Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 3)

by Shannon Messenger

  They both smiled sadly, knowing it was an impossible request.

  Fortunately, Lady Veda—Sophie’s elementalism Mentor—had her working on something far less dangerous than her usual tornado-bottling fare. She’d placed an etched crystal basin filled with water in the center of the table and showed Sophie how to bottle the ripples that formed when she tapped the water with her fingers. Sophie didn’t see the point of collecting such an insignificant amount of force, but when the bells chimed the end of session, Lady Veda held out one of the bottles.

  “Never underestimate the power of a small change,” she told her, pressing it into Sophie’s hand.

  She was obviously referring to the healing, but whether she was in favor or against, Sophie couldn’t decide. And the rest of her fellow prodigies seemed just as unsure. Stares and whispers trailed Sophie like a shadow, and when she let herself pay attention, she couldn’t find a consensus. Some thought she was brave. Others clearly agreed with Stina.

  But the majority were simply afraid.

  It was so strange having everyone know so much about her assignment. Even her agriculture Mentor—a stocky gnome who insisted on being called Barth the Reaper—had heard about the scandal. And when Sophie walked into study hall, the whole room went quiet.

  “All right—nothing to see,” Keefe told them, rushing Sophie to a table in the dimmest corner. Fitz was already there, slouching in his chair.

  “That Stina girl’s been telling people that you’re going to do some sort of freaky Inflictor thing on Fitz to prepare, and everyone’s waiting to see,” Keefe explained. “I’m guessing that’s a total lie—but I gotta say, that would be awesome.”

  “Yeah, well it’s not happening.” Sophie sat, hiding her face behind her hair as she transmitted, You still want to practice? to Fitz.

  He nodded, and she opened her thoughts to his mind, cringing when she saw his mental turmoil.

  Has your day been as weird as mine? he asked. People are taping notes to my locker saying, “Keep the criminals where they belong” and “Whose side are you on?”

  It’s not too late to change your—

  “Will you stop worrying?” Keefe asked, waving Sophie’s stress vibes away from his face. “Trust me—my boy can handle himself.”

  “Or you could let me help,” Dex said, marching up behind them.

  He pulled a slightly-less-than-round silver circlet out of his satchel and set it proudly on the table.

  “What is that?” Fitz asked.

  “Something I whipped up last night after Sophie and I talked.”

  He picked up the circlet and slipped it over Sophie’s head. It slid down to her ears, covering her eyes and matting her hair against her face.

  “Huh, your head must be smaller than mine,” Dex said as he spun the circlet so the clear trillion-cut crystals on each side rested over her temples, and tilted it so it wouldn’t cover her eyes. “I can tighten it when I get home. The healing’s not till this evening, right?”

  “Right,” Sophie told him. “But I’m not wearing this—whatever it is.”

  She reached up to remove it, but Dex blocked her.

  “It’ll help enhance all your telepathic abilities!”

  “Seriously?” Fitz asked as Keefe snatched the circlet off Sophie’s head and said, “Cool—will it tell me what Foster’s thinking?”

  “No, I only made it enhance existing abilities—so far,” Dex told him, taking his creation back.

  “What do you mean, ‘so far’?” Dame Alina asked, stalking up to their table. She checked her reflection in one of the windows as she asked, “You really think a gadget can affect someone’s ability?”

  “Why not?” Dex asked.

  “I can think of several reasons—but the fact that it’s never been done in all our years of history seems to be the strongest argument,” Dame Alina replied.

  “Maybe no one’s cared enough to try,” Dex argued.

  “Or maybe you’re just trying to fix your Talentless dad,” someone called, triggering a wave of snickers.

  “That’s enough of that!” Dame Alina shouted, reeling around to face the rest of her prodigies. “I will not warn you again.”

  She turned back to Dex. “Mr. Dizznee—put that contraption away and take a seat. And the rest of you’d best spend the rest of this session perfecting the art of silence, or you will give me an opportunity to put some of my newest—and, I daresay, most ingenious—punishments into effect. Understood?”

  Shuffling paper was the only reply.

  “Good,” she said, waiting until the circlet was safely out of sight before returning to her desk.

  “So you’re not going to use my invention?” Dex whispered while pretending to write in his notebook.

  Sophie shook her head.

  Dex was incredibly talented with gadgets. But she wasn’t about to bring an untested piece of technology into an already dangerous situation.

  Dex sighed, but didn’t say anything, using the rest of study hall to sketch a diagram of the circlet, covered in lines and numbers and all kinds of crazy things Sophie couldn’t translate.

  Sophie—on the other hand—spent the rest of the time transmitting anything she could remember about Fintan’s memory break to Fitz, trying to prepare him for what they would be facing. She’d figured Fitz would want to keep working after school, but when the bells chimed the end of the day he told her he had to go home.

  “My dad thinks a big part of his problem last time was how exhausted he was that day,” he explained as they made their way to the Leapmaster. “He made me promise I’d take a nap before tonight. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” Sophie said, realizing this had to be just as stressful for Alden as it was for her. Maybe worse, since he probably had even scarier memories of the last Break than she did. “There’s not much to practice anyway.”

  “Then maybe you should rest too,” Fitz suggested.

  But they both knew that was so not going to happen.

  Sophie decided to stay busy and search more of Edaline’s office instead.

  She had Sandor dig her a trail through the trunks and boxes so she could get to the chests in the back, hoping Edaline would’ve shoved Jolie’s school things as far away as she could. But when she opened the first trunk . . .

  . . . books.

  Thick, heavy-bound journals filled with Edaline’s intricate writing. A quick flip through the pages told Sophie there were probably some interesting stories in there—the words “monitoring the mermaid migration” particularly caught her attention. But she’d have to come back to them later. At the moment, she was a girl on a mission.

  The next trunk was filled with what had to be bramble jerseys, and Sophie couldn’t resist stopping to count how many different games they represented. Keefe had told her that the elves only had a bramble championship once every three years, and that was when they printed the jerseys. So if all the jerseys belonged to Grady, he was way older than she’d realized—by at least a couple of hundred years.

  She couldn’t quite wrap her head around that.

  The trunks got increasingly boring from then on, some filled with curtains, others with shoes, and there was a particularly stinky one that was currently empty but must’ve once held some sort of cheese.

  Sophie had gotten so used to finding useless things that she’d already closed the next chest before she realized what she’d just seen.

  She pulled the lid open again, feeling her heart pick up speed.

  Inside were neat rows of textbooks and carefully folded silver uniforms and capes.

  All of Jolie’s missing Foxfire things.

  THIRTY-ONE

  DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP, Sophie tried to tell herself as she unpacked the trunk. But that didn’t stop her brain from thinking, THIS HAS TO BE IT!!!

  She scanned ever
y page in each textbook, emptied every pocket and purse, disassembled every picture frame to see if any notes or clues had been tucked into the back. She even read an entire journal of sappy love poems Jolie had written about Brant.

  And she found . . . a lot of old, dusty junk that couldn’t tell her anything.

  “But it has to be here,” Sophie said, like saying it out loud would somehow make it true. She was running out of places to look.

  “Careful,” Sandor warned as she tried to pry the mirror out of one of the compacts she’d found in Jolie’s purse. “You’re going to break that and cut yourself.”

  “But what if there’s a note or something behind it?” Jolie also had a regular compact filled with a shimmering peach powder and a mirror. So why would she need a second compact with nothing inside except two more mirrors?

  No one besides Dame Alina was that vain.

  She tried to dig her fingernails along the sides of the glass, but the mirrors seemed to be welded in. And no matter how many times she pressed on the tiny pearls mounted along the outside, it never triggered a secret latch.

  “Sometimes a mirror is just a mirror,” Sandor told her.

  “Maybe.” But something bothered her about the compact.

  It took endless minutes of staring at her reflections before she realized what it was.

  “I think this side is a human mirror,” Sophie said, scooting into better light and checking her Ruewen crest in the reflection.

  The letters read backward.

  Elvin mirrors didn’t invert things the way human mirrors did, which was probably why Sophie’s eyes were drawn to the right side. The human mirror looked more like her—or the her she’d grown up with, at least.

  “Why would Jolie have a human mirror?” Sandor asked, taking the compact from Sophie to examine it. He tried to pry the mirror off, but didn’t have any better success. “There’s no way to remove these without breaking them.”

  Sophie agreed. Which meant there couldn’t be anything hidden behind them. In fact, nothing about the compact seemed related to the Black Swan. There were no runes etched into the silver. The pearls mounted on the outside were definitely not shaped into the sign of the swan. The compact wasn’t even black. The enamel on the outside was a pale sky blue.

  Sophie sat up straighter.

  The Black Swan didn’t always use the sign of the swan to identify themselves. Sometimes they’d used a phrase from an old dwarven song.

  “Follow the pretty bird across the sky.”

  “What bird?” Sandor asked—but Sophie was way ahead of him.

  She’d thought the pearls on the outside looked like a lopsided X. But when she turned the mirror a different way, she recognized the constellation.

  “It’s Cygnus again,” she whispered, tracing her finger over the familiar pattern.

  So the mirror had come from the Black Swan.

  But what was she supposed to do with it?

  A mirror was really only useful for one thing. And she didn’t understand how reflecting something was going to help.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Grady said from the doorway, making Sophie almost drop the compact.

  She shoved it quickly into her pocket, hoping Grady didn’t notice as she told him, “I didn’t realize you were home.”

  “Just got in. I wanted to see you before you left. Plus, the Council wants you to wear these for the healing.” He handed Sophie a golden satchel—which was surprisingly heavy. “Fireproof clothes,” he explained. “The cloth is woven from flareadon fur and bennu feathers. Both creatures are naturally resistant to fire.”

  Sophie was tempted to point out that Gildie—the flareadon who’d helped her bottle a sample of the Everblaze—had come back badly singed by the unstoppable flames. But she decided she’d rather not think about it.

  It couldn’t be a good sign that the Council was preparing for fire.

  “It’s just a precaution,” Grady told her as she made her way upstairs to change. And they really weren’t that different from her normal clothes. Just far less comfortable.

  The tunic and pants were so fitted, she looked like a cheesy superhero. And the enormous cape and knee-high boots didn’t help. The whole outfit probably weighed more than she did, and the fabric definitely didn’t breathe. She was sweaty and gross within five minutes.

  “How’s it going?” Grady asked as she sprayed on a thick layer of Stink Shrink, hoping it worked like deodorant. “Tiergan should be here any minute to pick you up.”

  “You mean ‘us,’ don’t you?” Sandor asked. “Pick us up?”

  “Unfortunately no,” Grady said quietly. “Even the Councillors won’t have their bodyguards. They’re trying to keep the amount of body heat to a minimum.”

  Sophie shivered under her stuffy clothes.

  Last time, Fintan had pulled warmth from Alden’s skin and used it to burn them both.

  “So their plan,” Sandor said bitterly, “is to gather all of their important people in one place and then not give them any goblin protection? Why not coat the whole place with aromark, while they’re at it?”

  “I thought the same thing, at first,” Grady told him. “And I didn’t understand why they were moving Fintan out of Exile. But then they told me the healing would be in Oblivimyre.”

  “What’s Oblivimyre?” Sophie asked when Sandor sucked in a breath.

  Her insides tangled into more knots than a friendship bracelet when they both whispered, “A place best forgotten.”

  Cold silence settled over the room, until Sandor raised his head and sniffed the air. “It seems Tiergan has arrived. Excuse me, I have some instructions to give him.”

  He marched down the stairs, and Sophie hoped Tiergan was prepared for an epic goblin safety lecture.

  “You seem calm,” Grady said, studying Sophie like he wasn’t sure if he believed it.

  “So do you,” she pointed out.

  “Do I?” He held out his hands, showing her they were shaking. “I know Alden and Tiergan will do everything in their power to keep you safe. And Kenric also promised to personally keep an eye on you. But Fintan . . .”

  His face creased with lines and shadows. “Do not underestimate him, Sophie. The level of evil he’s protecting is far worse than you realize. I won’t say anything else, because I don’t want you to feel any more pressure.”

  “Uh-uh. You have to tell me,” she interrupted.

  Grady sighed, his face aging another twenty years as he mumbled, “I suspect Fintan knows who killed Jolie.”

  Everything in Sophie froze. “What?”

  “It’s just a theory, of course. But I know her fire wasn’t an accident, and it makes sense that it would’ve been set by a Pyrokinetic.”

  “And Fintan trained an unregistered Pyrokinetic,” she finished for him.

  Grady nodded.

  “Whoa,” she whispered, trying to fit the new idea with the dozens of other tiny bits she’d already pieced together. “Do you think one of my kidnappers was the person who killed Jolie?”

  “I think it’s very possible,” Grady admitted. “And honestly, that would be better. I’m hoping there aren’t too many unregistered Pyrokinetics running wild in the shadows.”

  “Yeah,” Sophie mumbled, not sure how to process the revelation.

  “Hey,” Grady said, pulling her close for a hug. “This doesn’t change anything, okay?”

  Of course it did.

  It changed everything.

  Now she wasn’t just hunting her kidnappers. She was on the verge of solving Jolie’s murder.

  “I mean it, Sophie. Your number one priority is getting you and Fitz out of there safely. Do not take any unnecessary risks trying to find Jolie’s killer. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Sophie repeated.

  But she also had a chance to find her kidnapper and
Jolie’s murderer.

  Nothing was going to stop her from finally getting to the truth.

  THIRTY-TWO

  SOPHIE STARED AT THE GLITTERING tower built from brick-size amethysts. “That . . . isn’t what I was expecting,”

  She’d been to the jeweled city of Eternalia several times over the last year—though never to this section, far from the tree-lined river, where the lone tower stood surrounded by a silver fence. But the shimmering purple walls and the diamond-shaped windows made it look like it should house a princess with ridiculously long hair—not an insane, pyromaniac elf.

  And it definitely didn’t match the name Oblivimyre.

  “Do not let the beauty deceive you,” Tiergan warned, his long, heavy cloak—identical to Sophie’s—swishing noisily along the crystal path. “This tower is from a different time. Back before the ancient treaties were signed. When we needed to make an example.”

  He whispered the last word, like it was too horrible to say louder.

  “I thought elves hated violence.”

  “Yes, but violence isn’t the only way to instill fear.”

  She decided to take him at his word, following him silently to the locked silver gate. Thin strands of tinsel were draped over the fence like webs, and when they drew closer Sophie could see tiny prickles and barbs hidden among the sparkles.

  A thunderous clang shattered the silence, and the gates whipped open, revealing a dark courtyard filled with leafless trees. A chill seemed to hang in the air as they entered, and after a few steps even Tiergan started to shiver. Sophie pulled her cape tighter as the gates latched behind them with a groan.

  “Where is everyone?” Sophie asked, searching the shadows for signs of life.

  “Waiting for us inside.”

  He offered her his hand and Sophie gratefully took it, happy to feel some tiny hint of warmth.

  “At least there’s no angry mob protesting the healing,” she said, trying to stay positive.

  “Yes, it appears at least some secrets can be kept.”

  “So do you think that means the leaked information isn’t coming from the Council?” she asked, remembering her theories about Bronte.