have to worry about it for a few thousand years, thanks to the elves’ indefinite lifespan.
Keefe laughed as he squatted to get a closer look at the tiny statues with pointy hats. “Okay, I have to take one of these home. My agriculture Mentor will pee his pants.”
“Wait,” Sophie said as Keefe reached for a gnome that was sitting on a rainbow-colored mushroom. “What if it’s a clue?”
There was no rhyme or reason to the way the gnomes lined up, but something felt familiar about the arrangement. She let her eyes go out of focus, and as the shadows blended into a dark swirl, the memory slowly surfaced.
“Cygnus!”
“What’s a Cygnus?” Keefe asked as she dropped to her knees and started to dig in the planter.
“A constellation. Each gnome is one of the stars. We call them Aquello, Fuschaire, Rosine, Grisenna, Sapphilene, Scarletina, Nievello, Gildere, and Peacerre—but humans call them Cygnus.”
“Okay Miss I’ve-memorized-all-the-stars, no need to show off. And I still don’t see why you’re burrowing like a dwarf.”
“Because Cygnus means ‘swan,’” Sophie explained as she scooped out another handful of dirt. “And the constellation is made up of ten stars. But there are only nine gnomes. So I’m checking where the tenth star would be.”
Slimy mud squished under her nails, but Sophie kept digging. After another minute her fingertips brushed something cold and smooth.
“It’s . . . a bottle,” Keefe said as she unearthed a tiny green vial and wiped the crystal clean on the grass.
“And a note,” Sophie added, removing the stopper and tipping the bottle until a curl of paper slid free.
Keefe snatched the note before she could touch it. “Someone not covered in swamp sludge should read that.”
He had a point.
She wiped her hands on the grass as Keefe frowned at the note. “What?” she asked.
“You’re not going to like it.”
“I usually don’t.” The Black Swan could be annoyingly vague with their clues. But she was happy to have them back in touch. Or, she was until Keefe showed her the message.
Wait for instructions and stick to the plan.
“They could’ve at least made it rhyme again,” he said, stuffing the note back into the bottle. “And what plan?”
Sophie took the bottle and sniffed the nozzle, gagging at the familiar salty smell.
It was the same green bottle she’d drunk an entire ounce of limbium from—and almost died in the process, thanks to her allergy—so she’d be able to heal minds again.
“Prentice is the plan,” she told Keefe, rubbing the star-shaped scar on the back of her hand. Mr. Forkle had injected her with tweaked human medicine to stop the allergic reaction, and the needle wound had never gone away. “They’re telling me to wait until they decide it’s time to heal him.”
“Yeah, well I still think they could’ve rhymed. Wait for instructions and stick to the plan. Now get home safe as fast as you can!”
Sophie was too disappointed to laugh.
She definitely wanted to heal Prentice. But she didn’t want to wait.
Prentice had been a Keeper for the Black Swan, and thirteen years ago he’d let his mind get broken in a memory break to keep Sophie’s existence secret from the rest of the elves. She hated knowing he was locked in a tiny cell in Exile, moaning and drooling and waiting for her to pull him out of the darkness.
Plus, every day that passed increased the chance that Alden would shatter again. His guilt over his role in Prentice’s memory break had already broken his mind once—and even though Sophie had healed him, the only way to ensure his safety would be to bring Prentice back.
But the Councillors were still deciding if they were going to allow Prentice to be healed. And apparently the Black Swan were content to sit back and wait.
“Hey—how did they even know we’d come here?” Keefe asked as Sophie shoved the bottle into her pocket a little harder than she needed to. “I mean, they’ve pulled off some crazy things—but I doubt even they could guess you’d have trouble teleporting and accidentally bring us to your old house instead of your new one.”
“No,” Sophie agreed, hating that the only new note the Black Swan had given her probably wasn’t new at all. “They must’ve just assumed I’d come here eventually.”
Still, she had a more pressing problem to deal with than the Black Swan being stubborn—again.
Neither she nor Keefe were old enough to have their own pathfinders, so they’d have to get to a Leapmaster—a gadget made of leaping crystals—in order to leap to the Sanctuary.
“Do you have your home crystal with you?” she asked Keefe.
“Yeah. Why?”
“It’s not safe to teleport until I figure out what went wrong. It’s also not like there’s a cliff to jump off. And if we go back to Havenfield, Sandor will never let us leave—especially now that we can only leap outside the Sanctuary gates and wait to be let in.”
Keefe stared at his feet, looking about as unexcited by this idea as Sophie felt. His father definitely belonged on her list of People She Liked To Avoid.
“Silveny needs us,” she said, reminding herself as much as him.
“I know. But . . .”
“What?” she asked when he didn’t finish.
“I . . . don’t bring friends home.”
He fidgeted with the pin clasping his cape—the Sencen family crest. Two jeweled hands holding a candle with an emerald flame. His father had only given it to him a few weeks ago, even though most kids wore their family crest their whole lives.
“Okay,” Sophie said slowly. “I guess we’ll go back to Havenfield, then. If we run straight for the Leapmaster we might be able to get out of there before Sandor can stop us.”
“No, we won’t.”
Probably not. Sandor’s goblin supersenses wou
ld detect them the second they arrived.
“It’s still worth a try.” She dug out her home crystal—a pendant with a single facet—and held it up to the light.
Keefe glared at the beam refracting toward the ground. “This is stupid.”
He pulled out his own home crystal and created another light path.
Sophie didn’t have to be an Empath to feel the tension in his grip, or the way his fingers shook as they laced together with hers.
Her hands were shaking too.
But neither of them said anything as they stepped into the light. Then the warm, feathery rush pulled them both away.
THREE
WHOA,” SOPHIE WHISPERED AS SHE stared at the mansion looming over her.
Actually, mansion wasn’t the right word.
Skyscraper, maybe?
Though based on the squirmy feeling in her stomach, Ominous Tower of Doom might’ve been more appropriate.
“Yeah . . . my dad’s a ‘bigger is better’ kind of guy,” Keefe said as he led her through an iron archway with the word “Candleshade” laced into the design.
Sophie craned her neck, trying to guess how high the tower climbed. There had to be at least a hundred stories before the main building split into a series of narrow towers, each crowned with a curved golden roof that reminded Sophie of a flame. But there were no windows to count to tell her if she was right. The crystal walls were perfectly smooth, with no break except a single golden doorway, which was surprisingly small for such a massive place.
Keefe pressed his palm against the handle and the door swished open, gliding over the smooth black floor without so much as a hiss. The foyer they entered was empty except for a silver winding staircase that spiraled up and up and up some more, until Sophie lost sight of the twisting steps. The walls were just as smooth on the inside, but the crystal glowed with thousands of tiny blue flames tucked among the facets.
Balefire, Sophie realized.
Only a Pyrokinetic could spark a balefire flame, and pyrokinesis had been banned for millennia—ever since an accident that killed five people. But that wasn’t why Sophie was struck by seeing it.
Balefire had been Fintan’s trademark—until he moved on to Everblaze.
Before she could block it, Fintan’s face filled her mind, and not the angry, rebellious Fintan she’d seen in Exile, or the reckless Fintan surrounded by neon yellow flames she’d seen when she probed his memories.
The pained, haunted Fintan after the memory break she’d helped perform, rocking back and forth in his cell, his screams echoing off the walls as she and Alden left him to his madness . . .
“You okay?” Keefe asked, grabbing her arm to snap her out of the flashback.
“Of course.”
“You realize you can’t lie to an Empath, right?
“And yet you try it all the time,” a deep voice boomed from above.
The sound of the stairway spinning to life muffled Keefe’s groan, and a second later, Lord Cassius stepped off the stairs and into the foyer.
With their blond hair and ice blue eyes, the family resemblance between father and son was impossible to miss—though Keefe’s artfully mussed hairstyle and untucked shirt stood in sharp contrast to Lord Cassius’s immaculateness.
“Miss Foster,” he said, flicking an invisible speck off his hunter green cape. “We run into each other again.” He tilted his head, gazing at the blindingly high ceiling with obvious pride. “There’s no other place quite like this, is there? But I’m guessing you didn’t come here to marvel at the architecture—especially since you’re supposed to be at the Sanctuary. So tell me, to what do I owe the honor?”
Sophie glanced at Keefe, wishing he would jump in with one of his easy lies—but he was too busy staring at the floor like it contained the deepest secrets of the universe.
“We just . . . took a slight detour,” Sophie eventually said, avoiding Lord Cassius’s eyes.
He had a way of studying her like he could see straight through her—and maybe he could, because he cleared his throat and said, “Visiting a Forbidden City is more than a slight detour.”
When her jaw dropped, he laughed—a sharp, hollow sound.
“The hot waves of guilt wafting off you completely give you away,” he explained.
“You can feel that?” Keefe asked, sounding as stunned as Sophie felt.
Most Empaths could only read someone’s emotions if they were touching them. But for some reason—probably another side effect of her freaky, manipulated genes—Keefe could read Sophie’s from a distance. She’d hoped he was the only one who could, but apparently . . .
“You get your talent from me,” Lord Cassius reminded Keefe. “Though I’ll confess, female emotions are a bit harder to interpret. But that’s where simple deduction comes in. I assumed you wouldn’t miss your appointment at the Sanctuary without a very good reason. Pair that with your rather unique past, Miss Foster—and the reputations you both have for seeking out trouble—and it’s the most logical conclusion.”
It seemed like there were lots of other conclusions he could’ve come to.
Keefe must’ve agreed, because he stepped closer, touching his dad’s wrist. “That’s not how you knew.”
Lord Cassius pulled his hand away and patted the back of his already perfect hair. “Well, I was trying to spare our guest from witnessing an uncomfortable conversation. But if you must know, I have noticed that my blue pathfinder is missing.”
“And what? You think I took it?”
“Who else?”
Blue crystals were the only way to light leap to the Forbidden Cities, and they were restricted to specific members of the Nobility.
“It wasn’t me this time,” Keefe told him. “Check, if you don’t believe me.”
He held out his arm, daring his father to feel if he was lying.
Lord Cassius frowned. “How did you get to the Forbidden City, then?”
Keefe dropped his arm back to his side. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Actually, it does. I think you’re forgetting that your trip today was illegal—and I don’t mean that as a threat,” he added quickly, glancing at Sophie. “I’m sure you had your reasons, and that Sophie was careful while you were there. But if I’m going to keep this secret for you, I need to understand what I’m protecting.”
The smile he flashed came closer to reaching his eyes than any other smile Sophie had seen him give. But it wasn’t enough to make her trust him.
“You don’t have to keep it secret,” she said. “I’ll tell Alden the whole story the next time I see him.”
The sound of the whirring staircase drowned out Lord Cassius’s reply, and when it stopped a second later, Keefe’s mother swept into the room in a sleek dress and cape the same pale peach as her skin. Her tall, jeweled heels clacked on the dark floor and her blond hair was swept into a twisted updo—like she should be walking a red carpet, not standing in the empty first floor of her home.
“Why didn’t you tell me we had a visitor, Cassius?” she asked, clicking her tongue at her husband before turning to Sophie with a tight-looking smile. “I don’t think we were properly introduced before. I’m Lady Gisela.”
They hadn’t been “properly introduced” because they’d met at Alden’s sort-of-funeral, and Lady Gisela had been too busy sniping at her heartbroken son. But Sophie held her tongue, fumbling through an awkward curtsy as she said, “I’m Sophie.”
“Yes, I know. Even if you weren’t our world’s most infamous new citizen, my son talks about you all the time.”
“Not all the time,” Keefe muttered, going back to staring at the floor.
Sophie copied him.
“So are you staying with us for dinner?” Lady Gisela asked, “Or wait—I thought you two were supposed to be somewhere, doing . . . something.”
She tossed out the words like she couldn’t bother to remember the specifics.
“We are.” Keefe snatched Sophie’s wrist and pulled her toward the stairs. “
In fact, I’m sure they’re waiting for us at the Sanctuary, so we should get going.”
“Not like that, you won’t,” Lady Gisela said, blocking them. “Honestly, Keefe, what am I going to do with you?”
Sophie wished Keefe would snap back with one of his infamously snarky answers. Instead he froze, like he’d become a statue of The Most Miserable Boy on the Planet, as his mom smoothed his shirt and straightened his cape. He didn’t even flinch when she licked her thumb and wiped an invisible smudge off his face. But he came back to life when she reached for his head.
“Not the hair!”
“You and your ridiculous hair.” She reached for him again and he swatted her arm away. His hand barely touched her, but she still gasped and clutched her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she promised, glancing at Sophie.
But she was still rubbing her shoulder. And as she rearranged the peachy fabric of her cape, Sophie caught a glimpse of a red wound, near the top of her arm.
Lord Cassius stepped forward, blocking his wife from Sophie’s view. “You two should go. The Sanctuary is waiting.”
“Do you need to let them know we’ll be leaping outside, instead of teleporting in?” Keefe asked him.
“Actually, I think they were expecting that.”
“Why would they be—” Sophie started to ask, but Keefe dragged her onto the first stair.
“Ever been on a vortinator?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.” And she wished it didn’t sound so much like a carnival ride from her nightmares.
“Better hold on tight, then.” He grinned as she tightened her grip on his hand. “I meant to the railing.”
“Oh.”
Her face felt like it was on fire, and she’d barely grabbed the silver banister, when Keefe said, “Two Hundred!” Then everything turned into a spinning, sparkling blur of rushing air, and Sophie wanted to scream or throw up or pass out, but she didn’t have time for anything because they’d already stopped.
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