When he didn’t elaborate, Sophie explained about the aromark they’d found on Keefe’s hands and how the Neverseen kept finding them. Grady’s expression turned murderous.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Keefe reminded him. “We need him to lead us to the others first.”
“Right,” Grady said, running his hands down his face. “You can’t crush the first ant you find. You have to wait for the queen. So I will keep your secret—for now. But I will have goblins on standby near Candleshade in case things don’t go as planned. And you two need to tell your father,” he told Fitz and Biana. “I’m sure he will see the logic behind the Black Swan’s strategy—especially with the Council’s current uselessness. But he should know what his children are doing, and have the chance to make adjustments to keep you safe. Okay?”
They glanced at each other before they both nodded.
“Good. I’m going to make a few adjustments of my own,” Grady added. “First—Sandor’s coming with you.”
Sandor frowned. “But Miss Foster—”
“Will be perfectly safe right here,” Grady interrupted. “You should be with everyone on that mountain. And I should mention that this is the only way I’ll agree to this plan. Otherwise I will find a way to stop you.”
Keefe shrugged. “It’s fine with me, so long as Gigantor’s cool with it.”
Sandor surprised him by bowing his head. “It would be my honor, Mr. Sencen.”
“Ugh—can we stick with ‘Keefe’? I’m not exactly a fan of that name right now.”
Sandor nodded.
“Then I guess that settles that,” Keefe said, holding out his hands to Fitz and Biana. “I’ll need your scrolls. It says to destroy them.”
“I can do that,” Grady said, removing a silver flint from his pocket.
He lit the scrolls with a purple flame, letting the fire crawl over the paper like glowing moss, until there was nothing but a pile of ash.
“By the way, Keefe,” Grady said, dusting the ash off his fingers. “I’m sorry your father is caught up in this. I’m hoping there’s been a mistake. But if not, I want you to know that you can come to me with anything. Same goes for all of you,” he told Fitz and Biana. “We have enough fighting against us at the moment. If we’re going to survive the coming days, we’re going to have to trust one another and work together. Can we do that?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good. Then let’s all have another piece of mallowmelt. I have a feeling this will be our last peaceful meal for a few days.”
SIXTY-ONE
SOPHIE RESISTED THE SLUMBERBERRY TEA before bed, and without it—and without a way to reach Silveny—she found sleep impossible. She finally crawled out of bed and spent the rest of the night curled up on the floor near her window, staring at the stars.
They looked different, now that she’d seen how deadly their fire could be.
She wondered if the Council felt the same. Did they stay awake all night, regretting holding Fintan’s healing in a room with a glass ceiling?
They should.
So why had they chosen that tower?
Did they fear some sort of rescue by the dwarves who’d gone missing if they kept him underground?
Or was there a darker, more sinister reason?
Doubt was such a curious thing. Like lenses over her eyes, it blurred the lines between shadow and light, making everything murky and gray. Anything could mean anything. Or it could simply mean nothing at all.
She knew only that the Council was capable of cold, unkind things, and now she was powerless to do anything about it.
Or was she?
She wasn’t ready to face Foxfire yet, and when she checked Grady’s office she found a runic dictionary thicker than her head. Her arms ached as she pulled it down and carried the heavy volume to her room, but it was worth the strain. Whatever code Jolie used in her journal had to have a pattern or a key. If she could figure out how it worked, she would be able to translate the pages.
Her circlet slowed her progress. Every few lines her concentration started to stray—and she was fairly certain her photographic memory wasn’t working with the precision she was used to. But it felt good to do something productive. Even if it didn’t seem to be helping.
Whenever she compared Jolie’s markings against the runic alphabets in the dictionary, she couldn’t find a match. In fact, the more she studied them, the more the writing looked unnatural—like Jolie had tried to copy something she’d been looking at, and sometimes her hand had failed her. Marks were scribbled on top of themselves, and many of the lines were bunched so close together that Sophie couldn’t tell which rune they were connected to.
And yet, the whole mess still felt familiar.
Her eyes were starting to blur when Sandor announced that she had a visitor, and Dex shuffled nervously into her room.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d see me,” he mumbled.
“I thought you were Fitz.”
She knew she was being cruel, but she couldn’t stop herself.
Dex didn’t rise to her bait. He just stared at the carpet, looking so sad and lost she had to tell him, “Sorry.”
When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. “I’ll take it off right now, Sophie. I don’t care if they exile me.”
“Yes you do. And you know it won’t be just you. I can’t let that happen.”
“Then what should I do? Want me to wear one too? I will. I already started building it.”
He reached into his Foxfire satchel and pulled out a dull metal circlet with a spikey pattern instead of swirls.
Sophie grabbed it from him and ran over to Sandor, who crushed it into a ball of mangled metal with his giant goblin hands.
“I know what you can do,” Sophie said as she took the ruined circlet and handed it back to Dex. “You can never build another one—and stop making weapons for the Council!”
“I already did. I told them I wouldn’t build them another thing.”
“What did they say?”
He stared at the crushed ball, tracing his fingers over the individual bits of metal, like they were itching to repair it. “That they need my help to track down the Black Swan. And that even though things have calmed down with King Dimitar, that we still should be prepared from now on. They told me I could have some time to reconsider. But I won’t. I don’t trust them anymore. I never really did. I just . . .” He sighed, shoving the ball of scrap into his satchel. “I just liked that I mattered, you know? All my life I’ve been treated like a waste of a birth fund. And then suddenly I had Councillors visiting my house to talk to me, telling me how amazingly talented I was. And I wanted to impress them. I know that’s no excuse. But I was just trying to make the Dizznee name something people respected. So the triplets wouldn’t have to go though what I went through.”
Sophie sighed. “I know, Dex. I do understand. And I don’t want to be mad at you. But I am. And I probably will be for a while. Can you give me some time?”
He nodded sadly.
“But can I have one favor?” he asked. “No, favor isn’t the right word. I know I don’t deserve a favor.” He stepped closer, pointing to her bare finger. “I totally get why you took your panic switch off—and I know the last thing you want to do is call for me. But . . . what if the rebels come after you again? You can’t inflict or call anyone telepathically or teleport away, and I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened.”
“She has me,” Sandor reminded him.
“I know. But please, Sophie. Let me do something to keep you safe.”
His eyes glistened with tears, and Sophie felt her eyes burn too.
Dex was the boy who’d tackled the kidnappers so she could try to get away. He’d suffered in silence as they burned him over and over because he didn’t want them to do it to her. He was her first friend—her best friend—and he just wanted to keep her safe.
So even though she was still angry with him, she dug out his ring and slipped it on her finger—and
she stuffed her iPod back into her pocket, too.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, turning away and wiping his eyes. “And remember, if you need anything, all you have to do is press the center stone and it will call for me.”
Sophie nodded.
She had no intention of ever using the button. But it was nice to have Dex back on her side.
He left her then, and she went back to the mind-numbing task of studying runes. She’d only made it through a few more pages when Edaline peeked her head through the doorway, letting her know she had another visitor waiting for her in the living room.
She expected to find Fitz, Keefe, or Biana with news of the Black Swan. Instead, she found Magnate Leto standing under the crystal chandelier. He looked strange in his orange cape and tunic. Less intimidating than the silver clothes he used to wear as Beacon. Or maybe she just trusted him now.
“I can’t stay long, I’m afraid,” he told her as she offered him a seat on the couch. “I have a number of things still to arrange. But I wanted to stop by when I saw you were absent again today—and not to pressure you. I understand you might need further time to adjust. However, your sessions are waiting for you whenever you’re ready to return. All of them.”
“Even my ability sessions?” Sophie asked.
“Of course.”
“But . . . doesn’t this”—she pointed to her circlet—“make them kind of impossible?”
“Ah, I was under the impression that nothing was impossible.” He tapped his lips, making it clear her secret was safe. “But even if I’m mistaken in that regard,” he added, “all of your Mentors still see value in your sessions. I know Tiergan is very much looking forward to ensuring your thorough understanding of the rules of telepathy.”
“What about Bronte and Lady Cadence?” Sophie had to ask.
“Lady Cadence assures me that there are tricks for successful mimicking that go beyond simply being a Polyglot. And Councillor Bronte actually came to me, insisting your session not be cancelled. I almost didn’t allow it, given his role in your current predicament. But I told him I would leave the decision up to you. So he asked me to give you a message. Repeated it four times to ensure I remembered it.”
Magnate Leto’s eye roll told her how he felt about that.
“He said, ‘It takes a special person to see darkness inside of someone and not condemn them.’ Any idea what he means?”
“Not really,” Sophie admitted.
Unless Bronte was referring to their rather dramatic last session.
But she had condemned him. She’d been ready to have Keefe go lie detector on him to find out if he was the leak in the Council. Good thing they hadn’t done that. Now Bronte was one of the only Councillors still on her side—even if she did still think he was hiding something.
“Was that his whole message?” she asked.
“No, there was one other part. He said, ‘Inflicting comes from the heart, not the head.’”
“Wait. Does that mean he thinks I can still—”
Magnate Leto smiled. “So should I assume you’ll leave your schedule as is?”
“I guess,” Sophie mumbled, hardly believing that she was voluntarily keeping her session with Bronte.
But the thought of taking the ability back sent prickles of hope flaring in the back of her mind, clearing some of the clouds choking her concentration. Especially when Magnate Leto squeezed her shoulder and told her, “Take the time you need to adjust to your new situation. But know that Foxfire is waiting for you. We need our star prodigy back.”
“I’m not a star,” she told him as he pulled a slender pathfinder from his sleeve.
“That’s not what I’ve seen. I have it on good authority that nothing can stop you from being who we need you to be.”
Then he was gone, leaving her with renewed energy as she returned to her room and focused on Jolie’s journal.
Her thoughts were still slower, and her headache couldn’t dull completely. But this time she felt confidence—and the confidence made her realize she was on the wrong track completely.
Jolie had wanted the Black Swan to have this journal, otherwise “swan song” wouldn’t have been part of the key. So she had to have left a clue to tell them how to read it. And the clue had to be hidden in the only runes written in the Black Swan’s cipher.
“Reflections,” Sophie whispered, tracing her fingers over the careful lines and squiggles.
What was Jolie trying to tell her? To reflect on something inside the journal?
But how could she do that if she couldn’t even read it? What would she use to . . .
Sophie dropped the journal, not sure if she wanted to kick herself or jump up and down.
She decided to see if she was right before she made her decision.
She’d been reading the title like it meant “musings” or “observations.” But what if Jolie meant it much more literally?
“Please please please,” Sophie whispered, holding the human mirror in Jolie’s blue compact up to the first page.
If Sophie was right, the letters should inverse in the reflection and . . .
She had one second to celebrate as the squiggly lines morphed into words she could finally understand.
Then she read the first sentence.
If you found this journal, it’s too late to stop him.
SIXTY-TWO
WHO?” SOPHIE SHOUTED AS SHE squinted at the page.
Jolie didn’t seem ready to tell her.
In fact, the first sentence must have been added later, because after that it switched to an account of why Jolie had joined the Black Swan in the first place.
Translating the runes was tedious, and forced Sophie to work at a glacial pace. Jolie must’ve been copying down a reflection of an original entry, and her writing was sloppy and nearly impossible to read. Still, when Sophie took it one letter at a time, she was able to piece together the words to Jolie’s story.
Prentice had recruited her for the Black Swan toward the end of her first year in the elite. He’d been the Beacon of the Golden Tower, and overheard her tell a friend that the old ways didn’t apply to the present day. She’d meant it in regards to matchmaking, but Prentice had spent the next weeks revealing why she should apply it to the entire Council.
At first she’d resisted such traitorous statements, but then he’d shown her a scroll written in an ogre’s hand. The message made it clear that some sort of information exchange had been occurring between the ogres and a small band of elves. But when Prentice had shown it to the Council, the matter had been ruled a “misunderstanding” and dismissed without investigation. Same with several other disturbing bits of intelligence the Black Swan had uncovered. Which was why they’d formed their organization. Someone needed to start acting, before it was too late.
Still, Jolie refused his offer, arguing that her life was complicated enough already. But they wouldn’t let her walk away. Strangers would bump into her in the halls, whispering things like “The fall is never seen before the rising” and “The bold and brave are never seen.” Later she’d find bits of paper shoved into her pockets with times and dates for her to meet.
She never went, and eventually confronted Prentice, demanding the Black Swan leave her alone. But the Black Swan had nothing to do with those messages.
The rebels were trying to recruit her too.
That was when she decided to join them as a double agent.
Prentice warned her it was too dangerous, but Jolie refused to be persuaded. She swore fealty to the Black Swan and trained in their basic methods. But the next time she found a note shoved into her pocket, she followed the instructions to find the rebels.
The next three pages were a detailed account of all the different notes and clues and hoops the rebels made Jolie jump through, trying to decide if they could trust her. She’d been to more than a dozen of their “meetings”—which were nothing more than her finding another note they’d left her—before she even learned they called themselves th
e Neverseen. And for months after, they continued to live up to the name.
She’d find random messages, or hear whispers—but never meet an actual member. She was starting to think the whole thing was just shadows and games when—
“Hey, Sophie?” Edaline asked, nearly giving Sophie a heart attack.
She gave a small smile as she set a bowl of pink soup and a plate of black-and-white speckled cubes on the floor next to Sophie. “Looks like you found a way to translate that.”
Sophie nodded. “I’m writing a version you can read when I’m finished—not that I’m learning much.”
Fascinating as Jolie’s history was, she hadn’t given any actual answers. And it wasn’t like Sophie could skim ahead. The confusing runes made it way too easy to miss something crucial.
“What is this stuff?” Sophie asked, pushing the slimy cubes around the plate.
“They’re not the best tasting, I’ll admit,” Edaline warned her. “I tried some as I was slicing them and they’re rather sour. It’s a fruit called clarifava. The gnomes gave it to me, because it’s supposed to help the body resist the influence of technology. Honestly, I have no idea how that works. But I know that gnomes believe anything beyond nature is corrupting. And when they heard about your circlet they insisted you eat a serving every night. Claimed it would clear your head and sharpen your body’s defenses. So I thought I’d leave it up to you if you wanted to try it.”
“It can’t hurt, right?” Sophie decided—though she regretted the decision when the first bite zinged the glands near her ears.
“Rather sour” was a bit of an understatement.
Still, she forced herself to finish the plate, and by the time she’d choked it all down, she did feel a little better. It could’ve been the placebo effect, but her headache seemed like it had dulled around the edges.
“I actually think it helped,” she said, shoving aside her soup so she could get back to work. “Can you thank the gnomes for me the next time you see them?”
Edaline pushed her soup back to her. “I will. But you still have to eat some actual dinner, Sophie. The journal can wait ten more minutes.”
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