Everblaze

by Shannon Messenger

  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 already 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 tho
se 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, which 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

  Marquiseire

  Candesia

  Elementine

  “But . . . these are the unmapped stars . . . ,” Sophie mumbled, holding the image closer to make sure she was seeing it correctly.

  “That’s what I thought. Weird that there’s a map of the unmapped stars, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t know these stars. I mean . . . I do now that I’m looking at them. But I didn’t know that I knew them, you know? Not until I read them.”

  “Isn’t that how it always is when a memory gets triggered for you?” Fitz asked.

  “It is. But how could I implant a memory before I even remembered it?”

  “I don’t know. I figured you must’ve remembered it, since you knew how to find Elementine. Maybe this is where your brain pulled that information from without you realizing. So it would be like you knew it, but you didn’t know you knew it, you know?”

  Sophie wasn’t entirely sure if that sentence even made sense.

  But how could she argue with what was right in front of her eyes.

  “Was this it? Was that the only other memory I implanted?”

  “I’m still searching, so there could be more. But I definitely found one other.”

  He flipped through the pages again, stopping on a scene of a round window with black iron bars crisscrossed over it.

  “Can you read that?” Fitz asked, pointing to a square sign hanging from a nearby lamppost, right under a red circle with a wide white line.

  “It says ‘except authorized,’” Sophie told him, surprised Fitz had to ask.

  She studied the letters again, feeling her stomach tighten when she realized they actually said “eccetto autorizzati.” Which did mean the same thing.

  In Italian.

  “This is in the Forbidden Cities!” Sophie practically shouted, grabbing the journal to get a better look.

  “I figured it had to be,” Fitz agreed. “But it’s not from any of my memories, so you must’ve implanted it.”

  He was right—the memory was too sharp and clear.

  “But I don’t remember it either.”

  She also couldn’t find any other memories to connect it to, or any reason why she would’ve been thinking about a window—in Italy—during the middle of a deadly fire.

  And why would the Black Swan bother implanting the stupid window in her head in the first place?

  Then she noticed the dark stain discoloring the yellow stones around the window.

  She’d thought it was just wear and weathering. But the perfectly curved shape was unmistakable.

  The sign of the swan.

  FORTY-SIX

  WHERE IS THIS?” SOPHIE ASKED, flipping the page like it would somehow show her more of the scene.

  “I was hoping you would know,” Fitz admitted. “Seeing the memory again doesn’t trigger anything?”

  Sophie closed her eyes, willing her brain to pull the pieces together.

  “I’m not getting anything.”

  “Well, then I guess I don’t have a plan after all. I figured we’d go there and see what we can learn about the Black Swan. But that’s kind of hard to do if we don’t know where it is.”

  “And who knows if it’s even safe? Remember, last time Keefe and I tracked down one of their hideouts, there was an ambush waiting for us.” She slammed the memory log harder than she needed to. “It’s all such a mess. I can’t trust the Black Swan, and now the Council hates me and the ogres are out to get me and Eternalia is gone and Kenric . . .”

  Just saying his name ripped the hole inside her a little wider.

  “Here,” Fitz said, handing her Mr. Snuggles.

  He waved it under her nose until she took it, and she had to admit, hugging the super soft dragon did help.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “No need to apologize. If anyone deserves to freak out, it’s you. I seriously don’t know how you deal with it all.” He grabbed the memory log and flipped back to the Italian window, turning it round and round, like seeing it upside down would magically tell them which one of the dozens of cities in Italy they were supposed to go to.

  “I still feel like this is the answer,” he said quietly. “I mean, something had to trigger this, right? Your mind wouldn’t have just pulled up some random memory, would it?”

  “Who knows anymore?”

  Her sulky tone made her realize how pouty she was being.

  She took the memory log back and stared at the sign of the swan.

  It was clever the way they’d hidden it—glaringly obvious now that she knew where to look, but perfectly camouflaged to everyone else.

  She tried to think of any famous landmarks it could be a part of, but nothing seemed to fit. Sometimes she really missed the Internet. She doubted the answer was as easy as searching “round windows in Italy.” But it had worked in Paris when she was with Dex.

  “Why would they give me an image of one of their bases? And what would’ve triggered me to think of it?” she asked.

  She’d hardly been thinking about windows or Italy—or even the Black Swan—when she was racing to collect enough quintessence to save Eternalia.

  She was so terrified she could barely think straight.

  “Maybe that’s it,” she said slowly, trying to let the idea settle before she fed it any hope. “Maybe it was fear—like a panic switch.”

  She sometimes wondered how the Black Swan could send her into such dangerous situati
ons and not seem to care what happened to her. Maybe they’d stacked her memories in a way to make her remember how to find them if she ever really needed them.

  “Why didn’t it happen the other times you’ve been in danger, then?” Fitz asked. “It’s not like you haven’t almost died a few billion times.”

  “True.”

  Plus, she hadn’t been that scared when she was with Fitz on the beach. She’d actually felt almost . . . safe. They were away from the fire, and she wasn’t alone, and Fitz was helping her and—

  “What if it was trust?” Sophie asked, sitting up straighter. “Sir Tiergan said it was our most powerful asset. And it helped me let you into my head once.”

  “That’s true! And,”—he took the memory log and turned to a blank page—“that would be awesome, because then we should be able to re-create it!”

  “Re-create what?”

  “Whatever you did to dig up that memory. We do exactly what we did that night, and hope it helps your mind dig up the missing pieces.” He stood, offering her a hand to pull her up. “How were we standing? You were behind me, right?”

  “Yeah,” Sophie said, blushing as she remembered how close they’d been.

  Somehow she managed to make her legs drag her toward him, wishing for the fiftieth time that she’d had a chance to wash away the dino drool first.

  “No—you were closer than that,” he told her. “I remember feeling more heat—body heat,” he corrected, like that somehow made it less embarrassing. “It was really cold, remember?”

  Sophie had been trying not to relive even a second of that horrible night. But if she was going to make this work, she had to take her mind back.

  She pictured the beach.

  The vibrant, glowing waves.

  The freezing ocean breeze.

  Her arms were so weary from holding the heavy stellarscope that she’d leaned on Fitz, clinging to him like he was all she had left.

  “Yeah, it was more like that,” Fitz said, making her realize she’d started to lean on him again.