Archive of Our Own

“I got you something.”

Keefe plops down beside Sophie, stirring up panakes petals and blocking the light she’d been using to read. A mischievous grin tugs at his lips, and she can’t help the smile that fights its way onto her own. She doesn’t want to, either, has learned time and again to appreciate every moment of peace and joy like it’ll be the last.

Even near six months later, six months of peace, she still holds tight enough to choke.

“Well?” Keefe asks, nudging her, and Sophie realizes she’s been staring. He looks at her intently, intensely. He’s freshly showered, the roots of his hair not quite dry yet, and she has the urge to reach up and muss it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with Dex?” she says instead, putting her book to the side after she’s glanced at the page number.

Keefe makes a moue. “That’s all you have to say after I bravely escaped his explosive experiments so I could come and grace you with my beautiful presence?”

Sophie shoves at him, laughing. “You’re ridiculous.”

Keefe lets her, grinning. “You love it.”

Sophie turns to face him, straightening the soft lavender fabric of her tunic. “Okay. What did you get me?” A slight breeze wafts through Calla’s panakes, cooling the anticipation burning under her skin.

Keefe entwines their fingers. “A kiss.” He puckers his lips, and she rolls her eyes. Then leans in, placing her other hand against his cheek, and meets his mouth with her own. Keefe’s breath tickles her, his hand on her side for balance, and it’s as novel as that first day in the grove. It always is. Warm and easy and comfortable, a giddy rush building in her chest, reverberating between them until she leans back.

“Is that all?” she says, suppressing a smile when Keefe actually looks wounded. “Oh, please. Your ego is not that fragile.”

“Guilty.” Keefe repositions himself so they’re both leaning back against Calla’s panakes, pressing their legs together. Sophie can’t help taking the opportunity to rest against him, her head on his shoulder. He’s warm, almost hot, beneath her, steady and real. “But I do actually have something for you.”

She lifts her head. “You do?”

“I do.” Keefe reaches into his pocket, and she’s not sure what she’s anticipating, but then he pauses. “Close your eyes.”

“...why?”

“C’mon, Foster. I promise it’s not a tarantula.”

He’s using his pleading face, wide eyes and his bottom lip sticking out, slightly shiny with traces of Sophie’s chapstick. “I’m holding you to that,” she warns, but her heart’s not in it. She closes her eyes, screwing up her face as her heart dances with the gentle pull of Keefe’s hand on hers. There’s fabric rustling, and he undoes their fingers to hold her hand out in front of her.

Something cool and smooth slips over her skin, clacking together as the bracelet’s beads shift and settle into position.

“Okay, open,” Keefe says, and she does, holding her arm before her to inspect it.

Sophie gasps, twisting her wrist back and forth to see all the beads. Each one has been intricately painted, the details so tiny she has to squint to make them out. She recognizes fairy wings and mouse ears, tridents and a golden ring, a blue police box and a sign for 221B Baker street, a dozen tiny snapshots of a world she’s left behind but carried deep in the core of herself.

“Keefe…” she manages, but can’t think of what else to possibly say. She’s too busy inspecting each and every illustration, running her fingers over the smooth gloss and wondering where he even learned about most of these. “You painted all of these?”

She knows the answer already, but wants to hear it.

“Dex has been helping me find some of the references I used, but otherwise…”

There’s a faint flush over his cheeks, making the freckles he’s earned from the sun stand out. Sophie runs through the beads again. “How did you even know half of these?”

Keefe shrugs. “You’ve mentioned them before.”

Sophie stares at him for a moment, then tackles him.

Keefe starts, the breath knocked from him as Sophie wraps her arms around him and squeezes tight. He’s disoriented for a moment, then realizes what’s happening and squeezes back. Her face is pressed to him, and he can smell the sweetberry shampoo she used that morning mixing with the aroma of the panakes.

Her fingers press against his back, cool compared to his flush, a welcome balance. Her breath is light against the skin of his neck, and he can hear the smile in her voice when she speaks.

“Thank you. Seriously--it’s amazing.”

Keefe smiles into her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple, careful to be gentle. Buzzing warmth radiates from her everywhere their skin touches, fluttering through him to replace his earlier nerves with relieved satisfaction. He wasn’t sure she’d like it, wasn’t sure he’d gotten the images right. He’s still not sure what a sure lock is, let alone who lords over those rings, but he knows they meant something to Sophie. Still do, if in different ways. And that’s enough.

He squeezes again. “I mean, obviously it’s amazing. But if I’d known you’d react like this, I’d have done it sooner. I’ll have to make you things more often.”

Sophie pulls back, cheeks pink and her nose scrunched. “You don’t have to do that. I can’t imagine how long this took.” Weeks. Months.

“I had the time. And it was worth it.” A strand of hair falls as she shakes her head in protest, and he tucks it back behind her ear. He lingers there for a moment, dizzy.

Sophie makes a face. “I’ll get you something back to make it even.”

“Oh?” Keefe grins. “Now that I have to see.”

Sophie’s distracted, looking through the beads again. She’s stopped on one of his favorites, one of the few he actually understands because she took the time to explain it when he’d worn the dark knight’s symbol on a shirt. “I can’t believe you remembered. I mean--” she gestures between the two of them, tapping her temple “--not like that. But it was so long ago and we had so much else going on.”

“Uh, I would never forget the awesomeness of Batman.” Nor the cute scrunch to Sophie’s brows as she explained it, the faint self-conscious embarrassment and exasperation he’d teased out of her.

He still misses the clarity of those days, the zings and shivers she’d sent through the air. The dull ache he’s been left with without “completing” stellarlune, whatever that meant, wasn’t ideal. But he’d take it over creepy experiments any day, all day. Even if Foster fretted.

“What even happened to that shirt?”

Keefe shakes his head, opening his mouth to speak, but a faint ringing stops him. It’s only a momentary lapse, and he presses on. He’s used to it. Product of being a poorly-managed experiment. “No idea. It wasn’t with my things when the Black Swan sent them back. I think they stole it. I always knew they were shady.”

Sophie laughs, exactly as he wanted, settling back in next to him. “I’ll get you another Batman thing to replace it next time I visit Amy. I promise.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that, Foster,” Keefe says. “It better be spectacular.” Anything she gets him would be, but saying that sounds too sappy.

She’s about to say something when she cuts off, her eyes going unfocused and her head turning ever so slightly to the side. Her shoulders drop as she listens to whatever transmission she’s getting. A moment later her face screws up and she rolls her eyes, shaking off the fog. “Sorry, the twins are being so loud today. I can barely think.”

“Bangs Boy is pretty annoying,” Keefe agrees just to watch Sophie shove at him, and it’s worth the flash of vertigo. He catches himself on a hand and takes a breath, ignoring it. Sophie stands, brushing petals from her clothes and smoothing her hair.

She offers him a hand and he takes it, letting her pull him up. She’s smiling, already looking around for where the alicorn twins are.

Keefe falters. The vertigo from a moment before multiplying tenfold, and he inhales as everything fuzzes and jumps about.

“Keefe?” Sophie’s close, bracing him, and Keefe can’t quite think but he’s already talking.

“I’m fine. Just tired.”

A faint buzz of concern emanates from where she’s grabbed hold of him. “We can stay here if--”

Keefe waves it off. “It’s nothing, Foster. C’mon, let's find those tiny rascals so they stop bugging you.”

Sophie hesitates another moment, and he puts on his best smile. Everything’s still slightly wobbly, but it’ll pass. It always does. He can’t take it easy every time he gets a little dizzy. He’d never get up if he did. She reluctantly accepts it, but holds tighter to his hand as they set off through Havenfield’s pastures.

He’s not sure where Edaline and the Gradynator are--he didn’t see them when he arrived. Just Sophie under Calla’s tree and a host of gnomes bustling about. It’s still strange to have no goblins around. He almost misses Gigantor’s squeaky voice and the reassurance someone was looking out for Foster. He’ll just have to make sure nothing happens to her--not that she can’t take care of herself, because she could, but he’d be dead before he stopped trying to make it easier for her.

Sophie’s mumbling to herself about bothersome little alicorns and their disregard for privacy and irresponsible parenting, and he’s kind of listening, but he’s mostly paying attention to how the afternoon sun lights up the gold in her hair. That, and putting one foot in front of the other.

She notices him watching and cuts off. “You didn’t hear anything I said, did you?”

There’s a fond undercurrent to the exasperation. He blows her a kiss with the hand she isn’t holding. “I was distracted. Can you blame me?”

“You’re ridiculous.” She reaches to tug at an eyelash, but stops halfway. “There they are. Finally.” Her brow creases and her lips purse as she marches towards Wynn and Luna, who come rushing up to meet them. He wonders what she’s saying, how she’s chastising them. He can imagine it, given how often he’s been on the receiving end.

“Are you being annoying?” Keefe asks Wynn, who shoves his face under Keefe’s hand. “If it were anyone but Miss F, I’d be complimenting you.”

Sophie groans, scratching Luna’s nose. “They want to play. It’s like they don’t realize they’re huge now and will trample me if we play like when they were little.”

“Aww, don’t listen to her,” Keefe says. “We can still play.”

Wynn knickers, nudging Keefe in the arm like he can understand him. Keefe winces, but covers it with a laugh. He grins as Wynn gets rowdy, bracing himself against the increasing nudges. Wynn goes to butt him, and Keefe twists.

It’s like lightning. Striking him in an instant, all-consuming. He can’t think, can’t breathe.

Everything spins, and Keefe hits the ground.

“You’re not fine,” Sophie argues, pacing between the cots at the Healing Center. It’s been slightly rearranged, new cots and shelving, a different assortment of plants, new photographs in the attached office. But even though she hasn’t brushed with death in months, the place is still familiar as the back of her hand.

Keefe isn’t listening. She knows it. He’s barely cooperating with a worried Elwin, waving away balls of light and offered elixirs.

“Foster--”

“You collapsed in the middle of the pastures! That’s not fine, Keefe.”

Elwin adjusts his glasses. He removes them, wiping the lenses with the corner of his dragon-covered tunic. “She’s right, you know.”

Keefe screws his face up to argue, but Sophie can’t help lingering on how pale he seems. She never should’ve let him convince her he was fine. She knows--she knows--how bad he is about things like this. She should’ve pushed harder when he wobbled that first time, should’ve insisted they sit right back down and rest.

“Fine,” Keefe finally relents, leaning back in the cot and staring at the ceiling. “If it’ll make you feel better. But I’m fine.”

“You will be,” Elwin promises, and Sophie latches onto the words. Elwin’s incredible. She’d be dead a thousand times over if it weren’t for him. He’s brought her back from the brink of death, from fading and burns and exploded bones. Keefe’s in good hands. He’ll be fine.

She paces anxiously as Elwin runs through tests, ignoring Keefe’s attempts to joke his way through it. Until Elwin gives the all-clear, she refuses to feed into his avoidant ways.

“I was just tired,” Keefe insists. “So I got a little dizzy. That’s all.”

Green and pink balls of light linger around his head. Elwin switches them through the spectrum. “Have you been sleeping alright? More nightmares?”

“Nightmares?” Sophie asks, glancing at Keefe.

He has the good sense to look a little sheepish. “Only sometimes. They’re not a big deal. You know what it’s like, Foster.

Unfortunately, she does, but still…”Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I told you--they’re not a big deal. It’s nothing.”

“Keefe…” she says, dragging the word out. Before she can really dig into it though, Elwin makes a noise. “What’s wrong?”

Elwin shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“Not you too!”

Elwin cracks a smile. “No, no. I mean I can’t find anything wrong.” He circles around Keefe one more time. “I’ve checked everywhere. Nothing looks wrong. A little tired, yes. Your cells could use a little rejuvenation, but I’m not finding anything else.” He goes to his shelves, pulling off a couple bottles. “You probably were just tired. These should help you get back on your feet. That, and taking it easy for a day or two.”

“You’re sure?” Sophie has to ask, tentative relief calming her frayed nerves. She sinks onto the cot next to Keefe, scrutinizing him as if she’d have any idea what to look for. She should really get around to asking Elwin to teach her the basics.

“Told you, Foster,” Keefe says, downing the elixirs. She half-expected him to fight even that, and she isn’t sure what to make of his cooperation.

“Well,” Elwin admits, “There’s never 100% certainty. I’m not perfect. But for the moment I’m not worried. And I’ll keep an eye on him--even if it annoys him.” He shoots Keefe a fond glance, and Keefe scowls.

“And you’ll let me know if anything changes?” she confirms.

Elwin nods. “And I’ll let you know if anything changes. Tell you what--I’ll update you tomorrow even if nothing has changed, okay?”

“Thanks, Elwin.” She blows out a slow breath. Worry still nags in the back of her mind, but she trusts him.

“Anytime, Sophie. Do you need anything yourself since you’re here? No headaches or anything?”

She shakes her head. “Nope. All good still.” She shifts her attention to Keefe, who’s stayed unusually quiet. “Promise me you’ll behave.”

“You know I never do,” he says, blowing her a kiss. Which is exactly as she expected, but she rolls her eyes anyway. She can’t quite bring herself to be annoyed at him, the image of him collapsing still too fresh in her memory. His face softens. “I’m fine, Foster.”

“You better be,” she says, standing to cross to his cot.

He’s warm when she wraps her arms around him, and Elwin backs up a little to give them space. Keefe squeezes her back, pressing his face into her hair like he likes to. His lips are soft on her cheek. She returns it, turning her face to kiss him properly.

When she finally stands she looks him over one more time. She’s not sure what she’s looking for, but she forces her eyes away. Elwin has him.

“Say sorry to the twins for me,” Keefe says. “And hi to Mama Glitter Butt.”

“I will,” she promises, holding up her home crystal. “I love you.”

“Love you too, Foster,” she hears as she glitters away.

“Now that we don’t have an audience you’d like to protect,” Elwin says, settling into where Sophie had been sitting, “Anything else you’d like to tell me?” He has a brow raised.

“I don’t know what--”

“Yes, you do,” Elwin insists. “We both know you don’t like to worry her. So now that it’s just you and me…how bad is it really? You can be honest.”

Keefe groans, leaning back against the pillows, picking at a stray thread he’s found in the covers. “I’m fine, Doc. You just said nothing’s wrong.”

“I said I couldn’t find anything. But I’m not perfect. Did the anti-vertigo help at all?“

It had, actually. But if he said that he was admitting there was something to be fixed in the first place, and there wasn’t. So what he got a little dizzy? And sometimes had a headache? And blurry vision? And his whole body felt heavy and achey? He’d been through a lot the past few years--of course he was tired.

“Yes. It did a great job turning everything upside down, and--kidding,” he says when Elwin frowns. “I’m all good now, Doc.”

Elwin hums, studying him for a moment. “Well, I can’t make you talk. But I’m here when you’re ready to. For now I want you taking the rest of the night easy, just to be safe. And yes, I’m going to hold you to that,” he says before Keefe can even think of protesting. “Now, ready to go home?”

Keefe knows a losing battle when he sees one, but he’s still tempted to fight it anyways. But still he nods.

Elwin nods back and begins gathering his things. “Do you have a crystal? I forgot mine.”

“Yep,” Keefe says, lifting the crystal to Splendor Plains around his neck. Keefe fiddles with the angles, the clean cut planes familiar. Home.

“Alright, then we’re good to go,” Elwin smiles. He adjusts his bag over his shoulder and glances around the room one last time for anything he’s forgotten. Not that it’ll help. Most of the time Elwin forgets at least one thing every time they leave, but Keefe doesn’t mind.

Elwin holds out a hand and Keefe takes it, getting to his feet to stand in the fading sunlight from the window. For a moment the room spins, the blood rushing to his head. Elwin’s grip on him is firm, and he warns him to go slow. Keefe brushes it off, raising the crystal to the light and gathering his concentration.

They step through, and it’s lightning. Spinning. Breath he can’t catch.

“Keefe? Keefe?”

He’s on the floor. When did he get on the floor? It’s cold and reflective, Keefe’s face slightly distorted in the different colors. He stares into his own eyes, but he’s shaking. No--someone’s shaking him.

Elwin has his hands on Keefe’s shoulders, then his face, checking his temperature, his pulse. Static bursts under his skin everywhere they touch, a confusing jumble of temperatures and feelings that aren’t his own. He can’t translate any of them--fear? Delight? Exhaustion?

“I’m…fine,” Keefe finally manages to say, wincing at the lights around him. His head pounds and the room spins, and Elwin’s right in front of him asking questions.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” A hand on his head, his shoulder, his cheek.

Keefe opens his mouth to respond and shakes his head, but that only makes it worse. He clenches his teeth, sucking in a deep breath. It helps, marginally, so he does it again. And again. Until the room stops spinning and he can sit up straight again.

Splendor Plains’ foyer is dark, Keefe and Elwin on the floor, and he’s not sure how he’s going to talk his way out of this, but he clears his throat to try.

“Don’t even try,” Elwin warns. He has his glasses on again and is frowning, frustrated. He reaches for Keefe again and Keefe flinches, remembering the static feeling, the wrongness, the jumble of untranslatable something. “Talk to me, Keefe.”

Something’s wrong with his empathy. Again. More than before. It’s been messed up since Loamnore, since he ran away to the Forbidden Cities and turned everything off inside him, since her and now it’s catching up to him.

“Nice of you to worry, Doc,” he starts. “But--”

“Nope! No jokes right now. You just collapsed after a single leap--after collapsing at Havenfield, too. Do you think you can stand?”

The thought turns his stomach and he’s not quick enough to hide his grimace.

“Here, I’ll help,” Elwin says, shifting to help pull Keefe slowly to his feet. Keefe braces himself against the wall, trying to play it off, but it’s difficult when you’ve just collapsed twice in one afternoon. “Alright. We’ll get you to your room so you can lay down somewhere more comfortable,” Elwin says, proceeding to do exactly that.

Keefe doesn’t even want to fight it. Right now he wants nothing more than to sink into the pillows, maybe down a sedative to knock him out until all this is gone, and let sleep absolutely dominate him. He doesn’t care what it takes to get him there.

He tries to lighten the mood, but Elwin refuses to rise to his jokes, and Keefe isn’t paying attention to what his own mouth is doing.

His bed is still unmade from that morning, blankets already pulled back making it all the easier to crawl in. Exhaustion and relief overtake him, and he’d be happy to lay there for eternity, except Elwin is still there. Worried.

And Sophie…Elwin had promised to update Sophie, and she’d already freaked herself out enough.

“I still can’t find anything,” Elwin says, and Keefe realizes he’s been running more tests while he’d been laying there with his eyes closed. “But don’t worry--we’ll figure this out.”

“There’s nothing to figure out,” he mumbles into the pillows. “We all knew my mother’s creepy experiments would fail eventually.”

He can hear the frown in Elwin’s voice--or maybe he can feel it. He’s not sure. “You’ve lost me.”

Keefe cracks his eyes open to glare down at his hands. Being horizontal is helping him think a little clearer. “My empathy’s been weird for months. It was only a matter of time before something else went wrong.”

“You think something’s wrong with your empathy and that’s what’s causing this?” Elwin flips through a few more colors of light.

“What else could it be?” Keefe counters.

“Well, at least you’re admitting something’s wrong. That’s progress. But I don’t know that I like that defeatist attitude of yours.” Elwin shakes his head. “We’ll work on that later. Are you in any pain?”

Keefe shakes his head, even though it isn’t quite true. But he just wants to sleep, and says as much.

Elwin sighs. “I’ll leave these here just in case.” He sets a few elixirs on the closest bedside table, shuffling aside papers and colored pencils to make room. “You know where to find me if you need me. I’ll check on you too, okay?”

He closes the blinds, casting the room into a comforting darkness. “Don’t give up yet, Keefe.”

“I won’t,” Keefe lies.

It takes until almost mid-afternoon for Sophie to hear anything from Elwin or Keefe, and it nearly drives her out of her mind. It’s impossible to sit still, and she spends the day moving between all the pastures, throwing herself into anything and everything Grady and Edaline could possibly need help with.

That, interspersed with constantly checking her imparter to make sure she hasn’t missed any hails.

To keep herself from ripping out every eyelash she has, she fiddles with the beads on her new bracelet. Which her parents have pointedly not asked about, but she’s caught them looking a few times. Edaline in particular with that sappy smile of hers, but Sophie can’t bring herself to even be embarrassed by it when she remembers the sound Keefe made when he fell. Like all the air in his body had left.

When her imparter finally sounds its chirpy little alert, Sophie almost drops it in her haste to answer. Edaline silently takes over where Sophie was helping with the afternoon feeding.

But it’s Dex’s face filling the screen instead.

“Hey, Soph--Sophie? Everything alright?”

Sophie shakes her head, trying to bring her face back under control, but she’s never been very good at that. “Sorry--I thought you were someone else. I’m waiting to hear from Elwin.”

Dex immediately sits up, on alert. “Why? Is someone hurt?”

Sophie steps away from the pasture, sinking to the ground a few away. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. Something might be wrong with Keefe, but Elwin couldn’t find anything yesterday, so…” She blows out a breath, trying not to panic, but it’s hard. With a history like hers and Keefe’s, it’s hard not to think the worst.

In particular, it’s hard not to think of that one particular argument she and Keefe had had all those months ago.

Sophie couldn’t make Keefe complete stellarlune. She couldn’t make him go through that final stage his mother had planned. He was the one who’d have to endure and live with it, so he was the one who got to choose.

Even if Sophie disagreed.

Even if Sophie explained every possible pro and con and risk and reward.

Even if Sophie outlined exactly why she thought he needed to, with evidence.

Keefe still got to say no.

And Sophie respected that. She did. She really, really did. She understood exactly what it was like to be experimented on, and the kinds of complicated feelings and decisions that came with it. But…she’d also only gotten better when she’d taken the risk. Otherwise she’d still be broken and malfunctioning and a liability.

Which Keefe knew. But then he’d say that the Black Swan was a lot smarter than his mom, and while it had worked out for her in the end--mostly--that didn’t mean it would for him. In fact, he was probably only still alive because he hadn’t done it, but thanks for worrying, Miss F.

And then Sophie would say it wouldn’t be his mom doing it. It would be them, and they would be careful, and different, and better.

And then Keefe would say all they could do is what his mom already outlined, so it would be no different, and no better, no matter how careful they thought they were.

And then Sophie would--

“Sophie?”

Dex. She’s talking to Dex. She’s at Havenfield, in the grass, leaning against the fence of an enclosure, talking to Dex. She takes a deep breath and shakes herself out of it.

“Right. Sorry. What were you saying?”

Dex gives her a patient smile, and it helps--a little. “I was saying that Elwin can fix basically anything. Keefe will be fine.”

“But Elwin couldn’t see anything--and he just…he just collapsed. He would’ve hit his head if I didn’t catch him.” Sophie’s panicking, and she knows it, but she doesn’t know how to stop. Her nervous system’s still wired to the extreme even months later, and usually Keefe helps her, but Keefe--

Dex blows out a breath. “That…does sound scary,” he admits, and Sophie’s heart clenches. “But at least wait to hear the update before you start freaking out too much, okay? Maybe Elwin hasn’t reached out because they’re almost done fixing whatever the problem was, and everything’s fine.”

“Everything’s fine,” Sophie repeats, trying to believe it. She chants it like a mantra through the rest of their brief conversation, through their goodbyes and promises to talk later, until her heartbeat calms and she can see straight again.

Dex made a good point. She just has to wait for the update, whatever it is.

Though she hates waiting.

Sophie stares at her imparter, still warm from her conversation with Dex. She’s wanted to do this all day and barely held herself back. But it’ll calm her nerves to know what’s going on. “Show me Elwin Heslege.”

Elwin doesn’t immediately pick up, which isn’t surprising. But her hail continues to ring and ring.

It goes to voicemail. Or whatever elves call it. Sophie doesn’t care, because Elwin never misses a hail. She tries again, and this time Elwin picks up.

“Elwin? What’s going on?” He looks a little frazzled, his glasses slightly askew and his hair looking like he’s run his hands through it. He’s wearing the same tunic from yesterday and Sophie’s heart starts to race. All of Dex’s assurances fly out the window. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it? Can I come over?”

“Sophie,” Elwin says. He straightens his glasses and glances to the side. “Sorry I missed your first hail. I know I promised you an update. I hope you haven’t been worrying too much.”

“What’s the update?” She reaches for an eyelash, but forces herself to stop and sit on her hands halfway. She’s lost enough this morning already.

Elwin blows out a slow breath, like he’s trying to find the right words, which isn’t comforting in the least. “It’s not what I’d hoped,” he admits, and Sophie can’t breathe. She’s already up and heading back towards the house, towards the leapmaster. “He’s okay now. We’ve gotten the vertigo mostly under control, but it got worse after you left. It might have something to do with his empathy, because he says it’s acting weird, but there’s not much I can do when it comes to abilities. They’re too endemic to your genetics.”

Sophie knows that better than anyone.

“I told him this would happen,” she says, pushing open the front door and beelining for the stairs. Fortunately, her parents are still out in the pastures, so there’s no one to slow her down with questions and worries and consolations. She can and does make right for the spiral staircase, taking them so fast she loses her breath. “Why does he never listen?”

The second part’s mostly to herself, but Elwin answers anyways. “We didn’t know for sure. It was a fair choice, considering what we knew at the time.”

Sophie’s at the leapmaster now and calls out for Splendor Plains. A plan’s starting to form in her head. Has been there, if she’s honest, for months. Just in case. She doesn’t have all the details worked out, doesn’t know how she’ll make her cooperate. But she will. Keefe’s going to absolutely hate it, but this is too important.

She’s not losing him.

“You can’t be serious, Foster.” Her hair’s pulled back from her face, a simple braid she’s copied from the bark of Calla’s panakes. A few pieces have fallen out from the gentle breeze, and the pink skies behind her would be picturesque if she weren’t saying the things she is.

She’s been a little off the past week. Even with the strange static from his empathy he could pick up on it. The way her eyes lingered on him intensely, the small frowns she thought he wasn’t noticing, the increase in eyelashes stuck to her cheeks after she’d pulled them off.

He’d assumed, like an idiot, it had something to do with Elwin not being able to fix him. That she was being a mother hen and worrying too much. It had been a little sweet, or would have been, if he wasn’t trying to convince her he’s fine.

Because he is. Well, he’s not, and never has been. But it’s not worth the effort to fix him. There’s no way to fix everything wrong with him, and so it’s not worth it to try, so he’s fine. He can live being a little dizzy sometimes. He can live with a mild headache--Foster did it for seven years.

And yet she’s sitting in front of him, looking perfect, and amazing, and sweet, and she’s saying, “Your mom is the best chance we have to fix your abilities.”

He shakes his head, which makes the base of his skull ache, but he doesn’t let it show. “We spent forever tracking her down so we could lock her up. I’m done with her. Forever.”

Sophie leans forward. “You don’t have to talk to her at all! I’ll do the talking and the memory searching. I’ll go by myself. Well,” she amends, “or with whatever guard the Council makes me take. But you don’t have to be there at all.”

“That’s not the issue!” he argues. “The issue is you want to talk to my evil, traitor mom. You know working with the enemy never works out. We don’t need her. There’s nothing to fix.”

“Elwin said you have to take an anti-vertigo every time you leap,” she counters. She presses her lips together, and her voice softens. “You’re not…broken, Keefe. But you can’t ignore this.”

It’s cute she thinks that. Because he definitely, absolutely can. He has been for months. Actually, no he hasn’t. Because there’s nothing to ignore, because he’s fine! He almost says as much again, but he knows that will just set them off on an entirely separate path, and he really doesn’t want to go down it.

He’s so, so grateful that she still worries about him. That she cares enough to, after everything he’s done. But he doesn’t deserve it. He tries a different angle.

“You can’t honestly think the Council will let you talk to her.”

Sophie winces, and he knows he’s found the weak point in her plan. “If I make a good enough argument, they will.”

Keefe shakes his head. “Nothing you say will convince them to wake up the worst villain the Lost Cities has ever had from the somnatorium.”

“I’ll convince them,” she says. “I’m about to go to Eternalia to talk to Bronte.”

Keefe’s heart picks up. She has a meeting scheduled? She’s way more serious about this than he realized. “I’m going with you.”

“Keefe,” she tries, but he insists.

“It’s about me, Foster. If you’re talking about me, I should be there.” It’s playing dirty and he knows it, but he has to. Sophie’s too smart and determined--way smarter than him. It’s the only chance he has to put a stop to this before she gets too in her head and decides to break his awful mom out herself, all to try and fix something that isn’t even a problem.

So what he’s gotten a little dizzy after a few leaps? Foster’d had that problem for months back after she’d first faded. And yeah, she’d eventually gotten it fixed, and she was also way more resilient than him, but still.

Sophie reaches for his hand, interlocking their fingers. “Okay,” she relents. “You can be there. I’m not trying to make decisions for you, Keefe. I’d never want to do that to you.” She shifts and scoots closer, pressing their sides together and resting her head on his shoulder. Her skin is slightly chilled, or maybe he’s flushed. His chest tightens, and he can’t help leaning into her. “But I’m not going to pretend like she isn’t a viable option--maybe the best option.”

She’s always the optimist. Seeing potential in people when it isn’t there. Willing to take the chances and risks no one else would. He’s not sure if it’s from growing up with humans or if it’s just something about her. He loves it, would follow her lead anywhere, take any risk she asks of him.

Except this.

She gets…extra impulsive, sometimes. When it comes to him. Keefe turns, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. If it were anything else, it’d be sweet. “The Council still won’t let you.”

“I’m not gonna let them stop me.” She squeezes his hand as she says it, intending to be encouraging.

All it does is worry him.

Sophie hasn’t been back in a Neverseen hideout in months. Not since that final raid, the chaotic dash of days when everyone was working day and night to finally, finally cross the finish line. Flashes of explosions and knife edges overlay her memory, and somewhere deeper she can faintly feel the weight of ropes tying her wrists down, smell that cloying sweet haze.

But she shakes it off, straightening her spine and stomping through the empty halls.

Her friends are talking behind her, discussing a plan to spread out and systematically work through the place. Not that there’s much to see anymore. Dozens upon dozens of people have combed through every hideout a hundred times over. There’s barely even any dust, that’s how thoroughly the place has been scrubbed for anything and everything they could find.

Sophie doesn’t have the patience for another methodic sweep. They’d done that at the last hideout yesterday. And the one a few days before that. And the one a few days before that.

It’s all so stupid.

If they would just let her talk to Gisela, everything would be so much simpler. Something is wrong with Keefe’s abilities, and Gisela was the one who was playing God with his genetics. So if Elwin doesn’t know, then she’s their best option.

Sure, Sophie’s not happy about it. She’d be happy to let Gisela rot for the rest of eternity for everything she’s done if she could--well, as happy as she can be. The somnatorium still weirds her out. But that aside.

She doesn’t particularly want to have to rely on Gisela, and she doesn’t want Keefe involved in the process if she can help it, because he can be…impulsive. And vulnerable. When it comes to his mother.

Ideally they’d just wake Gisela up for maybe a day maximum, under heavy guard, and let Sophie and Fitz search her mind to find exactly what they needed. They probably didn’t even need to wake her up fully--in fact, it might be easier if she’s still slightly sedated so that she can’t try and trick them. Her defenses would be less volatile.

But no. Apparently that’s, “Absolutely out of the question. How could you possibly suggest that?”

They’d offered to give her access to Ruy, Gethen or Trix, maybe Fintan, but none of them had been part of Gisela’s stupid plans. Sophie could try talking to them, but she doubts it’d be any help.

So now they’re stuck going back through all the Neverseen’s old haunts, hoping there’s something left behind that can clue them--or rather, Elwin--in to what to do to help Keefe.

Keefe, who is currently trailing behind her like a puppy, letting her have her little tantrum. He doesn’t look bothered in the least, and that, more than anything, infuriates her. It’s his health! It’s his life! How can he be so passive about it?

She’s not sure exactly where she’s going, not really looking at anything right now. She turns swiftly around a corner, entering a round room with bunked beds and a central table. The mattresses don’t have sheets and the table doesn’t have chairs, but she circles the space anyways.

Or she starts to, until, out of the corner of her eye, she catches Keefe falter for a moment. He catches himself on the wall and straightens like nothing happened, continuing on.

Sophie circles back, silently linking their arms together. Concern takes the edge off her anger, though Keefe would deflect if she spoke it aloud. Instead, she takes a deep breath, and starts a methodic search through the room.

She looks through cleared shelves, testing them for false backs and hidden compartments. She flips mattresses to look for notes, runs her fingers along the seams for secret pockets, checks the insides of the metal framework for anything stored. She tests every square inch of the floor, tapping her foot to listen to the echo, to see if any part is hollow. She pulls at the trim in the rooms, gives herself a crick in the neck staring at the ceiling for any cracks or hidden edges.

Keefe puts his hands to the walls, testing panels for give, and even closes his eyes to try and sense any lingering energy in the room. But she can tell his heart isn’t in it. Or maybe he’s tired…he couldn’t keep his eyes closed very long before he lost his balance, though he tried to hide it. She wonders how much else he’s hiding, and renews her search with vigor.

They switch rooms with Dex and Tam. Dex has a handful of gadgets he’s been using to scan the place, and Tam has his shadows, so maybe they’ll find something. She doubts it. They haven’t found anything in any of the old hideouts they’ve searched yet.

It’s not surprising, but it only hammers in how much of a waste of time this all is.

“Anything?” Fitz asks when Sophie and Keefe circle back to the entrance. He’s on the ground and has peeled back some of the floorboards, but there’s nothing underneath.

“Nothing,” she grumbles, joining him on the floor.

Keefe lowers himself next to them, too, and she can’t tell whether his flush is from exertion or something else. “Told you this was a waste of time,” he says. “We should’ve all gone and rigged Leto’s office with stink bombs. It’s summer break; he’d never expect it.”

Fitz puts the floorboards back in place and gives Keefe a look. “Knowing you, he probably would. It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d do.”

“Which is why,” Keefe counters, “you should join me. You’ll add a level of Fitz-ness to it that’ll throw off the trail.” He considers for a moment. “Dex would be the best, though.”

“Best for what?” Dex asks. “And why are you all on the floor?”

Keefe pats the floor, and Dex sinks down. Linh isn’t far behind. “Stink bombing Leto’s office.”

“He won’t be in his office for a while,” Linh points out.

“That’s the point,” Keefe insists. “Then, when he comes back for next year, he’ll be completely surprised. Because who wants to go back to Foxfire during break? He’ll never expect it.”

Sophie shakes her head, though there’s faint smiles around the group. Before she can say anything, though, Biana interrupts.

“Hey, guys?” she calls from down the hall. “Are you seeing this?”

Sophie’s immediately on her feet, stepping over people in her haste. It takes her a moment to locate Biana, but she’s with Tam in one of the strangely long rooms with a window looking into the crowded forest outside.

Biana’s not looking at the view, though. Her back’s to the window, and she’s squinting at the opposite wall, which is completely blank. But Tam’s also frowning at it, tilting his head slightly.

“What is it?” she asks, heart racing. The rest of the group’s footsteps approach in a horde, and Biana gestures her closer.

Biana grabs her by the hand. “Stand right here. Doesn’t that spot look weird?”

Sophie lets herself be maneuvered, and Tam steps out of the way to let everyone else crowd around behind her. She stares where Biana points, her back to the window too. It’s a plain wall, this room entirely empty. All that’s left of the Neverseen are the scuffs on the floor where furniture used to be, highlighted by the scattered streams of light struggling through the canopy outside the window.

Except…there’s a spot in the wall, close to the ground, that looks…off. Just ever so slightly. She can’t even explain what’s wrong with it, but something about how the angle of light is hitting it catches her attention.

“What is that?” Linh asks, stepping to the side. “You can only see it from this angle.” “And only when the light hits it,” Tam adds. “The sun wasn’t hitting it earlier and it looked totally normal.”

Keefe squints at it. “How does that even work?”

“Let’s find out.” Sophie steps forward, keeping her eyes trained on the spot in case she steps out of the right spot to see it. She kneels next to it, a spot on the wall no bigger than an inch in height and width, and pokes it.

Her finger disappears through the wall as if she were a phaser. She can’t see through it, but, “There’s a little cubby.”

Keefe comes to crouch next to her. “Just so you know, that looks super weird.”

Sophie agrees, but she’s too distracted by what her fingers land on tucked a few inches into the wall. She pinches it and pulls it out, letting the crystal fall into her palm, tilting it to show the room. It’s rounded with a slight point, the clear crystal frosted and cloudy.

“A leaping crystal?” Fitz asks.

“To where?” Biana adds.

Dex scoots around Keefe to poke at the weird illusory wall, or whatever trick was used to pull it off. He frowns, glancing at the window--and then making a small noise of pain when he stares directly into the sunlight.

“Only one way to find out,” Sophie says, gripping the leaping crystal tight.

Keefe grabs for her wrist as if he expected her to just hold it up then and there on the floor. “Bad idea, Foster. You don’t have Gigantor anymore.”

“It’ll take forever to find any goblin,” she argues. “Plus, there’s no one left of the Neverseen to even run into. Everyone’s locked up.”

“That we know of,” Biana corrects.

“If there’s anyone left free they’ve done nothing for months. You seriously don’t want to know where this goes?”

Tam shrugs, but Dex says, “I do. How did everyone miss this? I swear a hundred people must’ve checked this place--including us. I honestly didn’t think we’d find anything. We haven’t anywhere else.”

“I’m going,” Sophie announces, standing. “No one else has to come with, but we have to know where this goes.”

Keefe stands too, and she doesn’t miss the way his eyes flash for a moment with vertigo, though he plays it off for everyone else. Sophie isn’t even sure everyone knows why, exactly, it’s so important they follow this. Keefe keeps insisting he’s fine. “Of course I’m coming, Foster. But I’m not exactly an example of good ideas.”

“I’m coming too,” Fitz promises. “But we should still be careful. Just in case. I’ll have my home crystal ready in case we need to leap away immediately.

They put him on the end of the chain to keep his hand free, everyone else falling in line between the two of them.

“Like old times,” Dex mumbles, patting his pockets to make sure his favorite gadgets are in easy reach.

Tam scowls. “I did not miss this.”

Sophie ignores him, lifting up the mystery crystal to pull them all into the light.

The light bores through the back of Keefe’s brain, setting off an awful throbbing at the base of his neck. When they rematerialize, he can’t even see where they are through the blur in his vision.

He stumbles a step and is faintly aware Sophie’s squeezing tight to his hand, that she’s letting him lean on her. Voices fade in and out, and he has to take several deep breaths before he can make any sense of which voice belongs to who.

He’s incredibly grateful they do not appear to be immediately leaping away, because he thinks if he tried to leap right now he’d pass out.

“Keefe?” he hears, a soft voice right next to his ear. The voice he’d recognize anywhere. “Where’s that elixir Elwin gave you?” He can feel Sophie’s hands gently patting him down, searching for the bottle. She finds it after a moment and goes to spray a dose under his nose, but the bottle’s empty. He’d run out a couple days ago and hadn’t bothered asking for a refill.

“You worry too much, Foster,” he says, mostly intelligible. Their surroundings are starting to clarify--he can make out grass, and flowers scattered throughout. He can feel the sunlight on his skin, the increased humidity in the air. He’s not sure when they sat down, but he pushes to his feet, forcing his legs to hold him up even as everything greys out for a second.

Fitz glances at him, looking him over for a second before turning back to their surroundings. “I don’t recognize this place,” he says. “I thought we got all of their hideouts.”

“I did too,” Dex adds.

Sophie hooks an arm around Keefe, trying to be casual about it, but he knows what she’s doing. Static burns under his skin where her fingers dig in, a disjointed mess of emotions threatening to pull him under again. Fear? Rage? Elation? He can’t make sense of any of it.

A simple stone cottage sits in the middle of the field. He’d think it were human built if it weren’t for the leaping crystal that’d brought them there. It has a simple wooden door with a window to the side, flowers overgrown into weeds in the box beneath it.

“Do you think there’s an alarm?” Biana asks, hesitating a few steps away from the front.

“Give me a second,” Dex says. “Even if there is, who would it alert?”

They all watch as Dex approaches. He lays his palm flat against the wood, and Keefe takes a deep breath. The pounding in his head isn’t easing, and things are starting to wobble again. But he needs to focus.

“Huh,” Dex says when the door swings open. “It wasn’t even locked.” He tentatively leans in, and they can all hear the echo when he calls out. “It’s completely empty.”

“But we didn’t empty it,” Fitz frowns. “So, what? They just have a completely empty cottage in the middle of nowhere?”

Biana follows after Dex, scooting him to the side to walk in. “It can’t be completely empty. There’s another room over here.”

“Let me check for traps first!” Dex calls, following her, and the rest of them trail after.

Sophie sets a slow pace, making them the last of the group. Her eyes are slightly glazed. “I can’t hear any thoughts anywhere near here--except for us, of course--can you?” she calls to Fitz, who slows down to stop next to them. He reaches for Sophie’s hand and their rings snap together, and Keefe keeps his mouth shut.

A moment later they let go. “Nothing,” Fitz confirms. Which is as expected, but it’s still disconcerting that they’ve somehow, in all the months since, missed an entire hideout.

He’d bet anything his mom’s behind it somehow.

“I’m not picking up anything tech,” Dex says as Keefe and Sophie follow Fitz inside.

“Oh, it’s completely empty,” Keefe says, turning slowly to look around. Even that threatens to upset his balance, but he grits his teeth and pushes through.

He’d figured it’d be like where they just came from--mostly stripped, but a few bare bones left. But there’s not a single thing inside the cottage--in either of its two rooms. There’s stone walls and stone floors and a stone roof, and that’s it. Unless you counted the slight layer of dust over the floors.

“There has to be something,” Sophie insists, and he can tell she wants to scour the place from head to toe, but she refuses to let go of him. Under different circumstances he’d love that, but he knows it’s mainly because she’s worried he can’t stand on his own. “You’re not picking anything up, are you? No shadowprints or anything?” she asks, turning to Tam.

They all watch Tam sweep the entire place--it’s not big, so it doesn’t take long. There’s nothing.

Sophie taps at the floor under her feet, but it sounds solid. No secret passages beneath. She glances at Keefe, and he lets go of her, leaning casually back against the wall to free her to move. Her arms drop awkwardly for a moment, but she moves through the rest of the space doing the same with help from Linh and Biana.

Everything sounds like it’s being filtered through an entire ocean of water. Keefe’s stuck on the inside of a bubble, the world blurry and distant. He regrets, distantly, not asking Elwin for a refill of whatever it is he’s been taking when he leaps to keep him on his feet. He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed it.

But he can’t let it show.

“You scanned everywhere, right?” Sophie asks, coming up beside Dex to peer at his assortment of devices over his shoulder. She takes one from him, and Keefe isn’t sure what it does, but Sophie starts waving it around in the air. It beeps periodically, but doesn’t alarm.

“Maybe there was something we missed outside?” Linh offers, but it’s skeptical. Still, they all dutifully file outside and circle around in the grass, spinning around like idiots, because there’s nothing to find.

Keefe starts to circle the outside of the stone cottage, leaning against the walls as he looks for any symbols or weird holes like where the crystal had been stored. But there’s just stone and mortar, rocks and dust, overgrown vines and wide leaves soaking up the sun.

It’s a little warm. A lot warm, actually. Keefe wishes he hadn’t worn full sleeves, because he can feel himself flushing.

Sophie comes up next to him, looking him over critically, so he straightens through the dizziness.

“There’s nothing here,” Keefe says, a firm declaration. At least he thinks it is. Alarm crosses Sophie’s face and she immediately grabs him, sending a jolt of static through him that turns his stomach.

Fitz glances at him, as if surprised, and his brow is furrowed.

“Woah,” Dex says, coming around the corner. “You don’t look so good.”

It’s really warm. When did it get so warm? Keefe looks to the sky for a moment, as if there’ll be a second sun to explain it all away.

It’s lightning. Something hits the back of his head. Someone calls his name.

There’re faces in front of him, leaning over him, and he realizes he’s on the ground. They’re indistinct, formless, overshadowed by the sky behind them, but one of them must be Foster. He just can’t figure out which one.

He tries to say her name, but he can’t hear his own voice. Can’t get enough air.

Everything is dark.

“If you try to say you’re all better again, I’m going to knock you out myself,” Sophie threatens.

Keefe looks at her like a pathetic puppy from his place on the couch where Elwin has wrapped him up in blankets and surrounded him with various stuffed animals. Sophie can recognize a lot of the species from living at Havenfield, but several are still complete mysteries to her.

“But I am all better now,” he insists, because his favorite thing in the world is to be difficult. “Elwin said so himself.”

Sophie crosses her arms and glares. “He said you were stable, not that you were better. And it took a full three days to get you there. Almost four.”

She barely slept the whole time, camped out at his bedside as Keefe tried to shrug off all of Elwin’s help and get right back to his feet.

“You’re cute when you’re mad,” he says, smiling slightly, and Sophie wants to roll her eyes so hard they fall out of the back of her skull. “What? You are!”

“This is serious, Keefe,” she says, sinking opposite him on the couch. “It’s getting worse--don’t you dare lie to me. I know it is.”

There’s a constant tremor in his hands he thinks she hasn’t noticed. His cheeks have taken on a permanent rosiness, except for when he stands and all the blood drains from his body until he’s pale enough to blend in with the clouds outside.

“I just missed a few doses of Elwin’s little elixir spray. It won’t happen again,” he says. “And since that was the problem, I’m all better now.”

Sophie doesn’t even dignify that with a response, scowling at him across the couch. Keefe lets out a breath and leans forward, reaching towards her, and it’s more to keep him from overdoing it than actual acquiescence that has her crawling closer like he wants.

Keefe shifts the blanket so it’s around her, too, and it’s a little too warm with two bodies, but she won’t complain. She wraps her arm around him, scooting in close, and Keefe presses a kiss to her temple. She wants to hold on to her anger, but fear underlaces all of it, and she gives in.

Gently, she turns Keefe’s face to press their lips together. Soft and slow. Keefe’s hand is on her cheek, tucking her hair behind her ear, and she tries to believe it will all be okay, but she doesn’t know how to fix this.

She’d thought, with that tiny cubby in the wall and the leaping crystal that surely--surely--that had to mean something. There’d be something new there, something they could use. She’s not sure what, exactly, that would look like. But she’d have known it when she saw it.

But there’d been nothing, nothing, and nothing, and then Keefe had started slurring his words and collapsed again, and there were right back where they’d started. Worse, even.

She’d have to work with what she already knew.

Stellarlune was Lady Gisela’s project, one she’d worked on for years. It used the natural forces of the world to bring out someone’s potential. It used shadowflux and quintessence. It used, apparently, a secret seventh element that’d never been named. At Elysian’s there’d been a field of a unique kind of rock that could absorb and store this seventh element. That element was a key part of the final step to stellarlune.

Keefe hadn’t taken that step. At least not then.

But those rocks are still there, even if Elysian the person has vanished without a trace. Maybe if Sophie went back, she’d learn something. Even though the Council had said the location was off limits indefinitely. Now that she knows where that giant dome is, she can teleport around it.

“You’re scheming, aren’t you,” Keefe says, and Sophie realizes she’s gone all quiet. She gives him a quick kiss, hoping to mollify him.

“I’m being smart about it, I promise.”

“You’re very smart,” he agrees. “You’re the smartest person I know. Almost smart enough to pull off the Great Gulon Incident without getting caught. But it’s okay. I can walk you through it.”

Sophie smiles. “I’m not going to fall for your distractions.”

Keefe sighs. “Okay, fine. If we’re being serious, what are you planning now? Because I’m going to be part of it--I don’t care what you say. I’ll cling to your legs if I have to, but I’ll be there.”

Unfortunately, she probably would need him there. She’d have no idea if anything in Elysian’s field would react with Keefe unless he was there for it to react to. She couldn’t exactly bring Elysian to him.

“Fine,” she says, pretending to capitulate so he won’t press further and will instead think he’s already won. “You can be there…but you’re not up for it right now. So we’ll wait until Elwin says you can leap again. And then you will take it easy, okay? Otherwise I’m going without you.”

Keefe grins. “So bossy. Fine, Queen of the Universe. We’ll do it your way.” He goes to say something else, but his lashes flutter. He tenses around her for a moment, trying to regain his sense of equilibrium, and his mouth snaps shut. Sophie squeezes him like she can hold him together, and after a moment he blinks hard and refocuses on her. “I’m good.”

He isn’t. He hasn’t ever been, really. But she’s not going to argue with him about that right now. She’s going to wait a few days for him to save up his energy, and then she’s going to take him to Elysian’s field, and they’re going to fix it.

And if that doesn’t work…well. If the Council won’t get out of her way, she’s done a prison break before.

With a lot of help, and with a lot of injuries, but she likes to think she learned from the experience. It’s a last resort, but like she told Keefe, she’s not going to pretend like it isn’t an option.

“You’re scheming again,” Keefe says, a faint whine in his voice as he jostles her.

“I’m just thinking,” she protests. “What’s so wrong with that?”

Keefe leans against her, resting his head on her shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

“That that color looks good on you,” she says. And it’s not exactly a lie. She had noticed it immediately when she’d walked in, when Elwin finally cleared Keefe for visitors. Well, not all visitors. He’d given the clear for Sophie to visit.

Keefe smiles, mischievous. “Like what you see, huh?”

It’s a buttery soft deep navy, white embellishments ringing the cuffs and neck. She hasn’t seen it before, but she likes it. She runs a hand down the sleeve, smoothing out the fabric where it’s gotten twisted. “I do,” she admits. “But you already knew that.”

He’s going to say another stupid quip, so to get ahead of it, she turns his face towards her and kisses him again. Longer. Harder. Again. Enough to forget, for a moment, everything else.

He lets her.

Sophie can’t tell whether the light leaping or teleporting is worse for Keefe. Even with two full weeks of bed rest--or, for Keefe, two weeks of half-resting because he wouldn’t sit still for the original one week Elwin prescribed him--he doesn’t look that much better.

The rosiness is still there, as are the frequent wobbles. She’s paying a lot closer attention now and making sure he doesn’t skip any doses of anything, making sure he doesn’t run out and put off telling Elwin for days like last time.

Still, she wishes she could’ve left him wrapped up cozy at home at Splendor Plains and done this part herself.

It was one of her smoother landings, but she still takes a moment to straighten her jerkin and get her hair out of her face. Not that it helps at all. It’s a bit windy today, brisk gusts sweeping over the expansive fields Elysian had called home for more centuries than Sophie could imagine.

She’s not there anymore. Hasn’t been for months, and no one’s sure how, or where, she disappeared to. Given how well she’d hidden the first time, Sophie’s not sure they’ll be able to track her down for another several thousand years.

But she’ll worry about that in a minute.

“Okay, so the rock quarry was this way,” she says, hooking her arm into Keefe’s. They’re not supposed to be here--the Council has been incredibly, incredibly difficult and cagey when it comes to this place, and she’s sure they’ve got eyes and sensors all over it. So she’s brought the smallest group she could.

Herself, Keefe, Marella, and Dex. Just the four of them. And Dex already has an obscurer in hand, just to be safe.

“So we’re just…looking around?” Marella confirms as Sophie starts off. She wants this over as quick as possible. “Like with everywhere else?”

“Basically,” Keefe says, who is still a little annoyed with Sophie for bringing them here. When he’d insisted on joining her she hadn’t told him where, exactly, she was going. But she refuses to acknowledge it or be sorry.

Sophie nearly loses her balance on a rock, and Keefe stumbles since they’re attached. She straightens. “This is where the power for stellarlune is stored. There could be something useful here.”

“Was stored,” Keefe corrects, fixing his hair, which the wind is sending all askew. “But the window passed.”

Sophie’s trying very hard not to think about that. The twelve day window of opportunity from months and months ago that had passed them by. Or rather, that Keefe had refused to acknowledge was even happening.

But why should she trust what Vespera and Lady Gisela had to say? This place is weird and confusing and buried in a thousand mysteries and misdirections and lies. It’s entirely possible--reasonable, even likely--that they got something wrong.

“I guess it doesn’t hurt to look,” Dex says. “We did find that crystal at that hideout even though we thought we’d scrubbed it top to bottom.”

“Except that we’ll get in a lot more trouble if anyone finds us here,” Marella points out.

Sophie picks up the pace. “So let’s hurry then.”

They pass through the giant stained glass dome, circling towards the quarry. Everything’s cast in shades of red and deeper red, a few hints of orange peeking through alongside more red. But more importantly, it’s not as windy now that they’re inside it.

It takes them a bit of searching, and each minute that passes has Sophie more nervous. Keefe keeps taking deep breaths he thinks she doesn’t notice, and when he stops moving he sways for a moment.

“Is this it?” Dex asks when they find the dry patch of rocks. “This is it, right?”

“Yep,” Marella says, popping the P. “Super exciting.”

Sophie stares at the rocks, kicking a small one with her foot, just to see what happens. Nothing happens. No sparks or pulses of light, no smoke or weird sounds or anything at all. It’s a rock. “You don’t feel anything in them?” she asks Marella, letting go of Keefe just long enough to pick up a hunk.

Marella squints at the rocks, then takes the chunk from her to twist and look it over. She walks out further into the patch, kneeling down to hold a hand over the ground. A few long, long minutes later, she shakes her head. “Nothing. I mean, there’s the general heat from the sunlight that does get through the glass, but I can’t feel any of the special heat I used to burn the Noxflares. Even when I try my hardest.”

Sophie reaches for an eyelash. “Okay…well, I guess that’s not surprising. You’re not seeing anything either?” she asks Dex.

Dex joins Marella in the middle squinting at the rocks. He pulls some sort of contraption from his pocket, a mess of wires and gears he used to scan all the Neverseen hideouts. He tinkers with it for a moment before walking in a wide circle with it aimed at the ground. “Nothing.”

“I told you,” Keefe says, nudging her. Is it just her, or does he sound breathless? “There’s no point being in this weird place.”

Sophie ignores him. “And you’re not feeling anything? Even when we get closer?” she asks, pulling the two of them to where Marella and Dex are standing. “It’s not any better?”

She studies his face as if she’ll be able to see anything. It’s such a long shot--there’s no reason any of this would work at all except stupid, flimsy hope she can’t bring herself to let go of. She’s exhausting leads and running out of leads to exhaust, grasping at straws for anything to fix him.

He doesn’t look any different. There’s still slight bags under his eyes, his cheeks are still too red, his hands are still too hot in hers. She can see him trying to control his breathing, see him widening his stance marginally to try and disguise the flashes of vertigo that aren’t going away. He should be at home, in bed, but even that won’t actually help. It’s the only reason she was willing to bring him along, but it won’t matter if this doesn’t fix it either.

“Didn’t Vespera say the energy was only here for those like two weeks?” Marella asks, dusting off her knees as she gets to her feet. “Wasn’t that why those weeks were so crazy?”

“Yeah,” Sophie admits, frustration laced with no small amount of panic building in her chest. These rocks are stupid--useless. .

But Elysian spent millennia here. She had a history with them--with this place. If only she weren’t who knows where hiding from the Council--the Council, who are still not relenting in their firm belief Sophie should not be allowed anywhere near Lady Gisela under any conditions, even though she’s explained it’s urgent a dozen times. Even though if it weren’t for Sophie, there wouldn’t be a the Lost Cities anymore.

Elysian’s house is still here, though. And even though that has also been combed through a thousand times, it was done by a much smaller, much more restricted group of people. They’d missed that crystal all these months, and more people had checked those rooms. Maybe they’d missed something here, too. Not that Elysian would be able to shed any light on what Gisela was trying to do, but maybe something about this place or her time here could help them fill in the remaining gaps.

“Where are you going?” Dex asks as Sophie links her arms through Keefe’s again, starting them off across the field.

“Elysian’s house,” she calls back. “I just want to check it again since we’re here.” She can hear Marella’s groan, but it’s shortly replaced by quick footsteps as they follow along behind.

But Keefe falters for a moment, flinching in her hold and almost knocking her over. His jaw is clenched and his eyes bright, and he’s breathing heavier. He hasn’t been making nearly as many jokes or taunts.

She slows down, and no one says anything about it. She’s starting to think teleporting was much, much worse than the leaping was. He won’t tell her if she’s right, but she can feel it. She doesn’t think he realizes how tight he’s holding onto her; she’s losing circulation in her fingers.

She can see Elysian’s house not much further, and it takes everything in her not to run to it. To stay steady, to be the coordinated one, to leave her eyelashes where they should be. The grass is overgrown around the stepping stones scattered in the grass, flowers coming up in the cracks.

The windows are dark, the curtains closed. It’s completely and entirely silent, and she knows there’s no one inside, but still she holds her breath when she reaches for the door handle.

It’s locked.

She jiggles the handle, but it doesn’t budge, and she groans. Seriously? It’s an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere that only like…two dozen people even know exists! Maybe three, and that third hasn’t even seen the place! Why would they ever need to lock it?

“Let me,” Dex says, scooting her aside. They switch places and Sophie returns to Keefe’s side, who’s leaning against the porch railing.

“This is a waste of time,” he says, putting his arm around her. Her heart clenches. The movement’s slightly wide and uncoordinated, jerky, and the edges of his words are blurring together again.

She says, quiet, “You should take another dose.” She pulls a small vial from her pocket, about the same size as her pinky finger. She’s taken to carrying it around herself, since she knows Keefe is most reckless with himself.

“We’re in the middle of--okay, okay! Fine,” he says, because they’ve had this argument several times over those two weeks of recovery, and he has learned that she will win. Every time. He pops the top and downs the contents, grimacing at the taste, and Sophie turns back towards where Dex fights with the lock.

“We could just break one of the windows,” Marella suggests. “That would get us in faster.”

“You will do no such thing,” a stern voice says, and all four of them jump. Sophie recognizes it even before she turns. It’s one of the people she’s most frustrated with at the moment.

Councillor Emery’s face is furiously set, and Bronte’s isn’t much better behind him--both of which are nothing on Alina’s absolutely disgusted expression.

“We were very clear, Miss Foster,” Emery continues, narrowing his eyes, “about the restrictions on this place.” He always avoids saying its name, even all these months later. Like he’s afraid of its power. “Imagine our disappointment when we received notification of someone on the premises.”

Alina huffs. “Speak for yourself. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest.”

Bronte steps in. “Whatever your reasons for the four of you being here, this is entirely unacceptable.”

Sophie glares at the both of them, stepping forward to confront them. “Whatever my reasons? I’ve told you a dozen times stellarlune isn’t finished and we’re running out of time, but none of you seem to care! It’s not my fault I had to take matters into my own hands--like usual.”

“All members of the Neverseen have been apprehended and stopped,” Emery says. “You know this. You were an invaluable assistant.”

“Assistant?” Dex scoffs, offended on her behalf.

Keefe adds, “You couldn’t…have done anything. If it weren’t for…for Foster.”

Sophie’s heart drops out of her chest. She rushes back to his side. “Keefe?”

He’s slumping over the banister and Dex is trying to support him, but it’s an awkward angle. Keefe’s lashes flutter. He’s burning when she gets her hands on him--she can feel it even through his tunic. Even though he’d just taken a dose of Elwin’s fix. She’d watched him. That had been why it was so bad last time--because he’d stopped taking it. That was supposed to be the reason.

“Hail Elwin,” Dex is telling Marella, and Sophie can’t think. “So he’s prepared.”

Keefe is falling apart in her hands, has been falling apart in front of her for weeks and she has been completely and entirely helpless to do anything about it. Nothing Elwin’s doing is helping. He can’t change genetics. No one even really understands what Gisela did to Keefe’s genetics, let alone how to help him.

They’d found that crystal, but it’d lead to nowhere. They’d come to Elysian’s field, but it didn’t change anything. And even if they got into Elysian’s house it’s all so stupid.

There’s not going to be anything there. It’s a waste of time to even try, but no one was letting her do anything else! Even this isn’t allowed. She’s getting in trouble for doing things that aren’t even worth it.

Marella’s talking to Elwin and Dex is reaching for Keefe’s home crystal to Splendor Plains, and she can hear the Councillors arguing amongst themselves. She’s so sick of it all.

Dex whispers to her, “I’ve got him.” Dex disappears with Keefe and Marella, and Sophie’s staring at the space where they used to be and aching.

Her eyes trail down to her wrist, to her favorite bracelet, and she traces her fingers over the hand-painted beads.

“If you don’t let me talk to Lady Gisela,” she says, her mouth moving faster than her mind, and it’s like she’s hearing the words from someone else. “I’ll tell everyone about Elysian. I’ll tell them everything.”

There’s a beat of complete silence. Then the Councillors start up their stupid arguing a moment later.

“Absolutely not,” Emery snaps.

Bronte tries, “I know you’re distraught--”

“This is a massive overreaction--”

“I’ll tell everyone about Elysian,” Sophie continues like they haven’t spoken. “And I’ll tell them about Nightfall and why elves really separated from humans. And I’ll tell them about the secret database in Lumenaria. And I’ll--”

“Enough!” Emery says, reaching to pinch the bridge of his nose. “The sudden revelation of these truths would bring complete turmoil to our world right when we’ve finally regained peace. You know this. It’s why you agreed to let us gradually disseminate necessary truths as we deemed appropriate for our people.”

Sophie pushes back to her feet and whirls on him in one smooth motion. “Keefe is dying. I don’t care about your stupid political speak. Let me talk to Lady Gisela.”

“Elwin can treat any ailment,” Alina dismisses, and Sophie sees red. “It sounds like he’s already being brought in to deal with the situation. It’ll be handled momentarily.”

“Elwin’s already tried! He’s been trying for weeks and it hasn’t helped!” She turns to Bronte, one of her most faithful supporters. “It doesn’t have to be for long. She doesn’t even need to be fully awake. I just need a chance to search her mind for how to fix him. That’s it.”

Bronte’s shaking his head. “No one is ever woken from the somantorium.

“Of course not. It’s a ridiculous idea,” Alina scoffs.

“Please,” Sophie says, ignoring her. “You can have whatever security you want. But I have exhausted every other option. If Keefe dies, it’s on you.”

“It’s not on--”

“You are the ones blocking us from vital information!”

Emery looks at her for a long moment. “You have no intention of letting this go, do you, Miss Foster?”

She shakes her head. “I meant what I said. If you don’t let me…” She lets the threat dangle. Lets them fill in the gaps of what, exactly, she’s willing to do to get them to cooperate.

“Threat’s from a child,” Alina says, opening her mouth to say more.

Bronte cuts her off. “You truly would undermine all our efforts over this?”

Sophie nods. “I would.”

Emery lets out a long, frustrated sigh. She doesn’t care. “It appears we have much to discuss,” he says, and for the first time in weeks a spark of real hope flares. It’s fragile and tentative, but it’s there.

Keefe will hate it. Completely and entirely. And she can’t even blame him for that. She’d feel the same in his situation.

But she isn’t in his situation.

And there is nothing--nothing--she would not do to save him.

Keefe isn’t sure how much time passes. Everything’s foggy, faded, disjointed. A deep, sharp ache has settled into every cell of his body. He’s aware of each breath he takes, the exact shape and planes of his lungs, the location of every muscle and tendon and bone he owns.

He’s not sure where he is, if he even is at all. He remembers…he remembers a ringing sound. There was something important happening but he couldn’t hear it over the ringing. The world narrowed to a tunnel, and someone was arguing. Someone was grabbing him, because jolts of static lightning coursed through his nervous system and fried it all to ash.

It’s still ash, and so is the taste in his mouth, but the thought of washing it away with anything has his stomach curdling.

He’s floating, weightless nothing interspersed with moments of shocking lucidity. Balls of light floating above him. The heavy weight of blankets pinning him down. A small, furry creature curled up on his chest.

Brown eyes.

Those eyes are important. He knows it deep, deep in his core, but he can’t connect it to any concrete memory. He holds tight to the image of them, of the crinkled brow and tear-stained face they sat in. It keeps him company as he floats, aching, aimless.

Then, static. Sharp and cutting. It infects him, draws him back, and he can think again. Slower, and foggier, but coherent.

He’s in his bedroom at Splendor Plains, the walls decorated with in-progress sketches and shelves of knick-knacks he’s started to accumulate from his friends. There’s mini alicorns and scowling gulons, mementos from trips and adventures. And a whole shelf dedicated to Sophie. A rock she’d thought matched his eyes, a jar of notes folded into hearts she’d given him. His brown sketchbook.

Everything takes a few moments to process and his eyes wander until they land on a set of hands. Three of them. One of them’s his, but the other two belong to a beautiful blonde girl hunched over at his bedside. She’s grasping tight, and it’s from her that the sharp static originates. It’s all tangled up in her and leaking into him, a painful grounding.

His hand twitches in hers and she sits bolt upright. “Keefe?” Her voice is hoarse, barely audible, but the room’s dead silent.

“You look awful, Foster,” he says, and his voice comes out even croakier than hers. Her hair’s all tangled and unbrushed, her clothes wrinkled, and her eyes are swollen and red. “But don’t worry…I still think you’re cute.”

She immediately bursts into tears, her hand shaking in his as her cheeks glisten. “You have no idea how good it is to hear you say that.” She wipes at her face with her sleeves, trying to put herself together.

“What happened?” he asks, reaching for her. He tries to sit up. It takes so much more energy that he anticipated, and Sophie scrambles to help him. He can’t help a wince whenever they touch, but she gets him into a seated position propped against a mound of pillows.

He makes a noise when she moves to get back in her seat, and she pauses. He tugs gently at where she’s interlaced their fingers again and she gets the message. Carefully, as though creeping through a gulon’s den, she crawls on top of the covers and settles next to him.

“It’s been almost a week,” she says, and he knows that that is very bad. He can’t quite muster up the energy to feel it, though. Not with his nerves shot and the static wafting from Sophie, her emotions all indecipherable prickling energy. “Bullhorn even laid on you.”

“Little guy loves me,” he says, a little drowsy. “He always sneaks into my room in the middle of the night. Always wants me to get him an extra treat.”

Sophie’s face screws up, but she hesitates and switches topics. “I should hail Elwin,” she says. “He ran out to Slurps and Burps for supplies. I think he was talking to Dex. I wasn’t paying attention,” she admits. “But he’ll want to check you over. Again.”

Keefe makes a noise, somewhere between a hum and a groan.

“What is it? What’s wrong? Are you in pain?” Sophie asks, immediately jumping up. “Elwin left some things here, and he told me what they do, but I’m not a doctor--”

“No,” he says, and it’s mostly clear. “Don’t go. I’m good. But I’ve had enough of doctor stuff forever.”

Sophie puts down vials of various things after a moment’s hesitation and returns to him. It brings back the static, but he doesn’t care. “Soon. It’ll be better soon,” she promises, kissing the top of his head.

“You’ve been scheming again,” he says, squinting at her. Or maybe his eyes are just closing. It’s really hard to keep them open, he’s finding.

“A little bit. But that’s not for you to worry about.” She squeezes his hands.

He frowns. “Sounds like you’re scheming about me, so I should definitely be worried about that.”

“Trust me, Keefe,” she pleads. “You need to focus on resting and saving your energy. Let me handle the rest.”

“Uh-uh. Now you have to tell me.”

She reaches for her eyelashes but stops halfway, playing with the beads on her bracelet instead and deliberating for a moment. “You’re gonna be mad.”

“At you? I could never be mad at you.”

“Yeah, well, you will be now.”

Keefe tries to shake his head, but the movement is microscopic, and even that has him dizzy. “What could possibly--” he cuts off, a thought occurring to him. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”

Sophie looks guilty. “Well…what do you think I did?”

He thinks that the main thing Sophie’s tiptoes about around him is a certain locked up traitor. He thinks she, out of concern for him, did not let go of her plan to talk to said traitor when the Council shut her down--when he tried to shut her down. He thinks that even though she was the worst villain in all of the Lost Cities’ history and it would take an impossible argument to make them ever consider waking her again, Sophie Foster is the impossible.

“How did you convince them? Or are you planning another prison break, because if you are--”

“I’m not,” she says, like that’s supposed to be comforting. Because she didn’t deny the subtle accusation of the first part.

Keefe closes his eyes when he asks, “So how?”

Sophie takes a long, long time to answer, and his heart tries to pound in the meantime. It can only half-way get there, but it’s still enough to have him light-headed and wanting to keel over.

“I may have threatened them. A lot.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You threatened the Council?” Under any other circumstances he’d be laughing himself hoarse and asking for a second by second playthrough of what she’d said, signing himself up to help her follow through without hesitation.

She fusses with the edges of her sleeves. “I blackmailed them.”

“Black mail?”

Sophie makes a brief face. “Oh. That’s a human term. It means I told them I’d expose all the secrets they’re hiding if they don’t do what I say.”

He stares at her for a moment. Even years later she still finds ways to absolutely amaze him. And she isn’t even trying. She’s just naturally a walking wonder, and he’s so grateful--so grateful--that she cares enough about him to do crazy things like that.

But not like this. Not for this.

“It’s not worth it,” he says, putting as much force as he can behind the words. She has to know--he has to convince her otherwise. “She’s not worth it.”

Sophie presses her lips together. “Yes, you are.”

He can’t breathe. Can’t think of anything to say. He hadn’t said anything about himself, but she’d heard it anyways. His eyes burn. “I’m not--”

“I’m not arguing with you about this,” Sophie says simply. “I get to decide who I care about, and who I love, and what’s worth it to me. And I care about you, and I love you, and so it’s worth it. No,” she says when he tries again. “I mean it. Pick something else to say.”

He grasps for something, anything. “You said soon, right? When is soon?”

Sophie grimaces, but he’d done as she asked, even though he really really really didn’t want to. So she answers, “I don’t have an exact date. In the next week or two, I think. I’ve been kinda…busy,” she says, and he knows she means busy waiting at his bedside.

“I want to be there,” he says.

Sophie runs her thumb over the back of his hand. “I don’t think they’ll let you. I don’t think you’ll be up for it,” she tells him gently.

“I don’t care.”

“Of course you don’t,” she says, but without the usual heat. It’s more resigned, maybe disappointed, but he can’t tell. It’s all static he’s pretending doesn’t hurt. “But that’s a problem for later,” she says, turning as they both hear the front door chime open. “Elwin’s back. Do you want me to stay?”

“Always.” The word’s out of his mouth before he can think to circle back to his original point. It’s getting harder to hold onto his thoughts. He wants to go back to sleep, but he can’t let her do this--not that he lets her do anything, but because she’s doing this because of him. It’s unacceptable. He doesn’t want his awful, evil mother anywhere near Sophie ever again. He couldn’t live with himself if he doesn’t find a way to stop this.

Sophie leans in and presses a kiss to his temple. “Okay. I’ll stay. Always.”

Sophie understands waking up a murderous terrorist from what’s supposed to be eternal slumber isn’t an easy process, but she can’t help wishing it could go a little faster.

Though, now that she thinks about it, the Council is probably dragging their feet specifically because they really, really don’t want to do it. But unfortunately for them, Sophie has blackmail and isn’t afraid to use it. Try as they might to delay it, she’s pinned them. She has top secret information they don’t want to get out, they can’t erase it from her mind, and they can’t disappear her because she’s too much of a public figure. People would notice--not to mention her friends and family would kick up a massive fuss.

It takes almost two and a half weeks from Keefe waking for them to give her a concrete day, and that day isn’t for another week after that. They refused to do any sooner--she’d asked. She tries not to be bitter about it, since she knows she’s stretching her luck. The fact they agreed at all, even with her pinning them in a corner, is still kind of surprising. She knows it’s the only option, but usually people don’t agree with what she has to say. The Council especially.

They’ve had more than enough critiques for her over the years, and she for them. They’re always saying she’s too rash, she’s too young. Even though they’d recruited her to Team Valiant, that hadn’t been about letting her step up her game. It’d been about trying to bring her under control and make themselves look better.

With the Neverseen dealt with, next is fixing the issues that caused the Neverseen in the first place. Namely, the Council’s millennia of bad decisions. And they’d gotten a lot less cooperative with her when she’d started on that. Some more than others, but enough to make it an absolute pain to deal with almost any of them.

Keefe is…she can barely think about Keefe without wanting to panic and charge the somnatorium herself. Elwin’s banned him from light-leaping at all--or teleporting--because no matter what he tries, every time he disintegrates he nearly or fully collapses. It doesn’t matter how far the leap, who’s concentration he’s wrapped in, or what elixirs he takes before or after.

Keefe had refused to listen, of course, and tried to come to Havenfield for a visit. She’d had to immediately take him back and remove every crystal from his vicinity. Elwin even shut down his leapmaster just to be safe and has been using his pathfinder for everything instead.

He barely has any energy. They’re in far too deep for him to pretend everything is okay, but he’s still trying to minimize it and play it off like it’s not so bad. It’s not working, considering the amount of time she’s spent at his bedside waiting for him to wake up the past couple months. But if there’s one thing she knows about Keefe Sencen, it’s that he doesn’t know when to quit.

“Still nothing?” Edaline asks, and Sophie jumps so hard she nearly falls out of her chair. “Oh, sorry, honey. I thought you heard us coming.”

Fitz is close behind her, straightening the sleeve of his tunic.

Sophie puts a hand to her chest. “Sorry. I didn’t.” She glances at her imparter, even though she looked at it last exactly 2 minutes and 37 seconds ago, and she has it on max volume so she absolutely cannot miss a notification. “Nothing at all.”

“Me either,” Fitz adds. “Sorry for coming over without warning you. It’s just getting late enough I thought it would be better if we were in the same place, so we don’t lose time meeting up later. We can review, too, if we need.”

“It’s fine,” Sophie tells him. “It’s smart.”

He sinks into a nearby plush chair, moving its decorative pillow to hug it close to his chest. “It’s hard waiting,” he admits.

“Well…” Edaline says, dragging the word out as she sinks next to where Sophie’s sat in the window seat. “They’ll let you know when there’s an update, so there’s no reason to get too worked up about it. Though I know it’s hard not to focus on it.”

It is. Extraordinarily hard. All Sophie’s done all day is pace. Pace and sit and stare at her imparter. Trying to decide whether it was worse or better to decide to stay away from Keefe today. He still disagrees with her on this. Has tried to talk her out of it with every trick in his arsenal, but she’s not budging.

He’s not the only one who’s tried to talk her out of it. But the rest of her friends have a much harder time mustering up any argument when they’ve seen how Keefe’s deteriorated--when they’ve been with her, firsthand, trying and failing to find any other option.

She doesn’t like it either, but she doesn’t have a choice.

She fiddles with the bracelet Keefe made her, that day before it all went wrong, reminding herself why she needs to do this. He won’t do it for himself, so she has to.

“They should’ve contacted us by now,” she whispers, checking her imparter again.

“I really thought they would’ve,” Fitz admits, hugging the pillow tighter, and they exchange a worried look.

Edaline isn’t happy about the situation, but since Sophie cannot be persuaded, she’s thrown her full support behind making it go as smoothly as possible. “Did they give you a specific time?”

Sophie shakes her head, and Edaline reaches out to smooth her hair. Her hand shifts to her back, rubbing soothing circles. “They said they’d wake her mid-morning, and that no one else was allowed to be there at all. Apparently it’ll take a while for her to wake up, since no one’s ever supposed to. There’d be time for moving and securing her. Then they’d hail us early to mid-afternoon to send someone over to retrieve us, where we’ll then get half an hour--under extremely super heavy guard--to get whatever we want out of her head, and then I never bring this or anything else like it up ever again.”

They all look out the window to the mid-afternoon sun hanging over the pastures. “We’re just nearing the end of the estimated time,” Edaline says, opting for optimism. “That doesn’t mean anything’s happened. Will you be able to get what you need in half an hour?”

Sophie clenches her fingers tight, refusing to admit she shares the same worry. “I have to.”

“Alright,” Edaline says. “Just be careful.”

“We will,” she promises. She’s not going to mess this up. It took too much to get here and too much depends on it.

Fitz adds, “She won’t be fully conscious. No one wants to give her the chance to think clearly. She’ll just be conscious enough for us to access her memories instead of the complete nothing of the somnatorium.”

Sophie can’t help a cringe at the thought of eternal black sleep. It still doesn’t seem right, but she doesn’t know what other option there was.

“Still,” Edaline says. “Don’t let your guard down. Is there anything else you need to do to be ready?”

Sophie starts fiddling with the beads again as she goes through her list. She knows what they need to find--mostly. Kind of. They need to find memories related to stellarlune and specifically its third step. Gisela has a photographic memory, so that will be massively helpful, if initially overwhelming.

Gisela’s not a pyrokinetic, so they don’t need to wear special clothes. Sophie has a basic outfit already chosen upstairs in her room.

She has her imparter for whenever the message to move into action comes through--which still hasn’t given her any alerts.

“Have you eaten?” Edaline asks, addressing her and Fitz both.

Sophie shakes her head, and Fitz says, “Not since lunch.”

Edaline stands. “Then I’ll get the two of you a snack while you go over whatever you need to to prepare.” She squeezes Sophie’s shoulder and kisses the top of her head, doing the same to Fitz when she passes him by.

Silence falls for a moment, each of them stuck in their own worries.

Fitz quietly admits, “I know it’s not the same, but I can’t stop thinking of Fintan’s healing.”

“It does feel similar,” she says, bouncing her leg to try to distract herself. “The anticipation of it all, thinking we’ve planned it out but wondering if we’re missing something.”

“Being in the mind of a murderer,” Fitz adds, and Sophie can’t help a grimace. “I didn’t miss that.”

“Yeah. Me either.”

They fall silent for another moment, listening to the last moments of peace for the day. Sophie glances at Fitz as he takes deep breaths, playing with the tassels on the pillow.

Thank you, by the way, she transmits, and he looks up at her. For being willing to do this.

Of course. We’re stronger together. And I want to help Keefe as much as you do.

Sophie looks away. Everyone thinks this is a bad idea. She leaves it at that, but Fitz knows what she isn’t saying. He always does.

You can get a little…reckless, he admits, when it comes to Keefe. But you’re not stupid. You’re doing the best you can. It’s not your fault the options are limited. And you wouldn’t do this if you thought there was any other choice.

There isn’t, right? she has to ask. I’m not missing anything?

She can see him thinking about it, giving her question serious weight, and it eases some of the tension. She stops bouncing her leg, idly watching his thoughts form into something cohesive.

I guess you could’ve searched Elysian’s house, he says. And we could try to track her down, because she knows more about those rocks. But that’s a really long shot.

That’s what I thought, too.

As much as I hate it…I think Gisela is probably the only real option we have at this point. Elwin has tried everything he can think of. So has Livvy.

Right, Sophie says, and she can breathe a little easier. It’s genetics. And we’re not saying we’ll let her out. We’re just getting information.

Right, Fitz repeats, and they lapse into silence. A more comfortable silence, broken when Edaline comes back with a tray of assorted snacks and drinks she places next to Sophie in the window seat.

Fitz moves across from her on the other side of it--though he holds on to his emotional support pillow. The snacks provide a momentary distraction, as does a bit of chaos that breaks out in the pastures they can see through the window. Sophie can’t exactly make it out, but she thinks Verdi might be to blame, which is why she’s their permanent resident.

But both of them have their imparters clearly visible on the cushion between them. Fitz’s gets a message from his father checking in that has them both jumping when it comes through, but still nothing.

The sun starts to set.

“They really, really should’ve contacted us by now,” Sophie whispers. She’s showered and changed into her planned outfit, and Grady and Edaline are working on dinner in the kitchen.

Fitz runs a hand through his hair. “They really, really should have.”

He opens his mouth to say something else, but he’s interrupted by a chime from Sophie’s imparter. They both sit up so fast they nearly crash into each other. There’s a single message from Councillor Emery, and she rereads it three times before Fitz finally loses his patience and demands she show him.

She doesn’t need to, though, because his own imparter chimes with the same message only a minute later.

“This cannot be happening,” she says. “Please tell me I’m dreaming. This can’t be real.”

Fitz swears, grabbing at the pillow tassels so hard a bit of thread snaps.

Sophie scoots closer, double checking the message is the same even though she knows it is.

“You two alright?” Grady calls, peeking his head out from the kitchen. He wipes his hands and starts to walk closer. “Did you finally get the hail?”

Sophie can’t say it. This is her fault. This is all her fault. Everyone said it was a bad idea, but still she pushed.

Fitz says it for her. “The memory search is canceled. Lady Gisela escaped.”

He knew it was a bad idea. He’d known, and he’d said as much, but that hadn’t been enough to stop it. No one can stop Foster when she gets an idea in her head; she’s incredibly smart, and crafty, and determined, and a million other things that make her a force to be reckoned with.

He still wishes he’d tried harder.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, crossing her arms so tight to her body it looks painful. She stands next to his bed, but noticeably hasn’t sat down with him. Her lip is raw from chewing on it, and her emotions are a wreck of static he can’t translate. He hasn’t been able to translate anyone’s emotions for weeks. It’s just static, static, and more static.

Even his own are starting to feel like static.

“We’ll find her,” Sophie says. “We did it before; we can do it again.”

“It took years,” Keefe chokes out, his hands shaking. He’s not sure if it’s because of his mother or because he’s been shaky for days. A tremble that never quite goes away.

Sophie steps closer. “She had a whole secret network before. Hideaways and people working with her that she doesn’t have anymore.”

Keefe looks at her. “You just found a new hideout we didn’t know about. Who knows how many more there are. She probably even has more minions we missed who’ve been keeping everything ready for the moment she got out.” He lets out a half manic laugh, the sound grating against his throat. He swallows, hard.

“We don’t know that,” Sophie says, and it sounds a little desperate. She reaches for an eyelash, then switches to playing with the beads on the bracelet he gave her. “We’ll find her.”

He’s not sure he has it in him to do it again. It was so awful the first time. Dex had almost died. And now they’re back at square one. Except this time, he’s an even weaker link than before.

“We’re already arranging to check all the hideouts we know of in case she went back. Everyone’s gearing up as we speak.” Sophie’s already geared up. She’d never thrown away the modified clothes Flori had made her, and they’ve made a reappearance. He knows that blue top has a dozen pockets along the sides, same with those black leggings.

“What if she went to the Forbidden Cities?” he counters. He ignores how Sophie avoided including him in that everyone. “We both know it’s impossible to find anyone there.”

“How would she get there?”

Keefe rubs his eyes. “She’s a conjurer. She probably has things squirreled away we can’t even guess. A pathfinder is an obvious choice. It’s probably how she escaped in the first place.”

Sophie’s imparter chimes before she can say another word, and she pulls it out. “I have to go,” she says. “I’m really, really sorry Keefe. I’ll make all this up to you. I promise, okay?”

“I’m not mad at you,” he says, and something he can’t translate crosses her face. Whatever it is makes her brave enough to finally step close.

She wraps her arms around him, and he clings to her with everything he has. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until she pulls back and brushes her thumb across his cheek. He leans into the touch, desperate.

“I love you,” she says, and kisses him. Hard, like there’s a million things she has left to say and can’t.

“I love you,” he repeats, watching her step back and pull out a pathfinder she’s borrowed from someone.

The feeling builds in his chest. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Sophie spins the crystal, and it threatens to choke him.

He has a bad, bad feeling about this. He’d had a bad feeling about waking his mom, and he’d tried, but he hadn’t been able to stop it.

He can’t let it happen again.

Sophie moves closer to the window to catch the light.

She’s doing all this for him. All this trouble, all this pain and misery, for him. Because he was born wrong and it’s finally catching up to him.

He can’t--

He can’t.

Sophie holds the crystal up, her eyes closing, and he doesn’t think.

Keefe moves.

“No!” Sophie yells, frantically splitting her concentration to cover Keefe. His hand’s wrapped tight around her wrist, and they rematerialize stumbling.

Sophie’s too clumsy to support them both and they crash to the rocky ground.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she says, leaping back up and reaching for him. Elwin forbid leaping, and she doesn’t have any doses of his medication in these pockets because he wasn’t supposed to be here! “Keefe? Keefe, are you okay? Talk to me.”

He lets out a small groan, but pushes himself up. His lips are pressed into a thin line, but there’s a determined set to his jaw that has dread welling inside her. This is the Keefe that does whatever he thinks is best, no matter what anyone else tells him.

“Keefe?” Dex asks, running up behind them. “What are you doing here?”

“He grabbed onto me when I leaped,” Sophie says, dusting off Keefe’s shoulders.

Keefe waves her away. “I’m fine. I’m good.”His voice is wobbly and he coughs to clear it. He starts to push to his feet, and she and Dex each take a side to help him stand. “I know I can’t help my charm, but we have more important things to do.”

“We?” Sophie exclaims. “I’m taking you back right now.”

“Seriously,” Dex adds, “I don’t think you’re up for this.”

Keefe ignores both of them and starts, with a slight stumble, towards the hideout entrance hidden in the rocky mountainside. She’d been here not that long ago, one of her many stops before they’d finally found that strange cubby in the wall of that hideout in the woods. “I’ve been resting for weeks. I’ll be even better than the two of you combined.”

Sophie doesn’t believe that for a second and shares a worried look with Dex. The plan was for everyone to divide and conquer. Split into pairs, each pair discreetly checking a number of the hideouts for any signs of recent activity.

Or, potentially, for Gisela herself. Hence the discreetly part of it.

If they found anything, they’d send a message, and if they couldn’t, they’d hit their panic switches.

But if Keefe’s with them, all that’s out the window. He won’t be discreet if his life depends on it--and it does. They can’t check anywhere else because he’s not cleared to light-leap or teleport; she already dreads the one leap it’ll take to get him back home, and she’s pretty sure she’s going to have to manhandle him into it.

“Okay,” Dex says, pulling out his imparter. “I guess the three of us can do this one, so he can feel included and not useless, and then you can bring him back while I start on the next?”

Sophie is going to kill someone. “Yeah. You might want to team-up with someone else, because I’m sure he’s going to fight me about going home and it’ll take a while.”

“Are you coming or not?” Keefe calls from the door, leaning against it, and they both straighten. Sophie hurries over, taking up her place at his side with their arms interlocked.

“Remember, we’re being careful, just in case,” Sophie tells him in a lowered voice. “And don’t think we’re done talking about your recklessness.”

Keefe smirks, but his eyes are fever bright. “You can yell at me all you want later. How about that? Can you feel anyone here?”

Sophie sighs, closing her eyes as they all stop outside the door. She casts out her consciousness with force, every sense hyper alert for anything at all. It’s a long few minutes, but she shakes her head. “Nothing. I can only feel us.”

Dex nods. “So no need to be stealthy.” He opens the door. The air inside is stale and dusty--and thin, since they’re on a mountainside. Another reason she hates that Keefe’s tagged along. He has enough trouble breathing sometimes at sea level.

Keefe squints into the dark. “There could still be…” he trails off for a moment, and Sophie recognizes a fight with vertigo when she sees one. “There could still be traps.”

“It’s too bad we were here not that long ago,” Dex says as they carefully make their way inside. “We disturbed all the dust, so it’ll be harder to tell if anyone was recently here.”

Sophie shares the same concern, but she’s not going to let that stop her. “Just look for anything weird or out of place. We were just here, so it’ll be easier to tell if something is off, even if we did disturb the dust.”

They start a systematic sweep of the place, combing through every room. It doesn’t actually take very long, since there’s still absolutely nothing here, and absolutely nothing to find.

But still by the end of it Keefe’s breathing heavier, and his hand is trembling in hers. Sophie pulls them onto a bare bench, giving him a break while she admits, “There’s nothing here.”

“There was no guarantee,” Dex says. “This is just the first place our group is checking. And everyone else is checking everywhere else, too.”

“Where’s next?” Keefe asks.

“For you? Home,” Sophie tells him. “I let you stick around on this one, but I’m taking you back now.”

Keefe shakes his head, gritting his teeth. “This is about my mom. I’m not letting you chase her down without me.”

“Letting me?”

Dex glances between the two of them, then takes a few steps back. He mouths, I’ll meet you there, adjusting the pathfinder and leaping away to start searching the next place without her. He won’t have her to search for thoughts, but he’s resourceful--and can ask Fitz or Tam for help if needed.

Keefe reaches for her hand. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“You physically can’t do this, Keefe. Why can’t you accept that? You’ve spent months pretending everything is fine, and then that everything isn’t so bad. Do you think I don’t have eyes?” She crosses her arms, and Keefe’s hand falls in the space between them.

“You don’t have to coddle me--”

“Apparently, I do!” she snaps. “Because you can’t listen to common sense and now you want to put all of us at risk because you refuse to admit you’re not up for something like this!”

Keefe flinches, but her imparter chirps at her before Keefe can answer, and she pulls it out. He leans in to read over her shoulder, and she has half a mind to shove him away, but she’s too busy reading the message.

It’s brief, from Biana. Lady Gisela isn’t there anymore, but there’s footprints at the hideout in the woods.

“I know where she is,” Keefe says, and Sophie puts her imparter away.

“How?” she demands, still angry with him.

Keefe nudges her. “Think about it. What did we just find where Biana is? Hint: Biana herself found it.”

Sophie sits up. “That crystal. I bet she went there looking for it.”

“And,” Keefe adds. “I bet it wasn’t the only one.”

“Who has it?” she mumbles, casting her mind back to that day. She’d had the crystal in her hand when she’d leaped them all with it, but the day had gotten blurrier towards the end when Keefe had his episode. Had she passed it off to anyone?

She doesn’t think so.

In fact, she thinks it’s back home, still in her cape pocket, which is an absolutely stupid place to keep something like that. Is it even still in that cape?

“Show me Edaline,” she says, getting her imparter back out and ignoring Keefe’s look of curiosity.

Edaline picks up on the first ring. “Sophie? Is everything alright?”

“Mom, this is really important. Did you ever find a random leaping crystal in my clothes when you did the laundry?”

“A random--” Edaline’s brow furrows as she thinks. “Was it clear and frosted?”

“That’s the one,” Keefe says.

Edaline looks surprised for a moment. “Keefe? I didn’t know you were--”

“He’s not supposed to be,” Sophie interrupts. “Where did you put it? Please tell me you remember.”

“I think I just put it on your dresser with all your other miscellaneous things. Why? Do you need it?”

Sophie’s already standing. “Yes, I need it. Can you go find it? I’ll be there in just a minute.” Edaline agrees and Sophie hangs up the hail. If they can’t find it, she can teleport them all there, but that would be loud and showy and definitely alert Lady Gisela to their arrival. If they can be sneaky and catch her by surprise, everything will be so much easier. “You,” she says, pointing at Keefe, “are going home. Right now.”

“It’s cute you think that.”

“I mean it.”

Keefe switches tactics. “You need me there. My mom will never stop and listen to anything you have to say. As far as she’s concerned, you’re an annoying obstacle. But I was part of her stupid plan.”

Sophie groans, running a face down her hands.

“And she’ll never believe you about…about anything that’s happening with me unless she sees it.”

Sophie pinches the bridge of her nose, because he’s not as wrong as she wants him to be. It doesn’t matter what Sophie says. Lady Gisela believes what she wants and does what she wants. It’d taken an astronomical amount of work and pre-planning to capture her the first time.

Maybe if Keefe is there, it’ll throw her off just long enough for them to get her.

She put centuries of work into Keefe. She’d hate to see it go to waste, right?

Sophie’d worked alongside Vespera temporarily when they needed to find Elysian’s field, and that had worked out…kind of. Lady Gisela had then murdered her, but she wouldn’t kill Keefe.

Nothing said she couldn’t temporarily work with Gisela. Well--Keefe would hate it. But he’d be alive, and that’s what mattered in the end.

And it would end. As soon as she had what she needed to fix him, Lady Gisela was going right back to prison, and Sophie would wash her hands of her forever. And this time, all the loose ends would be tied up, and they’d never have to do this ever again.

She’s also very aware that time is of the absolute essence right now, and she does not have time to fight Keefe. And he will put up a fight. Every minute they’re not chasing Lady Gisela down she’s closer to getting away for good.

“Wait right here,” Sophie tells him, and this cannot be a smart idea, but she doesn’t know what else to do. She messages the rest of their friends to meet her here. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

A minute later she has the new crystal in her hand, given to her by an Edaline waiting and ready at the door. Everyone else has arrived and the mountainside hideout is packed, but Sophie’s eyes linger on Keefe.

“Okay,” she says. “Are we all on the same page? We think she might be at that new place we found, and we’re going to be quiet and stealthy and bring her back so we can talk to her, okay?”

There’s nods around the group, plus more than a handful of confused looks in Keefe’s direction that he responds to with winks and blown kisses. It would be funny if she couldn’t see the tremble in his fingers, the extra red flush to his cheeks, the dilation of his pupils.

“We’ve got this,” Biana says, starting the chain. “We did it before. We can do it again.”

Sophie desperately, desperately hopes so. She’s not sure what she’ll do otherwise.

Everyone links together, Sophie at the end holding the crystal high. Keefe places a hand on her shoulder, stepping closer, and she pulls them all into the light.

Foster had once told him fading had been her most pleasant brush with death, a soft floating away into nothing. Either all her other near-misses had been so horrific fading seemed nice in comparison, or she was flat out lying.

Everything hurts, and he swears he can identify every individual cell in his body as it breaks apart and tries to find its way back together again. There was a reason Elwin said he couldn’t do this anymore.

But sometimes you have to break the rules. Even if there’s consequences.

They rematerialize on the grass outside, and Keefe immediately sinks to the ground, wheezing. Everything swims, and his heart’s pounding hard enough he swears it’s breaking his ribs with every beat.

Sophie’s hands are on him and her voice is in his head. Are you okay? She asks, and he winces at the volume of her voice.

More important things to worry about, Foster.

He raises his head. Everything looks exactly the same as it did a few weeks ago. Grass swaying in the breeze, flowers dotting the plains. A simple stone cottage with a wooden door and overgrown flowers beneath the windows.

It feels different, though. There’s a charged anticipation in the air, the sense they’re narrowing in on something.

He knows his mother is here. He can’t explain how, but he does.

I’m not picking up any thoughts inside, Sophie says, looping the entire group into a shared mental space to talk.

Fitz shakes his head. Me neither.

I’m gonna look through the window, Biana says, vanishing. They all sink down to the ground, watching as the grass parts around her. She stops right before the flower bed below the window. The inside looks exactly the same. No one’s there.

How is that--

Wait! Biana says. I see something. Not on the inside, but the outside. The grass parts again as she moves around the perimeter. Some of these bricks look funny.

What do you mean? Sophie asks, inching closer.

Biana rematerializes and points. See how this one’s not flush with the others? She pushes on it, and a loud grating sounds out as the brick moves back. There’s another one here.

Sophie’s made it to Biana, and the rest of them follow.

Keefe tries to, at least, but he’s having trouble standing. Dex notices and hangs back, offering him a hand. Keefe flinches when their hands meet. It’s more than static now. The static’s turned to fire burning under his skin, and he has to let go. He only makes it a few more steps before he has to sink back down.

Two leaps was too much. He’d powered through after the first, but that had burned through all the energy he’d saved up in his weeks of sitting around doing nothing like a good little patient.

I see a third, Tam adds, pointing to the left of the door. Linh follows where he points and presses on the brick.

Sophie, seeing Keefe on the ground, rushes back to his side. I shouldn’t have let you talk me into bringing you, she says. You shouldn’t have grabbed onto me in the first place. I’m bringing you back right now--I don’t care what you say.

No--no more leaping, Keefe manages. The thought turns his stomach and he has to take several deep breaths to keep from retching. Everything’s fuzzy at the edges.

Sophie curses soundly. Right…okay. Then I’ll bring Elwin here.

It opened a tunnel! Dex calls to them, pointing at the back of the cottage. The cottage is just a decoy.

And there’s footprints, Fitz adds. They look fresh.

Keefe reaches for the last vestiges of energy he possesses and forces himself to his feet. Still he thinks Sophie’s taking more than half his bodyweight as they shamble to the backside of the cottage.

The ground against the wall has given way to a narrow staircase into the dark. The true hideout, not the cottage looking deceptively abandoned on top of it.

It’s not too many stairs down, but Keefe can’t feel his legs by the time they reach the bottom. He’s not sure he’ll be able to make it back out.

There’s glass sconces of fire flickering in the hall ahead of them, the dirt floor giving way to stone and brick held with wooden supports.

This is super creepy, Dex says, running his hands along the walls to feel for…Keefe isn’t sure what.

The hallway opens into a round room, vaguely like a living room. The ceiling is held up by wooden pillars just like the hall. It’s fully furnished, if a bit dusty, and more hallways branch off into other rooms--probably storage, bedrooms, things like that. That’s generally how these places are laid out.

But more importantly, there’s a dark purple cloak thrown over the back of one of the couches.

“I must admit,” a sickeningly familiar voice says as the hall they just came through seals off with a heavy thud. “You were much quicker than I expected.”

Sophie immediately shoves Keefe behind her, turning to find the source of Lady Gisela’s voice. It sounds like it’s coming from everywhere, or maybe above them, but that doesn’t make sense.

“Show yourself!” Biana demands, a throwing star in her hand.

“You are not in the position to be making demands,” Gisela says, and there’s a faint popping sound, like a cork being pulled from a bottle. A snap follows it, and a moment later the bottle in question materializes in the center of the room.

A colorful gas fizzes from the top, and Fitz is the closest. He immediately starts coughing, stumbling back and covering his face with a hand. Linh chokes, and Sophie’s own airways react in revulsion.

“Cover it!” Dex cries, rushing forward to slap his bare hand over the bottle opening. He hisses, but the gas doesn’t get any worse.

Not worse is still bad, though, and Keefe’s coughing furiously behind her, bright red in the face as he struggles to breath.

“How do we finish stellarlune?” Sophie yells, cutting right to the chase as Dex finds something in his pockets to function as a makeshift cork.

Lady Gisela lets out a sharp laugh. “You want to finish stellarlune? After all the effort you went to locking me away, you’ve realized the error of your ways?” There’s a slight hoarseness to her voice, an undercurrent Sophie wouldn’t have been able to pick up on if she hadn’t spent so many weeks dissecting every minute detail of Keefe’s deterioration. “It’s a little late to switch sides now. I don’t think I’ll be very forgiving.”

“We’re not switching sides,” Biana argues. “We’re trying to save Keefe!”

There’s a moment of silence, then footsteps. Lady Gisela appears at the end of the hall second to the left, something like a melder in hand. It’s shaped similarly, but Sophie has no doubt it’s far more lethal. “No sudden movements now,” she says, moving the weapon in a wide, slow circle, her threat clear.

Her clothing is torn, smudges of dirt and something else on her too-tight skin. Her hair’s falling out of the style she's pulled it back into, and several of her fingernails are broken. But more than that, there’s a deep sallowness to her face and cheeks, heavy bags under her eyes. Sophie’s seen the look on others stuck in the somnatorium.

She also leans casually against the wall, but Sophie recognizes someone hiding dizziness and tremors like she knows the back of her hand. Keefe’s made sure of it.

“Oh, dear,” Gisela says, who’s been eyeing over Keefe as they’ve been eyeing her. He’s on the floor, leaning against the side of a chair, looking like he’s not even really here. He hasn’t said a word since they heard his mother’s voice, and that worries her more than anything else. “You just had to be stubborn, didn’t you.”

Sophie refuses to acknowledge that she’s had the same complaints.

“How do we fix it?” she demands.

Gisela shifts her attention slowly. “Fix what?”

“His abilities! He’s like this because of you,” she snaps, gesturing at Keefe.

“Is that why you woke me? I can’t say I don’t appreciate it,” she says. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Shut up,” Dex snaps. He has his own version of a melder out and aimed at Gisela, putting their groups at an impasse. “Tell us how to fix him.”

Gisela shrugs. “You can’t.” She wrinkles her nose at her son and sighs. “All that hard work, and you threw it away to be petty and stubborn.”

Sophie’s heart drops out of her chest. “What do you mean we can’t?”

She has a sickening feeling she already knows exactly what Gisela’s going to say, and sure enough, “Those rocks were only powered for twelve days. Stellarlune can’t be completed.”

Sophie shakes her head. “No. No, there has to be something.” She’s tried everything else. Gisela was her last option--her only option. If Gisela can’t fix Keefe, no one can.

“Is that all?” Gisela asks, trying for casual, but there’s a sweaty sheen to her. However she’d escaped, whatever last ditch efforts she’d used, it had cost her.

Sophie lunges without thinking, knocking the melder from Gisela’s hand. Shouts echo behind her as she struggles to grab onto her. “There has to be something!” she insists, though it’s breathless and Gisela shoves her back. “Don’t let her get away!”

Gisela snaps, conjuring her melder back to herself as Fitz rushes for her. He barely dodges, cursing.

Gisela changes targets. Instead of shooting at them, she shoots for the glass sconces along the wall. It bursts in a shower of glass, spitting sparks everywhere, and though the floor is stone, the support pillars are not.

Smoke mixes with the lingering gas from before, making Sophie’s eyes burn and her throat constrict. Lady Gisela turns to run, but Dex rolls a small gadget underneath her, setting off a flash of light that has her hissing and stumbling back.

Sophie was near the blast radius, and now stars dance in her field of vision.

She grabs for Gisela again, refusing to let go. Panic gives her strength, and she drags her back.

Gisela doesn’t bother saying anything. She simply turns, pressing her melder against Sophie’s temple.

Her finger curls on the trigger.

Someone slams into Sophie from behind.

He doesn’t feel where it hits him. Everything hurts and he’s tired, he’s tired of pretending it doesn’t.

He’s known from the start there was no way out of this. Elwin had told him he couldn’t fix genetics, and Keefe had known. Even as he’d watched his friends scramble, as he’d watched her scramble, he hadn’t let himself get his hopes up.

He’d just tried to enjoy what he had left.

It’d pissed Sophie off to no end, but if he was living on borrowed time, it wasn’t going to be in a bed staring at the shadows changing on the walls.

His ears are ringing and voices are shouting. He can’t make out exactly what they’re saying. He can’t feel anything. All his limbs are numb and he’s just a floating consciousness, the scraps tying him to the physical world fraying and snapping.

“Keefe? Keefe, please, oh my god,” he hears, and it’s that voice. “Can you hear me? Keefe, please.”

Her voice is choked and raw, and that’s wrong. She shouldn’t be crying. She should be happy, and free, living her beautiful life to the fullest. “Don’t…cry,” he mumbles. “I know I’m pretty, but...” he trails off, and he’s not sure he takes another breath.

Sophie sobs harder, and he cracks open his eyes. He can see the sky, wide and blue, and she’s holding him. It’s nice. He never wants to leave.

“Elwin’s coming, okay? Just hold on.”

“It’s okay,” he whispers, quiet enough she nearly doesn’t catch it. “You’re strong. You’ll be okay.”

Sophie looks at him, her eyes wide and wet. “What? No. What are you saying?”

“We both knew, Foster. We both knew this was the only way this was going to end.”

“No. No,” she says, firmer. “You’ll be fine. Just hold on a little longer. We’ll figure something out. I’m not losing you. I can’t--I can’t.”

Keefe tries to reach for her, but his arm is so heavy, and he can’t really feel it. He only makes it part way, but Sophie meets him there, holding tight to him. He can’t feel the static anymore. “You can. You’re Sophie. You can do anything.”

“Stop talking. Please,” she whispers, leaning close to him. Her breath brushes his cheeks.

“I love you,” he says.

He doesn’t hear her say it back.

There’s a tree standing crooked in the setting light, its leaves a pale yellow scattered with ice blue flowers that smell like salt air and summer sun.

It’s a new tree, finding its footing in the lush soil carefully selected. The roots are strong, the branches tall and twisting. It’ll last an eternity.

There’s a girl standing at the trunk, a hand to the bark. She runs her fingers over the texture and her cheeks are wet, but she doesn’t make a sound. She stands there for a long while, alone, watching the breeze play with the leaves and send them floating to the ground.

“We finally caught her,” she says, as if letting the tree know. “She didn’t get far. She’s asleep again. Forever this time. I’m sorry--” her voice catches, and she has to clear it. “I’m sorry. For everything.”

She takes a step back. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a beaded bracelet.

There’s a charm in the center. Plastic and gaudy. A black bat set against a bright yellow.

The girl holds it for a moment, then wipes her face and reaches on her tip toes to slip it onto a sturdy branch.

“There you go,” she whispers, leaning against the trunk. “Just like I promised.”

She runs her fingers over her own bracelet, each bead intricately hand-painted. A labor of love. She lingers on one in particular. A black bat against a yellow background.

“I love you.”

Her lip wobbles and she takes a long, deep breath.

She presses a kiss to the trunk.

She picks up a fallen blue flower, holding it close to her chest.

She leaps away.