Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 3)

by Shannon Messenger

  “Why?” Sophie asked.

  “Because we have a far better chance of Lord Cassius guiding us to the Neverseen’s leader if he does not realize he’s a suspect.”

  “How do you know he’s not the leader?” Sandor asked, looking ready to perform a one-goblin raid on Candleshade.

  “Because their leader is a Pyrokinetic. He left his burns on Sophie’s wrists—burns that took me nearly an hour to treat.”

  “An hour?” Sophie repeated.

  She’d figured he’d treated them while she was unconscious on the Paris street, after he’d triggered her new abilities. But she’d never imagined he’d stayed an hour.

  “I’ve never seen anything so vile,” Mr. Forkle said, his voice suddenly thick. “And I vowed that day to do everything in my power to make sure he pays for his crimes. Which is why I will need you to pretend, Keefe.” He pulled a different vial out of his pocket—blue this time, with an atomizer—and spritzed a shimmering mist on Keefe’s hands.

  Instantly the red glow dimmed, and within a few seconds his skin was back to normal.

  “The aromark is still there,” Mr. Forkle warned him. “I’ve only neutralized the reveldust, so no one will know that you’ve discovered it. You’ll need to do the same to your pin—if it does indeed glow red. Can you do that? Can you keep this secret until the optimal time?”

  He offered both vials to Keefe.

  Keefe backed away, covering his face with his hands and shaking so hard Sophie had to hold him steady.

  “My dad’s an Empath,” he whispered. “How am I supposed to do this? How is this even happening?”

  “If it’s true, you lie to him the same way you lie to any Empath,” Mr. Forkle told him. “You use one lie to cover another.”

  “What lie?” Sophie asked.

  “Yes, what lie, indeed?” Mr. Forkle wandered the yard, staring at his swollen feet as they squished in the soggy grass. He’d passed them three times before he said. “We’ll use Silveny.”

  “We’ll use Silveny how?” Sophie asked, not willing to put the precious alicorn at risk—even for something as important as this.

  “She won’t actually be involved. We’ll just make them think she is—since we know the Neverseen are interested in her. Actually, this is brilliant.” He moved toward Keefe, prying him away from Sophie. “I know I am asking an extremely difficult thing. But this could be the lead we’ve been waiting for. If you tell your father that the Black Swan have asked you to help move Silveny to a top secret location, it will explain why you seem nervous and distracted and give us a perfect way to trap him.”

  “Trap him?” Keefe sounded like he was going to be sick.

  “Yes, trap him, Keefe. And as many of his fellow rebels as we can. We’ll make them think we’re giving them the opportunity to steal Silveny that they’ve been waiting for. But the whole situation will be rigged to catch them.”

  “So Sophie and Keefe get to be your bait again,” Sandor interrupted.

  “I don’t care about that,” Sophie jumped in. “I care about Keefe. Look at him!”

  Keefe had sunk to a crouch, cradling his head in his hands.

  “Could you do what you’re asking of him?” she asked Mr. Forkle as she squatted beside Keefe, holding him steady. “Could you betray your own father?”

  “I’ve done far worse,” Mr. Forkle whispered. “The right road is rarely the easy road. And no war was ever fought without casualties.”

  “Is that what this is?” Sophie asked. “A war?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. A quiet war, to stop a louder one from raging. You may hate me for asking this of him, but it is the cold reality we all face. We cannot control the actions of others, nor stop them from disappointing us. We can only use the anger and pain to fuel us. To rise above.”

  The harsh words hardly seemed like the pep talk Keefe needed. And yet, Keefe stood, his jaw set and his eyes dry of tears.

  His hand shook as he took the vials Mr. Forkle offered him. But his voice was steady as he said, “I guess it’s time to go.”

  Mr. Forkle grabbed Keefe’s hand as he reached for his home crystal. “Go only if you’re sure you can handle it.”

  “I can handle it.” Keefe took a deep breath and turned to Sophie. “I’m going to make this right, okay?”

  “It’s not your fault, Keefe.”

  “I’m still going to fix it. Whatever he’s done—I won’t let him get away with it.”

  “Even though it’s your father?” Sandor asked, still looking like he wished he could be the one to drag Lord Cassius away.

  “Especially because it’s him.”

  “You’ll need to confirm that we’re right,” Mr. Forkle said as Keefe raised his crystal up to the glow of a streetlight. “If it’s true, tell Sophie ‘swan song.’ She’ll pass the message to me and I’ll get back in touch with the details of our plan. We’ll need to move quickly—no more than a week. Hiding the lie any longer would be impossible.” He moved closer, taking Keefe by the shoulders. “This will be the hardest week of your life, but I’m confident you will survive it. I saw you face down the rebels at the entrance to our hideout—you wore a look of absolute determination. You must call on that emotion again. And remember what we’re fighting for.”

  Keefe nodded.

  “Wait—what if it’s not true?” Sophie jumped in. “Then what does he say?”

  “It’s true, Sophie,” Keefe whispered. “What else could it be?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ve been wrong before. What’s the code word for ‘it’s a mistake’?”

  “No code word needed,” Mr. Forkle decided. “Just call another meeting, since I’m sure there will be much to say.”

  Keefe shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. It’s fine, Sophie. I’m sure once this is all over I’m going to need an epic-level freak out. But for now . . . I’m okay.”

  Mr. Forkle moved one of the gnomes, making the air shimmer again as Keefe gave Sophie a heartbreakingly sad smile and glittered away.

  “He’s not okay, you know,” Sophie told Mr. Forkle, shattering the silence that followed.

  “Of course he’s not. Are any of us?”

  He gathered the gnomes, moving them back to the weed-filled planter and lining them up perfectly straight. Like soldiers.

  “Why ‘swan song’?” Sophie asked.

  She knew what the phrase meant to humans, but she was hoping it meant something different to the elves.

  “It’s a tradition among our group, going back to our earliest days. We knew the course we’d chosen would involve hardship. So we decided that any time one of us was forced to take a great risk or make a large sacrifice, we would alert the others by declaring it our swan song. That way we all knew to brace for very bad days ahead.”

  A lump caught in Sophie’s throat and she cleared it away to ask, “Have you ever called it?”

  “Many times. Many ways.”

  He moved one gnome, separating it from the others.

  “Prentice called his the day before he was captured,” he added quietly. “I still haven’t figured out how he knew it was coming.”

  “The Council’s never going to approve his healing now. You realize that, right?” Sophie whispered.

  “Yes. We’ve been expecting the same thing. And we’d been working on a plan. But after your incident with King Dimitar”—he muttered something under his breath that started with “you kids”—“we’ve put that plan on hold. Best to let the dust settle before stirring anything up again. Besides, we have more urgent things to focus on. You’re going to have to keep a very close eye on Keefe. The guilt and rage he will experience over the course of the week is going to be life changing. He will need a steady friend.”

  Sophie nodded.

  “Time to go, then.”

  “Wait!” Sophie called as he p
ulled out a noticeably blue pathfinder. “What about Jolie?”

  “What about her?”

  “I . . . I need to know who she was.”

  “She was Grady and Edaline’s daughter.”

  “No—that’s not what I mean.” She took a deep breath for courage and shoved the words out. “I need to know who she was to me.”

  “To you?” He stepped closer, leaning down so they were face-to-face. “You think she’s your mother.”

  “Is she?”

  He glanced behind him, checking the still-empty street before he told her, “No.”

  The crushing relief nearly knocked Sophie off her feet.

  “Do not bother asking me who your mother is—that is one piece of information I cannot share.”

  The hard lines of his expression made it clear there would be no arguing with him. But now that she knew she wasn’t related to Jolie, she was happy to leave her mother’s true identity a mystery.

  Still, she wasn’t ready to let him leave.

  “What did she do for you?” she asked, pulling out the mirrored compact to show him. “I know she was connected to the Black Swan.”

  He waved the compact away. “I see nothing black. Nor any swan.”

  “And I see a pretty bird in the sky,” Sophie argued, pointing to the constellation pattern. She opened the compact and showed him his reflections. “And a human mirror.”

  “Fine,” he said, glancing over his shoulder again. “I will not tell you any more than this. Jolie volunteered to infiltrate the rebels. She was working deep undercover—which was why she owned nothing bearing the sign of the swan.”

  “Did she learn anything?”

  “She must have. We’ve long assumed they killed her because of it. But she died before sharing her report, and any record must’ve burned in the fire.”

  “But—”

  “I told you from the beginning that I wasn’t going to answer all of your questions. I’ve already shared far more than I’d planned. It’s time to go home.”

  He leaped away without another word, leaving Sophie and Sandor alone in the dim twilight.

  “He’s right,” Sandor said, when Sophie didn’t move. “Without that energy field, we’re at risk for ambush.”

  Sophie nodded, reaching for her home crystal—but she froze as a new thought clicked inside her head.

  Jolie was working undercover for the Black Swan. So she would’ve known about their tradition with ‘swan song.’

  Maybe she finally had the password Vertina needed.

  FIFTY-SIX

  SWAN SONG,” SOPHIE WHISPERED, FEELING her hopes plummet when Vertina’s smile faded. “That isn’t the word you needed?”

  Vertina sighed. “No, it is.”

  “Okay,” Sophie said slowly. “So . . . aren’t you supposed to tell me something?”

  “I am.”

  Seconds ticked by and Sophie lost what little patience she had. “Just tell me the stupid secret, okay?”

  “If it’s so stupid, why should I tell you?”

  “BECAUSE I GAVE YOU THE PASSWORD!!!” She backed away, knowing she was dangerously close to tossing Vertina out the window. “Please, Vertina. I don’t have time for this.”

  Keefe could hail her any second and say the words that would change everything—and she’d already wasted ten minutes dodging Grady and Edaline’s questions. They were very unhappy when she couldn’t tell them who the leak was, and if Sandor hadn’t assured them that they were keeping the secret for good reason, she would probably still be getting interrogated.

  Vertina hung her head. “I’m sorry. This is just harder than I thought. I’ve been keeping this secret for so long—and if you’d seen her face when she told me . . .”

  “I’m only trying to help her,” Sophie promised.

  Vertina closed her eyes, letting two shiny tears streak down her cheeks. Then she whispered, “The truth lies behind the glass that is not a window.”

  “The glass that is not a window,” Sophie repeated, wishing it didn’t have to be a riddle. Clearly the Black Swan had trained Jolie in obnoxiousness.

  But she could figure this out! She just needed to think of other glass things . . .

  A table?

  A goblet?

  Or . . .

  “Do you mean a mirror?” Sophie asked, digging Jolie’s compact out of her desk. “This mirror?”

  Vertina frowned as she studied it. “I do remember Jolie using that mirror—and I never understood why. One side was so unflattering. But I don’t think that’s what she meant. I have suspected she meant a mirror. But the way she said it when she told me made me think it was a specific mirror in a specific place.”

  “Where?” Sophie asked, trying again to pry off the compact’s mirrors, just to be safe.

  They still wouldn’t budge.

  “She never told me,” Vertina admitted sadly.

  “And that’s all Jolie said? There was nothing else?”

  “That was it.”

  “Great,” Sophie mumbled, shoving the compact into her pocket and heading downstairs.

  Every wall in Havenfield was made of some sort of crystal or glass. It could take days to search each piece of it—especially since the mirror she was looking for had to be small enough for no one to notice.

  “You don’t have to follow me,” she told Sandor as he trailed her down the hallway.

  But of course he did, stationing himself outside Jolie’s room as Sophie slipped inside.

  “Please let it be in here,” she whispered, snapping her fingers to turn on the lights.

  The room looked far more chaotic than she’d remembered—clothes and shoes and books strewn all over the floor, mixed with a maze of half-packed trunks and boxes. She didn’t remember it being that messy the last time she’d been in there, but she also realized—with a serious dose of guilt—that she’d never finished packing up Jolie’s things.

  She would have to get back to that. But right now she had a more important job to tackle. The clue had said the glass was not a window, and maybe Jolie picked that wording to tell her where to start.

  She threw back the dusty curtains, revealing the floor-to-ceiling windows. Thin veins of gold divided the glass into square panes, each about the size of her head.

  Hundreds of them.

  It felt like thousands.

  She worked systematically, starting at the bottom and moving her way up and over and checking each. Stupid. Pane. But by the time she reached the other side, she still hadn’t found a hidden mirror. And maybe that made sense.

  The individual panes were all the same depth. There would be no way to hide anything behind them, unless the mirror stuck out—which would’ve been way too obvious.

  So it had to be one of the walls.

  But the walls were all crystal, not glass—weren’t they?

  Sophie sank to the floor, leaning against the bed and rubbing her eyes to bring some moisture back to them. She was pretty sure she hadn’t blinked in over an hour, and she was so tempted to give up and go to bed, try again in the morning when her head was clearer and the light was better.

  But she was so close.

  A vibration in her pocket made her jump, and her stomach turned sour as she pulled out her Imparter.

  “Swan song,” Keefe whispered, not quite looking at her.

  She knew it was lame, but she had to tell him, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. In fact . . . it almost makes sense. I finally understand everything I’ve ever felt about my life. I mean, it still sucks. And I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now.”

  “No one can hear you, right?”

  “No. They left me a note. Apparently my mom wanted to go to some fancy restaurant in Atlantis, so he took her and they’re still not back. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised the
y weren’t sitting at home worrying about me anymore.”

  “I’m—”

  “Please don’t say you’re sorry again. It makes me want to smash things, and that would be really hard to explain—and not because I’m mad at you,” he added. “It’s just . . . I don’t want you to be sorry because one of the people who tried to kill you just so happens to be my dad. Every time I think about it, I want to fling goblin throwing stars at all his favorite things. Which again, would be pretty hard to explain.”

  “Then don’t think about it.”

  “I won’t. I’m going to go drink a couple cups of slumberberry tea and hope it knocks me out until the plan is ready.”

  “Uh, that’s not dangerous, right?”

  Half a smile curled his lips. “Nope, it’s just tea. My mom makes my dad at least three cups a night. I guess now I know why he has trouble sleeping.”

  Sophie bit her lip. “I’ll hail you as soon as I hear from the Black Swan.”

  “Thanks. Oh, and . . . Sophie?”

  “Yeah?” she asked, surprised he was using her first name.

  “Please don’t hate me, okay?”

  “Keefe, I will never hate you.”

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts.’ In fact, I remember a pretty smart person telling me that our families don’t get to decide who we are. And that goes one step farther. Our parents don’t make us who we are either. Look at how much you’ve rebelled against your dad. Deep down, you’ve always known you didn’t want to be him. Now you finally know why.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes—either from tears or exhaustion, Sophie couldn’t tell which.

  She hoped it was the latter and told him, “Get some sleep.”

  He nodded and clicked away.

  “I’ll go deliver the message,” Sandor said, making her drop the Imparter.

  “Seriously—how do you sneak around like that on those giant feet?”

  “Goblin secret. But the tide is too high for you to join me. Can you stay out of trouble while I’m gone?”