“You’ll come here first thing in the morning,” Elwin corrected.
“That depends on what my mom tells us,” Keefe argued. “If we’re heading straight to Nightfall—”
“You’re not going to Nightfall,” Sophie interrupted. “You’re doing bed rest until Elwin says you’re better.”
Keefe smirked. “It’s cute that you think that.”
“I mean it, Keefe.”
Ro cracked up. “Wow, she just stamped her foot—that’s adorable! Are they always like this?”
Elwin nodded.
Keefe wrapped his arm around Sophie. “Foster gets all worked up when she’s trying to protect me.”
“That’s not what this is about!” Sophie snapped, pulling away. “Though would it kill you to do the smart thing, just once, and actually listen to someone when they’re giving you good advice, instead of thinking you know everything and doing whatever you want?”
Keefe considered that for a second. “Yeah, that might actually kill me.”
“Ohhhh,” Ro breathed, “that eye roll she gave you was amazing!” She backed up a step when Sophie reeled on her. “Wow, and I thought my dad was the master of the death stare.”
Elwin coughed to cover his laugh.
“Hey,” Keefe said, grabbing Sophie’s arm as she tried to stomp away. “I get it. You’re mad at me—”
“No, you don’t get it,” Sophie interrupted. “You claim we’re a team, and then you change the rules the first chance you get and drag me into whatever insane plan you’ve come up with and expect me to just be okay with it. Well, I’m not okay with it.”
“Yeah. I’m sensing that. But—”
“There’s no ‘but’ with this. Either you swear that you’ll be honest with me from now on—and I mean actually honest. No more surprises. Or . . . I can’t trust you anymore.”
“You can trust me,” he promised. “You heard Dimitar. My mom’s message told him to challenge me. So he would’ve done it whether I took the title of Mercadir or not, and things would’ve ended up exactly the same way.”
“Maybe,” Sophie agreed quietly. “But you didn’t know that when you demanded the title, so it doesn’t count.”
Keefe sighed. “I’m just trying to keep you safe. Is that really such a horrible thing?”
“I’m not some damsel in distress who needs you to swoop in—”
“I know that, Foster. Believe me, I’m super aware of how powerful you are. And brilliant. And special. And—”
“The sucking up’s getting a bit desperate,” Ro warned him.
“I’m just saying she’s important,” Keefe insisted, before turning back to Sophie. “You’re the one who matters—I’m just some pawn in my mom’s creepy game. So if I see a way to take the hit and make sure you’re not the one covered in bandages, I’m going to do it. And I thought you of all people would understand that, considering how many times you’ve put yourself at risk, trying to protect your friends.”
“There’s protecting and there’s steamrolling, Keefe. You’re preplanning ways to betray me. You went there today knowing exactly what you were going to say. You’d done research—which you didn’t bother sharing with me. That’s not teamwork. That’s the Keefe Show, and we’ve already seen how that ends.”
He flinched like she’d struck him.
But that still didn’t stop her from adding, “I can’t do it again.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. I . . . need some time to think. And it seems like you do too. So I guess it’s a good thing you have a week of bed rest ahead of you.”
“Right. So I’m just supposed to lie around doing nothing while you contact my mom and head to Nightfall without me?”
“No. You’re supposed to get your strength back so you don’t do permanent damage.”
“I don’t care about permanent damage.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
“Pretty sure she’s not just talking about your wound—in case you didn’t catch that,” Ro told him.
She shrugged when Sophie glanced at her. “What? He’s a clueless guy. Figured I should help him out.”
“Okay,” Keefe mumbled. “I hear what you’re saying, Foster. You’re right, I’ve been taking over everything. I’ll try to stop. And I’ll send you that scroll about the soporidine when I send it to Lady Cadence—and anything else you want to read.”
“Soporidine?” Elwin asked. “Should I know what that is?”
“Probably. I’ll get a copy for you too. See?” He turned back to Sophie. “I’m sharing. Don’t shut me out, Foster. You need me—and not just because I have this.”
He reached for his pocket, frowning when he found it empty.
“You mean this?” Sophie asked, holding up the starstone hairpin. “It’s not cool when someone steals from you, is it?”
“Whoa, I did not see that coming!” Ro said. “Gotta tell ya, I’m liking this girl more and more.”
Keefe didn’t look like he agreed when he told Sophie, “Okay. You’ve made your point. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stolen my mom’s scroll from you. I shouldn’t have done a lot of things.”
“Maybe if you say that enough times,” Sophie told him, “you’ll actually believe it.”
“I do believe it, Foster. But I think you’re forgetting that you can’t do this without me. You need my blood to hail my mom—and to get into Nightfall.”
“I know,” Sophie said, pulling a clear satchel from her pocket, filled with some of his blood-soaked bandages. “But you spilled enough of it already. So I’m all set.”
“Wow,” Ro said. “If I’d known you elves were this intense, I would’ve visited way sooner.”
Sophie couldn’t look at Keefe after that. She didn’t want to see the hurt in his eyes as she dug out her home crystal.
“You’ll make sure he gets home safe?” she asked Elwin.
“If he won’t tell me where he’s staying, I’ll take him to my place,” Elwin promised.
“And I’ll make sure he stays there,” Ro added. “Sorry, dude,” she told Keefe. “You called me your babysitter. Now you get your wish. Besides, I’m pretty sure she’ll clobber you if you don’t listen.”
Sophie nodded, holding her crystal up to the light and keeping her eyes focused on the shimmering beam.
“Take care of yourself, Keefe,” she whispered. “I’ll see you in a week.”
Thirty-six
I WAS EXPECTING to hear from you yesterday,” Lady Gisela snapped through the Imparter. “And I’d expected to see you with my son—not a Vacker.”
Fitz scowled at the silver screen, which once again remained blank for the conversation.
Sophie had reached out to Fitz telepathically as soon as she’d gotten home from the Healing Center, and she’d ended up telling him everything—the bloody battle with Dimitar and her fight with Keefe. He’d rushed straight over with another present to cheer her up—and because he didn’t want her hailing Lady Gisela alone. But Sandor sent him home as soon as he’d given her the gift, refusing to hand over the Imparter until Sophie had gotten some rest.
She’d fought Sandor at the time, but in the early light of morning Sophie was glad she’d had time to mentally prepare for the conversation. And she was even more grateful that her parents had agreed to let her and Fitz speak to Lady Gisela alone—with their bodyguards supervising, of course. She’d had to promise a full update afterward, but at least she’d have time to process whatever they learned before anyone started arguing about how dangerous the next step would be.
“Well then,” she told Lady Gisela, leaning back against the side of her bed in a way she hoped looked calm and casual, “you shouldn’t have told King Dimitar to challenge Keefe to a sparring match.”
She waited to see if Keefe’s mom would ask if her son was okay—or at least worry about how Sophie managed to have some of Keefe’s blood to activate the Imparter.
Instead Lady Gisela said, “Sounds like Dimitar accepted
my bargain. Who did he assign as Keefe’s bodyguard?”
“Why don’t you ask King Dimitar?” Sophie countered. “Don’t you two have an alliance now?”
“Far from it. All this means is that I showed him we have a mutual interest in keeping Fintan and his allies away from my son. But who he assigned is an excellent way of judging exactly how committed Dimitar is to the cause.”
Sophie shrugged, keeping her expression neutral. She’d already held up her end of their deal. Now it was time for Keefe’s mom to come through with hers—and she wasn’t giving her anything else in the meantime.
“It’s his daughter, isn’t it?” Lady Gisela asked. “Actually, wait. I bet it was his son.”
“He has a son?” Sophie asked.
“No. But obviously you know he has a daughter. So that must be who he assigned—exactly as I’d been hoping. Thank you. You almost make it too easy.”
Sophie gritted her teeth.
Lady Gisela laughed. “Now now, no need for sulking. The more you work with me, the better off you’ll be. I assume you got the starstone?”
Sophie glanced at Fitz before she held the hairpin in front of the Imparter, letting the stone flash blue in the soft glow streaming through her windows.
Her feet itched to jump into the beam and go charging into Nightfall. But she knew they had to wait until they had a solid plan.
“So tell us what other security thing we’re missing,” Sophie demanded, “and everything you know about Cyrah Endal.”
Lady Gisela clicked her tongue. “If you’re in such a hurry, you shouldn’t have waited all night to hail me. First things first—does the Council know there’s an ogre princess serving as an elvin bodyguard?”
“What do you think?” Fitz asked.
“I’ll take that as a yes. And I’m assuming the fact that you have two goblins standing beside you means that they’ve agreed to accept the new arrangement with the ogres as well?”
“ ‘Accept’ isn’t the right word,” Grizel said as she stalked out of the shadows. “But the elves have always had alliances with the ogres, so it changes nothing.”
“Those sound like the words of your queen,” Lady Gisela noted.
They actually were. Sophie had overheard most of Sandor’s rather boisterous conversation with Queen Hylda after he’d gotten word that the Council was going to allow Ro to stay. And the queen’s final verdict had been that Ro’s presence in the Lost Cities didn’t violate any treaties. Unless Ro did something to prove herself an enemy to the elves—or to the goblins living among them—no action should be taken.
“Well,” Lady Gisela said, “it seems my plan is coming together quite nicely.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Glad to hear it.”
“You should be. It’s going to fix everything.”
“You can keep telling yourself that, but you couldn’t even get a message to King Dimitar without my help,” Sophie reminded her.
“And you did it, didn’t you?” Lady Gisela countered. “Delegating doesn’t make me weak. It makes me smart. Clearly you need to learn that.”
“She’s delegating to me,” Fitz reminded her.
“Yes. And you’re a poor substitute for my son.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of other ways to manipulate Keefe into ruining his life,” Sophie snapped back.
“His life isn’t being ruined. I’ve given him a purpose—I’d think the moonlark, of all people, could understand the difference.”
Sophie stopped herself from asking what purpose Keefe was being prepared for. She’d never get an honest answer.
But she couldn’t resist making a different plea.
“Leave Keefe out of this. He’s your son, not some genetic experiment, and—”
“What makes you so sure?” Lady Gisela interrupted.
Sophie’s throat went dry.
There’d been a time when she’d feared that the Lodestar Initiative was the Neverseen’s version of Project Moonlark, and that Keefe had run off to join them because he’d realized he’d been created as Sophie’s nemesis—but she never found any proof to validate the theory.
And Keefe had cracked up when he found out that’s what she’d been fearing, so she’d set the worry aside.
“You look pale, Sophie,” Lady Gisela noted. “Does that mean it would change things for you?”
“If you designed him to destroy me?” Sophie asked, before she could stop herself.
Lady Gisela laughed. “I love how you assume it would have anything to do with you. Do the math, Sophie—when my son was born, you didn’t exist. But the problems in our world did. And like it or not, my son is part of my solution.”
Silence followed, until Fitz shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Keefe doesn’t have any crazy powerful abilities like Sophie does.”
“He’s exactly the way he needs to be—or he will be, when he starts listening to me.”
“Well then, there’s your mistake,” Sophie told her. “Keefe doesn’t listen to anyone.”
“He listens to you.”
“Trust me, he doesn’t.”
“Ah. So that’s why he’s not there. Interesting. I suppose excluding him is the best punishment. Especially given your choice of replacement.”
“He’s not here,” Sophie corrected, “because these games you keep playing are slowly breaking him. And if you don’t stop, he’s going to shatter completely.”
“The thing you need to understand, Sophie, is that sometimes we have to break so we can rebuild ourselves into something stronger. Look at me. Fintan thought sending me to prison would destroy me. But I got myself out. And now I know I can survive anything. There’s a special kind of power in that.”
“The same power you’re using to betray the guards who helped you?” Sophie asked.
“I know you’re young and blissfully idealistic. But sooner or later you’re going to realize that there’s no such thing as loyalty.”
“Maybe for you,” Sophie argued. “I know plenty of loyal people.”
“Do you, now? I suppose you think the Vacker boy is one of them?”
“I am,” Fitz said, scooting closer to Sophie.
“As am I,” Sandor added, moving to Sophie’s other side. Grizel stood next to Fitz.
“All that means is that someone hasn’t found your weakness yet,” Lady Gisela told them. “Or perhaps Sophie is your weakness. Either way, all it takes is for someone to figure out where you’re vulnerable—and hit you there—and that loyalty will crumble. So you can either be the one exploiting people to your advantage, or risk that they’ll exploit you.”
“Is that what happened with Cyrah?” Sophie asked. “You used her weakness to force her to make the starstones you needed, and then killed her so she couldn’t tell anyone?”
“I’m sure you’d love that to be true. You’re so determined to assign me the role of villain in this story. Sadly, reality is rarely so one-sided. But we’ll get to that later.”
“That wasn’t our deal.”
“Actually, I very intentionally never gave a timeline for when our Cyrah conversation would happen. But you can unclench that jaw. I’m not going to stall the discussion endlessly. I’m just keeping the proper priorities. Right now I need a better idea of what the Neverseen are up to. And you need to find your family. So let’s focus on Nightfall for the moment, shall we?”
Sophie nodded, even though she hated herself for it.
Once again, she was allowing herself to be distracted from the bigger picture. But . . . she was so close to getting her parents back.
“Good,” Lady Gisela said. “Now, where should we start?”
“How about you tell us what Nightfall actually is?” Fitz suggested.
“I already have.”
“Saying it’s ‘the future’ doesn’t mean anything,” Sophie argued.
“It means everything. Nightfall is more than a place. It’s an idea—though I can’t take credit for it. At least not originally.”<
br />
“Who can?” Sophie asked.
“The oldest records I’ve found link it to Fintan’s new advisor. It was her focus—but she got herself arrested before she could make it a reality. And without her to spearhead it, the plan was forgotten—until I discovered her notes and realized the potential of her dream. It took me years—and some rather brutal sacrifices—but eventually I did what she couldn’t and carved the facility into the mountain. But I also made some amendments to turn Nightfall into what it needs to be. And when I was done, I realized that the world wasn’t ready for the change I’d be bringing. So I locked the door and sealed it away—I believe you saw that memory. Over time, I realized that something so crucial should have regular guards. And since the Neverseen were stretched far too thin, I had to invent an alternative.”
“Please tell me there isn’t some sort of robot army in there,” Sophie begged.
“Of course not. The creatures I designed are far more elegant.”
Sophie and Fitz shared a look.
“Are you saying you made some sort of . . . genetically engineered guard dog?” Sophie asked slowly.
“Don’t be silly. These beasts could swallow a dog whole. And I didn’t make one. I made three.”
Thirty-seven
FOR A GIRL created in a lab, I didn’t expect you to be so shocked by this revelation,” Lady Gisela said, breaking the silence that had settled over Sophie’s bedroom. “Especially since I never would’ve had the idea if it weren’t for your creators. Mind you, I’m not a fan of altering the genetics of our species—but I could see the advantage of designing a lesser creature to fit my security needs.”
Sophie was still trying to wrap her head around the idea when Fitz came to another realization.
“So you’re admitting you didn’t do any genetic experimenting on Keefe?”
Lady Gisela laughed. “Of course I didn’t manipulate the DNA of my son. Clearly you two have been spending far too much time with an order that disrespects elvin genetics. They may have given you some uniquely powerful talents, Sophie, but I’m not convinced you won’t later discover that their alterations have unanticipated consequences.”