Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 3)

by Shannon Messenger

  “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.

  “You with me, Foster?” Keefe asked as she leaned against the rail, wondering if her stomach was still on the ground floor.

  “Do you really ride that thing every day?”

  “You get used to it after a couple of turns. Come on.” He offered her his hand, and Sophie was too dizzy not to take it.

  It took ten deep breaths for her head to clear enough to realize they were in one of the golden-roofed towers. Dangling above them were more round crystals than Sophie had ever seen.

  “The Leapmaster 10,000,” Keefe explained.

  Sophie couldn’t even think of ten thousand places she’d want to go.

  But there was one she was definitely ready to see.

  “The Sanctuary,” Keefe said, making the Leapmaster rotate. A single crystal dropped low enough to catch the sunlight from the window. “Okay, let’s try this again.”

  FOUR

  THE WARM, RACING LIGHT DROPPED them at the base of the Himalayas, and Keefe pulled his cape tighter around his shoulders.

  “Couldn’t they have picked a warmer mountain range to build this place?” he grumbled as they trudged up the snow-covered path to the Sanctuary.

  “I’m pretty sure they needed as much room as possible,” Sophie reminded him.

  The Sanctuary housed all of the creatures that the elves had taken into protective custody—everything from dinosaurs to dodo birds, plus any animal that humans foolishly believed was “magical.” They even kept endangered species, wanting to make sure they continued to thrive.

  The elves believed every creature existed on the planet for a reason, and to allow even one to go extinct would cause irreparable damage to the delicate balance of their world.

  An icy blast of wind cut through Sophie’s tunic, making her wish she’d worn a cape. She always felt dumb wearing them—but braving the snow without a cloak was definitely dumber.

  She also wished she’d taken Dex’s offer a few months back, and let him teach her how to regulate her body temperature.

  “Here,” Keefe said, draping his cape over her shoulders.

  “I’m f-f-fine. You d-d-don’t h-h-have t-t-to—”

  “That would be a lot more convincing without all the shivering,” he interrupted. “Besides, it takes more than a little snow to get to me.” He flashed a smug smirk, but she could see he was already shivering.

  “You don’t know how to regulate your body temperature either?” she asked, feeling her voice steady as Keefe fastened the warm cape under her chin.

  “Eh, that only works when it’s sorta cold, not freezing. But no, I’ve never learned. That’s the kind of random skill you only learn in Exillium.”

  The name caused a whole different kind of shudder.

  Exillium was a school the Council had threatened to send Sophie to if she couldn’t hack it at Foxfire. She didn’t know anything about it, except that people kept telling her she didn’t want to go there.

  “Why does Dex know how to regulate his temperature, then?” Sophie asked. The only school he’d ever attended was Foxfire.

  Keefe laughed. “Are you really surprised his family would teach him something weird?”

  “Good point.”

  Dex’s parents were known for playing by their own rules and not following social conventions. His dad had even admitted that he designed their store, Slurps and Burps, to be intentionally bizarre and chaotic, just to make the stuffy nobles—as he liked to call them—squirm while they shopped for their elixirs.

  Keefe shivered again, his whole body shaking, and Sophie tried to hand him back his cape.

  “Nope. You deserve it, Foster,” he insisted. “You have saved my life a few times, after all.”

  “Only once,” Sophie corrected.

  “Yeah, well you also saved the whole world from the Everblaze, so that counts too. Plus I’ll face the wrath of Gigantor if I let you freeze to death, remember?”

  “Well, thanks,” she mumbled as he pulled the hood up over her head, warming her icy ears.

  He held her gaze for a second too long before he backed away and shrugged. “Just don’t lose the Sencen crest. My father will strangle me.”

  He clearly meant it as a joke—but it reminded Sophie of his mother’s bruise.

  And the way she’d tried to hide it.

  And the way Lord Cassius had rushed them out of there after she saw it. . . .

  “So,” she said, not quite sure how to broach the subject as they went back to trudging through the snow. “Everything’s okay at your house, right?”

  “Um, if you leave out my father’s constant lectures on how I’m ‘not living up to my potential,’ then yeah. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  “Psh—there’s always a reason with you, Foster. Spill it.”

  Sophie tugged out a snow-covered eyelash, wishing for a little extra courage as she flicked it away. “Just . . . your dad doesn’t ever . . .”

  Keefe stopped walking. “Ever what?”

  Sophie sighed.

  This was so much harder than it seemed on television.

  “When your dad gets angry, does he ever . . . hurt anyone?”

  The last words came out as a whisper.

  Keefe laughed, but his smile quickly faded. “Wait, you’re serious? Wow, uh, I know my dad has the whole stern and scary thing going for him, but still—that’s crazy.”

  “So that’s a no, then?” she asked, needing to hear him say it.

  “Yeah, definitely a no. You really thought . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. Your mom had a red wound on her shoulder—”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah. And your dad looked like he didn’t want me to see it.”

  Keefe frowned. “Well, I have no idea what that was about. But it’s not what you’re thinking. People don’t do that around here. Remember, that whole guilt-shattering-our-sanity thing? That goes for violence, too.”

  The elves did seem to be incredibly peaceful. They didn’t even have police.

  And yet, Sophie could still remember the searing pain as her kidnapper burned her wrists, trying to force her to answer his questions. She could still see the dead look in Dex’s eyes as the rebels blasted him with a paralyzing melder over and over. She could still hear the crunch of Silveny’s wing breaking when the rebels dragged her out of the sky, right before they broke several of Keefe’s ribs in a fight.

  Either elves were capable of more than they realized, or the rebels were insane.

  She didn’t know which would be worse.

  “Okay. Well. Sorry,” she said quietly. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  “No need to apologize. It’s nice to know the Mysterious Miss F. cares.”

  Neither of them seemed to know what to say after that, so they walked in uncomfortable silence as their flat shoes crunch crunch crunched through the snow.

  “I don’t understand how humans haven’t found this place,” Sophie said when they reached the towering silver gates set into the mountain. But then she spotted the round black Obscurers scattered among the various rocky outcroppings.

  “Careful,” Keefe warned, pointing at a bunch of silver forklike gadgets that were stabbed into the ground next to some of the rocks. “Those are effluxers. Step too close, and they’ll make you stink like you’ve been hanging around a pack of gulons. My dad set one off while the gnomes were installing them, and when he got
home I could smell him all the way on the hundred-and-eighty-seventh floor. I guess the smell damages ogres’ sinuses or something.”

  “Ogres?” Sophie asked, taking a giant step away from the stinky gadgets.

  “Yep. One of the goblin patrols found some weird footprints a few nights ago, and thought they might be from ogres. They couldn’t tell for sure, because the tracks had no scent, and by the time Alvar got here—”

  “Fitz’s brother?” Sophie interrupted.

  “Yeah. He’s been working with the ogres for a few years, so my dad figured he’d be able to tell if they were involved. But by the time he got there, it had snowed, and the tracks were gone. So the Council had the effluxers installed, just in case.”

  “Okay,” Sophie said slowly. “But . . . I thought we had a treaty with the ogres.”

  “We do—but that doesn’t mean we trust them. Look at what happened with humans.”

  Throughout the centuries, the elves had signed treaties with all of the “intelligent” creatures, trying to ensure peace. But humans decided they wanted to rule the world, and in order to prevent a war, the elves chose to disappear. They still watched from the shadows, finding subtle ways to share their wisdom when they could. But the humans continued their path of violence and destruction, and eventually the elves had to cut off contact completely.

  And yet, the Black Swan broke every law—risking their sanity and their lives—specifically so they could hide Sophie among humans. She still didn’t understand why.

  “Why would the ogres care about the Sanctuary?” she asked, studying the massive gates.

  “Uh, hello? Silveny’s in there. Remember the whole Timeline to Extinction thing?”

  She did. The elves had been searching for a female alicorn for decades, desperate to breed her with the only alicorn they’d ever found, a male already at the Sanctuary. If they couldn’t start repopulating the species soon, alicorns would be the first creatures to go extinct.

  But Sophie still didn’t see why ogres would care about a couple of sparkly flying horses. Grady had told her once that ogres didn’t value animals’ lives the way elves did.

  What else would’ve made the footprints, though?

  “Do we need to knock or something?” she asked, ready to get to the other—much safer—side of the gates.

  “I’m sure they’re scanning our registry pendants right now, to make sure we have the right clearance.”

  Sophie’s hand darted to her neck, her fingers closing around a triangular crystal hanging from her choker. The Council had added extra chains to hers, after the kidnappers cut her first pendant off. But she still liked to double-check that it was there.

  “Finally,” Keefe said as a loud clang echoed off the mountains.

  The ground shook when the silver gates swung apart, and a blast of warmth prickled Sophie’s skin as she followed Keefe into the sunny paradise.

  She knew she was walking deep into a mountain range, but she had a hard time believing it as she stared at the lush meadows and forests of flowering trees that seemed to stretch on forever. The sky was a perfect cerulean blue—though it shifted with every step, flashing through the colors of the spectrum as if they were walking inside a rainbow—and the air had a crisp sweetness, like biting into an apple.

  “How much of this is real?” she asked, rubbing her eyes, half expecting it to disappear.

  “The sky is an illusion. And they hid the walls to make the space feel bigger. But everything else is real.”

  “How did they—”

  “You’re late,” a tall, skinny elf interrupted as he stepped out of a clump of bushes. His chocolate brown tunic was covered in bright green patches, and his thick black hair hung in long tangles. “Do you have any idea how much trouble that’s caused me?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Sophie mumbled, avoiding his piercing blue eyes.

  He laughed—a bitter sound that felt sharp in her ears. “I am many things, Miss Foster, but I am definitely not a ‘sir’. You may call me Jurek. I’m the equestrian caretaker for the Sanctuary. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

  Sophie glanced at Keefe, but he looked as confused as her. “Right?”

  Jurek pulled a lumpy satchel out of one of the bushes and slung it over his shoulder, motioning for Sophie and Keefe to follow him. “You couldn’t teleport here, could you?”

  “Uh, no,” she admitted. “How did you know?”

  He smiled. “Tell me this: If you could teleport into the Sanctuary, why have the alicorns never teleported out?”

  That . . . was a very good question.

  She squinted at the rainbow sky, which wasn’t really a sky at all. “Is it the mountains?”

  “That’d be my guess. Keeps light leapers away—why not Teleporters? But then what do I know? I’m not the one with the fancy abilities and the strange eyes.”

  “Well, you clearly knew more than me,” she said, ignoring the insult. She was getting used to being the only brown-eyed elf.

  “So wait, she can’t teleport through anything solid?” Keefe asked, frowning when Jurek and Sophie both nodded. “Dang—that’s going to kill a bunch of my plans. But don’t worry, Foster, there’s still plenty of ways we can cause trouble.”

  He nudged Sophie, but she couldn’t return his smile.

  She’d liked knowing that if the Council didn’t give permission to heal Prentice, she could teleport to Exile on her own. But the isolated prison was buried deep in the center of the earth, so if she couldn’t teleport through anything solid, there was no way she could reach it on her own.

  “Whoa, hang on a minute,” Keefe said, stepping in front of Jurek to block his path. “You didn’t think it might be a good idea to be like, ‘Hey guys, that teleporting to the Sanctuary thing might not work out so well. You could get trapped in that creepy black voidy place’?”

  “Actually, I told her father—who informed me that as a Talentless, it’s my job to tend to the animals and prepare for visitors, not to pretend to know things about special abilities.”

  Sophie cringed.

  Elves without special abilities were just as wealthy as other elves, and supposedly they were still equals. But they also didn’t qualify for the elite levels at Foxfire, couldn’t become members of the Nobility, and wore different clothes for their jobs in “working class” cities. And sometimes it seemed like people saw them as lesser.

  But that mostly happened with jerks like Vika, Timkin, and Stina Heks, a family who loved to think they were better than everyone. Sophie hated to think that Grady was like that too.

  “Grady really said that?” she asked quietly.

  “Who’s Grady?”

  “My father.” She was surprised at how easily the word rolled off her tongue. Grady and Edaline had only adopted Sophie about three months earlier—after a rocky process—and she still didn’t quite feel comfortable calling them Mom and Dad.

  Jurek pointed to the Sencen crest on her cape. “I thought Lord Cassius was your adoptive father.”

  “Oh! No, this is Keefe’s.” And she could totally see Keefe’s dad saying that.

  Jurek snorted. “I guess I should’ve known. They both have that same smug smirk.”

  “Yeah, but I have better hair,” Keefe said, mussing it even more as Sophie gave him back his cape.

  “Let’s hope that’s not the only way you’re better.” Jurek walked away without another word.

  Keefe rolled his eyes like he didn’t care. But Sophie noticed he hid the Sencen crest in the thick folds of his cape before he followed.

  She trailed silently behind, staring at the shimmering flowers and trying to think of something to say.

  After several awkward seconds, Keefe cleared his throat. “So, where’s Glitter Butt?”

  “He means Silveny,” Sophie clarified. And she’d been wondering the same thing. The pastures aroun
d them only held grazing mammoths, feathery dinosaurs, and enormous wolf-bear things.

  “All equestrians are in the violet pastures,” Jurek explained as he veered off the path to cut straight over a line of hills.

  The long blue grass was slick with dew and Sophie struggled not to slip as she ran behind him. By the time they crested the last hill she was sweaty and out of breath, but she didn’t mind one bit when a familiar voice filled her mind.

  Friend! Sophie! Keefe! Visit!

  Yes, Sophie transmitted back, shielding her eyes as she tried to find her.

  A pair of silver-and-black unicorns galloped in one of the purple-grassed fields, and a small river was lined with strange bluish-green horses that seemed almost slimy. But no sparkly alicorns in sight.

  “She prefers the pastures down here,” Jurek said before plopping to the grass and sliding down the hill.

  Keefe launched after Jurek immediately, but Sophie stared at the slope, fairly certain the slide would end with an Elwin visit.

  It was only when Keefe shouted, “Come on, Foster. Don’t wimp out on me now!” that she dropped to the ground and pushed off after them.

  Bits of grass and mud peppered her face—and she could tell her backside would be bruised for days—but she bumped and bobbed and somehow made it safely to the bottom.

  Well . . . almost safely.

  Stopping was harder than she’d thought, and she ended up crashing into Keefe, knocking him on top of her.

  “Y’know, if you’re trying to sweep me off my feet, there are less painful ways,” he told her, laughing as she struggled to stand.

  Sophie turned away to hide her burning cheeks. “Was the sliding really necessary?” she asked Jurek.

  “No. But it was fun.” Jurek tossed his wild hair, sending bits of grass flying.

  Friend! Sophie! Keefe! Fly!

  Sophie spun toward the sound, feeling tears prick her eyes as she spotted a glittering streak, flipping somersaults in the rainbow sky. Part of her had worried Silveny’s wing wouldn’t ever heal properly. But clearly she was good as new. And just as sparkly as ever.