CHECK IT OUT, BLONDIE!”
Sophie squinted, trying to focus on the fuzzy purple-gray shapes in front of her—but her eyes were still much too sleepy.
“Clearly you’re a grumpy riser,” Ro noted. “Another thing you and Funkyhair have in common—but tough! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
Ro yanked back Sophie’s covers and dragged Sophie’s pillow out from under her head.
Sophie grabbed another pillow and smacked her in the chest as Ro said, “There’s that Foster feistiness I’ve been waiting for! And much as I’d enjoy pummeling you in an epic pillow war, we’re wasting time! We have a plan to put together, some elf-y mysteries to solve, and a sulky boy to find! Plus, I’m starving. So get your scrawny butt up, throw on some clothes—maybe fix that hair because it’s not cute at the moment—and let’s do this! Oh, and what do you think of our new look?”
“Our?” Sophie asked, combing her fingers through some of her tangles as her eyes finally shifted into focus.
“Ta-da!” Ro held up Iggy with one hand and tossed one of her choppy pigtails with the other.
“You… match” was the only response Sophie could come up with.
Iggy’s fur and Ro’s hair were now deep shades of purple, blue, and gray, with each color fading into the next in an ombré effect. It reminded Sophie of the night sky, right before the stars appear—and it was definitely an improvement from the weird mermaid-tiger thing Iggy had going on before. But…
Keefe’s final gift was gone.
Just like him.
“I thought about coloring your hair too,” Ro said as Sophie focused on her tangles, hoping Ro wouldn’t notice how watery her eyes were. “But then I wouldn’t be able to call you Blondie anymore.”
“Where did you get the dye?” Sophie asked.
Ro patted her armored corset. “Secret pockets. I never go anywhere without pouches of microbes and packets of hair color. You know—the necessities.”
“Uh-huh,” Sophie said as Iggy flapped his batlike wings and flitted over to her shoulder.
He’d been so many colors at that point, she wasn’t sure if anyone remembered what his natural fur even looked like. But he was always happy about each change—and he really seemed to love this one. He kept spinning in circles, trying to admire himself from every angle.
Sophie scratched his fuzzy ears and asked Ro, “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to thoroughly search this place for all your embarrassing secrets. But you disappoint me, Blondie! No juicy diaries! No love letters from Fitzy! Best I could find was this.”
She held up a charm bracelet covered in little dangling hearts, as well as the note that had come with it. “Who’s Valin—and why have I never met this mysterious member of the Foster Fan Club?”
Sophie blinked.
She’d completely forgotten about Valin—and his awkward midterms gift.
“He goes to Foxfire,” she mumbled. “Or he used to. I don’t actually know where he is anymore. I haven’t seen him since I was a Level Two.”
“Is that because you broke his heart?” Ro asked, pointing to the Love, Valin signature on the card.
“No! If anything, he probably got freaked out by my kidnapping and started avoiding me.”
She’d also been banished for a while—and almost died a bunch of times. So keeping up with the other kids at Foxfire had been kind of a challenge.
“Or Hunkyhair, Fitzy, and the Dexinator scared him off,” Ro suggested. “I mean, that is some pretty steep competition.”
Sophie tried to decide if she wanted to lunge for the bracelet or smack Ro with a pillow again. “Is this seriously why you woke me up at the crack of dawn?”
“Uh, hate to break it to you, but it’s way past the crack of dawn.” She tossed the bracelet into Sophie’s lap and clapped her hands to raise the shades, letting in a flood of early-afternoon sunlight. “I let you sleep late because I also got an update from Gigantor this morning, and he told me about your little fire attack yesterday—high five for that, by the way. I thought you deserved a nice long rest after all that awesome butt-kicking. But you started making these pathetic little whimpery sounds, so I figured it was time for you to get up and do something instead of just having stress dreams. That’s also why I made sure that Iggy and I look extra fierce—to show you we’re not going to sit around moping about boys, or worrying about how those black-cloaked losers might be planning to retaliate. We’re going to start making some actual progress—on what, I don’t know yet. But we’ll figure that out! So hop to it, Blondie. We’ve wasted enough daylight. Plus, like I said—I’m hungry!”
“Glad to hear it,” Edaline called from the doorway. “I heard you were finally up, so I came to see if you two wanted any sweetberry swirls. I baked them fresh this morning.”
She snapped her fingers, and a tray of huge, buttery pastries appeared on Sophie’s bed. They looked like cinnamon rolls filled with some sort of reddish berries, and the tops were drizzled with cream and sprinkled with sugar.
“Delicious food mysteriously appearing from nowhere—now that is an elf-y talent I can get behind,” Ro said, shoving an entire sweetberry swirl into her mouth. She sprayed crumbs everywhere as she warned Sophie, “Better dive in quick, or I’m eating all these myself.”
Sophie couldn’t even think about food.
She stumbled to her feet, needing to move as she told Edaline, “Lady Gisela is a Conjurer.”
Edaline froze midsnap. “You’re sure?”
Sophie nodded. “Lord Cassius showed me one of his memories yesterday—one she’d tried super hard to erase—and I watched her conjure something and admit she’s been hiding the ability. I meant to tell you last night, but I got sidetracked.”
“Why?” Ro asked with her mouth full of another sweetberry swirl.
“Um, because you threw a huge fit after I brought us to Havenfield instead of to a Forbidden City to search for Keefe,” Sophie reminded her.
“No, I threw a fit because you abandoned our plan without discussing it with me, and without having another plan ready to go—but that’s not what I meant. I meant why would Lady Evilskirts want to hide the ability? Seems like she’d want to show it off so everyone would know how fancy and powerful she is—assuming conjuring is useful for more than food delivery.”
“It is,” Edaline assured her. “Though it’s also one of the more limited abilities. I can only work with physical things, and it doesn’t give me any deeper knowledge or insights.”
“Seems pretty useful to me,” Sophie told her, thinking of the hundreds and hundreds of times she’d seen Edaline snap her fingers. “And Lady Gisela told Lord Cassius that she’s hiding the ability because she wants to be underestimated.”
Ro snorted more crumbs. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! If you’re actually strong and powerful, you don’t need to be underestimated. That would be like me hiding my awesome muscles and acting like, ‘Leave me alone, I’m so weak.’ Forget that! I want everyone to know that if they mess with me, they’re going to get a good pounding. Then the scrawny ones won’t waste my time—and the strong ones will still get whooped because I’m amazing!”
“Yeah, well, this is Lady Gisela,” Sophie reminded her. “Everything she does is sneaky.”
“I think you mean wimpy,” Ro muttered, stuffing her mouth with another sweetberry swirl.
“That too.” Sophie turned back to Edaline. “How exactly does conjuring work again?”
Edaline snapped her fingers, making a bottle of Youth appear in her hands. “Everything is connected by invisible energy strings, and Conjurers are able to feel those ties and tug on them with our minds, dragging what we want back and forth through the void—but we have to be able to visualize exactly where something is or we won’t be able to move it.”
She snapped her fingers again, and two bottles of lushberry juice appeared on the tray next to the sweetberry swirls.
Ro grabbed one and took a long swig. “I can see how that could give Gisela certain tactical advantages.”
“Like what?” Sophie asked.
“Well, for one thing, she could conjure up weapons anytime—anywhere. Or better yet—conjure up some explosives. Think about it! One snap”—Ro snapped her fingers—“and anything she wants goes boom!”
Sophie really, really, really didn’t want to think about that—but now she couldn’t stop her mind from imagining the glittering elvin cities collapsing into piles of rubble. And then she realized something much scarier.
The same thing could happen at Havenfield—even with the goblin patrols everywhere.
One second everything could be bright and sunny. Animals grazing. Waves crashing.
Then some sort of explosive could appear out of nowhere and…
“Does conjuring work through force fields?” Sophie asked, wondering if Maruca was strong enough to form one around the entire estate. Probably not, since she hadn’t manifested that long ago—but Sophie wasn’t friends with any other Psionipaths.
Maybe the Council could ask one.…
“It depends on the force field—and the Conjurer.” Edaline stepped closer, taking Sophie’s hand before she could reach for her eyelashes. “I’m pretty sure I know what you’re worrying about, Sophie. And I don’t think you need to. None of the Neverseen’s attacks have ever involved explosives.”
“Yet,” Ro countered. “That doesn’t mean they aren’t saving them for their grand finale. I know you elves are used to solving all your problems with your weird little talents or endless boring conversations, but that’s not how you take over the world—and Gisela knows that. There’s no way this ends without some death and destruction—you get that, don’t you?”
Sophie sank down onto her bed, curling her knees into her chest.
It was a little easier to think about these kinds of horrors in a Sophie-ball.
Edaline sat beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
“Gisela went to great lengths to make sure no one knows she’s a Conjurer,” Sophie mumbled. “She has to be planning something huge—something only a Conjurer can do. And it must need to happen at a specific moment. Otherwise she would’ve revealed the ability by now. Think of how many times it could’ve changed the way everything went! She could’ve conjured up another net to stop us from escaping the first time she tried to steal Silveny, or—”
“Uh, couldn’t she have just conjured up Silveny?” Ro interrupted.
Edaline shook her head. “Conjuring only works on inanimate objects—nothing living.”
“Huh, I guess that’s good news—though it would’ve been nice if you could’ve snapped your fingers and brought home the Keefster.”
Edaline hugged Sophie a little tighter. “That would be nice.”
“Except then Lady Gisela could snap her fingers and grab him too,” Sophie felt the need to point out, even though it didn’t really matter. “But… she could have conjured up a weapon on Mount Everest instead of having to jump off the mountain and retreat. Or she could’ve conjured up something to defend herself from Brant and Fintan, instead of getting all those shamkniv scars on her face. Or she could’ve conjured up the key to her cell and escaped the ogre prison way sooner—”
“Uh, the locks are the first of many defenses,” Ro cut in. “I still don’t understand how she got out—even with help from traitors. But whatever. Speaking of keys, I’m actually surprised she didn’t conjure up those annoying metal puzzle pieces that Keefe spent hours and hours playing with. Didn’t they turn out to be the key to that Archetype thing she wanted you all to get for her from Nightfall? And come to think of it, couldn’t she have just conjured up the Archetype and saved everyone a lot of trouble?”
“Not if she couldn’t picture exactly where those items were,” Edaline reminded them. “Especially if she doesn’t have a lot of practice using her ability. It took me years to learn what cues I needed to focus on so I’d be able to reach the things I need.”
“Plus, I don’t think she actually cared about her Archetype,” Sophie added, mostly to herself. That was why she’d felt okay letting it burn with the rest of the storehouse.
Hopefully that wouldn’t turn out to be a huge mistake.
“But she could’ve conjured up something to stop Linh from saving Atlantis,” Sophie added. “Or something to restrain Tam in Loamnore after Glimmer set him free from his ethertine bonds. I could keep going, but I think you get my point—if she’d been using that ability, she would’ve had much bigger victories.”
“Not necessarily,” Edaline insisted. “For one thing, conjuring can drain tremendous amounts of energy if you don’t do it right. But let’s also not forget that if she’s not in the habit of using the ability, it likely wouldn’t occur to her to rely on it. How many times have you looked back at a situation and realized it could’ve gone differently if you’d used your abilities—or skills, for that matter—but didn’t, because you spent so much of your life having to hide them?”
“Maybe,” Sophie conceded. “But… Lady Gisela is way too calculating for her to not have a good reason for hiding the ability for this long. I mean… she probably manifested when she was a teenager. That’s a long time to wait.”
“I’m with Blondie on this one,” Ro agreed, devouring the final sweetberry swirl and swiping the crumbs off her lips. “I’m sure she’s holding out for some big, dramatic moment, when revealing the power will let her do something awful that no one will be expecting.”
“Any idea what that could be?” Sophie asked, turning to face Edaline. “Can you think of any situations where being a Conjurer would give you a huge advantage? Especially if no one knows you are one?”
“It’s hard to say. I would never use my ability for something like that.” She snapped her fingers and made a second plate of sweetberry swirls appear. “But… I’ll think about it.”
“You’ll need to really think like an evil, murdering psychopath,” Ro warned. “Otherwise you’ll never get anywhere. You have to get in her head—figure out what makes Gisela Gisela. In fact, let’s see if we can get you to embody her a little better. Close those big blue eyes.”
Edaline sighed but did as Ro asked.
“Good. Now tilt your chin up the same snotty way she does,” Ro told her. “Set your jaw, and pull your hair back so tight, it looks like it’s stretching your face. And remember: You used to be elf-y pretty, but now your skin is super wonky because of all the surgeries you had to cover up your scars.”
Edaline nodded and twisted her amber hair into a painful-looking bun as she sat up straighter, angling her nose toward the ceiling while turning her face slightly away from everyone.
The changes were subtle, but somehow she didn’t look like the Edaline Sophie knew anymore.
She looked cold. And rigid. And angry.
“Perfect,” Ro said. “Now try to imagine yourself insisting that everyone call you Lady—and correcting them if they don’t. Imagine seething deep inside because everyone is less than you, but you can’t show them your full greatness—yet. You have to wait for the right moment, knowing it will take years of planning and sacrifice. Imagine choosing to marry someone like Lord Cassius—”
“She chose him for his DNA,” Sophie interrupted. “She wanted a powerful Empath.”
“Yeah, but there have to be other powerful Empaths that are better than that guy. And she picked him knowing she’d have to kiss him.”
Sophie groaned. “Ugh, can we please not talk about Lord Cassius and kissing?”
“Fine—let’s talk about a more important piece to the Gisela puzzle. Imagine treating your son like an experiment. Planning and strategizing and manipulating everything about him—even before he was born—mostly so he can make you look better. Imagine watching him grow up, knowing what you’re going to put him through. Lying to his face over and over. Erasing his memories if you slip. Then finally strapping him to a dwarven throne, slamming a crown on his head, and forcing a Flasher and a Shade to blast him with shadows and light until he’s almost dead—all so he can fulfill his mysterious legacy.”
“She only forced Tam,” Sophie had to remind her—even though she’d kinda sorta started trusting Glimmer.
She also almost blurted out that Keefe might have one more step to endure in his mother’s experiment. But it didn’t feel right to share that news until she’d broken it to Keefe and let him decide what he wanted to do.
“That doesn’t matter,” Ro told her, leaning closer to Edaline. “Think about how patient you’d have to be. How cruel. How calculating. Then remember that everything you’ve done so far is part of a bigger plan—your chance to finally take control in some sort of epic climax. And ask yourself, how would conjuring help make your ultimate dream come true? What would you—and only you—be able to do?”
Edaline squeezed her eyes tight, and Sophie counted the passing seconds—but after only a hundred nineteen, Edaline shook her head and slumped into a slouch.
“I’ll keep trying,” she promised, untwisting her hair and letting it fall loose around her shoulders. “But it’s not an easy question.”
“It isn’t,” Ro agreed. “If it were, we’d have already figured it out and Lady Gisela would be dead.”
Dead.
The word shouldn’t have hit Sophie so hard.
She knew that was how this had to end.
But it sounded so… brutal.
“Don’t worry, Blondie. When the time comes, I’ll happily be the one to make sure she never breathes again,” Ro promised. “You just need to find her for me and get me a clear shot—preferably before she does too much more damage.”
“I’ll try,” Sophie and Edaline said together.
“You’re gonna have to do more than try. We need an actual plan—not just the goal of making one. And believe me, I know how hard it is to do that, so let’s take it one small step at a time. Maybe it’ll help if we think of it more like a to-do list. What’s one thing we can do right now that would actually be an accomplishment?”
Sophie sat on her hands so she wouldn’t tug on her eyelashes. “Well… I guess I can check in with Silveny. See if she’s made contact with Keefe yet.”
“Works for me!” Ro said. “I also wouldn’t mind chatting with some of your patrols, to make sure they actually know how to protect the borders of this place, in case the Neverseen are planning some revenge.”
“My soldiers are well prepared for anything!” Sandor snapped from the doorway. “Even the things you were just discussing, in regards to this new ability. There’s nothing capable of completely surprising me.”
Ro grinned. “We’ll see.”
They argued about tactics the whole way down the stairs, and Sophie did her best to tune them out. Somehow it sounded like too much and not enough all at the same time. But as she stepped outside to find Silveny, she realized that Sandor’s security patrols did at least need to improve their communicating. Because there were all her friends, standing among the pastures, waiting for her.
And they did not look happy.