Exile by Shannon Messenger
“Hopefully there won’t be a next time.”
“Aw, what, you don’t want to make this a regular thing?”
Sophie shook her head “It’s a little different for me, Keefe. There’s kinda a lot riding on this.”
“Like your health and your future and Alden’s health and stuff?”
“Which I thought you cared about—Alden at least.”
He was quiet for a few seconds, and Sophie thought he was going to ignore her. But then he leaned closer—close enough that she could feel his breath on her cheek as he said, “I know I crack a lot of jokes, Sophie, but . . . that’s just because it’s easier, you know? It’s how I deal. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care. I do. A lot.”
She was suddenly very aware of how close he was, and the way his arms were around her. She felt her cheeks flame and hoped he couldn’t feel the change in her mood.
“Are you scared?” he asked quietly.
She shrugged, not trusting her voice.
“You don’t have to be. I meant what I told Sandor. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
She wanted to tell him he didn’t have that kind of power. Instead she cleared her throat and said, “Thank you.”
He leaned back, taking his warmth with him. But at least she felt like she could breathe again.
“So tell me about the Black Swan,” he said. “What are we up against?”
“I wish I knew. It’s not like they tell me anything.”
“Yeah, they do seem to like keeping their sense of mystery. Reminds me of someone else I know.” He poked her side.
She smiled at the joke, but it also hit a nerve. “Do you think I hide too much?”
Her voice had barely been louder than the wind, but Keefe still asked, “What do you mean?”
“Grady and Edaline think I keep too many secrets.”
“You do,” he agreed. “But I’m guessing you’ve sorta had to, right? I mean, look at the kind of things you deal with. I don’t really know how you do it.”
Sometimes she didn’t either.
She checked the compass again, steering Silveny back to the right.
“You can trust Grady and Edaline, though,” he added after a second. “You got good parents there.”
Parents.
Not guardians.
They were slowly starting to feel like that.
“Things have been a little better with your parents too, haven’t they?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t intruding.
“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know. They only like when I do things they want me to do. Like this. My dad loves that I’m helping you—probably because everything you do seems to, like, change the course of history and whatever. But it’d be nice if they could be proud of something I like to do.”
“Maybe it would help if the stuff you liked to do didn’t involve gulons or glittery poop.”
“Probably. But that’s way less fun.”
“Maybe you could just try . . .”
Her voice trailed off as a dark shape appeared on the horizon, silhouetted by the moonlight. Tall, rocky cliffs jutting out over the ocean. And when she checked the compass, the needle pointed straight to them.
“Is that . . . ?” Keefe asked.
“I think it might be.”
She nudged Silveny to fly faster, keeping her eyes trained on the compass as the cliffs drew closer. The silver-white slopes of the rocky ledges came into focus, bright and gleaming in the pale moonlight, and Sophie felt goose bumps prickle her skin as she noticed a dark smudge toward the top of one of them.
A cave.
“That’s it,” Sophie whispered as a memory prickled her mind.
The dark cavern had a distinct curved shape, and she could see a perfect image of it in her memory. Which meant they’d always meant for her to find them someday.
She instructed Silveny to land on the ledge outside the entrance. Keefe tightened his grip on her waist as they swooped to a stop, and he helped Sophie slide down Silveny’s neck to the rocky ground.
“Okay, the legs are not happy,” Keefe complained as he took a few wobbly steps. “Remind me never to take up horseback riding.”
Sophie’s legs were throbbing too—but she was too distracted by the pitch-black entrance to the cave.
“So . . . I’m guessing we have to go into the scary black cavern of doom?” Keefe asked, sighing when Sophie nodded. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. I love that neither of us thought to bring a light, either.”
“You don’t need one,” a gravelly voice said from the shadows, making both Keefe and Sophie scream.
“Dude—that was not cool,” Keefe said as a hairy brown dwarf skulked out into the moonlight.
The dwarf laughed—a clunky sound like a spoon caught in a garbage disposal. “We need to get out of sight. Can you lead your horse inside?”
“I—I think so,” Sophie stammered, wishing Silveny could send her some of her calm. But the jittery alicorn was more terrified than she was.
Trust, Sophie told her. Come.
She followed the dwarf toward the cave, and after a few steps Keefe and Silveny followed. As soon as they were inside, the dwarf flipped a switch, and blue-flamed torches sprang to life all along the rocky walls that curved around them. The cave was much shallower than she’d expected.
“Won’t someone see the light?” Sophie asked.
“The cloaking is back up. I took it down when I felt you draw close, so you could find us.”
“You felt us?” Keefe whispered.
Sophie pointed to the magsidian swan on her bracelet.
“Whoa—dwarves are freaky.”
“I was not told there would be two,” the dwarf grumbled. “Only a girl and a horse.”
“My parents wouldn’t let me come alone.”
The dwarf made some sort of sound—a bit like a growl.
“I think he likes me,” Keefe whispered, earning himself another growl.
Sophie looked around. As far as she could tell, it was just a normal cave—smaller than the one at Havenfield, even. “Is this . . . it?”
“Until you eat this.” The dwarf handed her a plate with what looked like a cookie on it. A black swan. Written in some sort of icing were the words “THEN LET’S REST.”
“Tucked in the branches of your quiet nest,” Sophie finished, remembering the final line of the poem. “So . . . this is a sedative?”
“You cannot see where I take you.”
“Come on, isn’t this whole mystery thing a bit overkill?” Keefe asked.
“Don’t worry. There’s no cookie for you. You can stay with the horse.”
“What?”
“But he’s with—”
The dwarf held up his hand, silencing them both. “Only you.”
Keefe glanced at Sophie. “He’s like three feet tall and all fur. I think we can take him.”
“That would not be wise.” The dwarf stomped his foot and a crack split the ground, stopping just before Keefe’s toes. Another inch and he would’ve been swallowed by the gap.
Sophie cleared her throat and took a deep breath for courage. “It’ll be fine, Keefe. In fact, maybe it’ll be better. I don’t think Silveny would do well here all alone. Keep her company.”
“But—”
“There’s only one cookie,” she told him, picking up the tiny swan.
Keefe stared at the crack in the ground, then back at her. “You’re sure?”
She wasn’t. But she’d come this far.
Her head screamed at her to toss the horrible, revolting sedative away, but she shoved the cookie in her mouth before she could change her mind. As soon as the sweet, fruity flavor hit her tongue, her head clouded and she could barely swallow the bite.
“I’ll be right here when you—” Keefe called, but the darkness stole the rest of his words, leaving her alone in the black.
FIFTY-SIX
WAKE UP SOPHIE,” A DEEP, raspy voice called, and the déjà vu ripped Sophie out of the thick mental
“Relax,” the voice ordered as she thrashed on the soft cushion she was lying on—half expecting to feel bonds restraining her. But her limbs moved freely.
“We’re on your side—remember.”
My side, she told herself as she forced her eyes open—though she had no idea what her side was. The light from a single crystal hanging over her head burned her corneas, and it took several seconds to adjust.
How long had she been out?
She sat up slowly, letting her head clear before she turned to examine her surroundings. There wasn’t much to see. She rested on a small cushioned cot—almost identical to the cots in the Healing Center. The rest of the space was an empty void of darkness.
“Where are you?” she called, surprised as her voice echoed off walls that were much farther away than she would’ve guessed.
A heavyset figure stepped into the light. “You kids and your screaming.”
Sophie felt her jaw fall open. “Mr. Forkle?”
“That’s one of my names, yes.”
“Want to tell me the real one?”
A tiny smile played across the wrinkles of his bloated face. “When the time is right.”
That wasn’t good enough. She’d flown who knew how far and been drugged and dragged to who knew where—she didn’t go through all of that to not get answers. She closed her eyes and pushed her mind into his and . . .
Hit a wall of silence.
Mr. Forkle laughed—though it sounded more like a wheeze. “You’re not the only one with an impenetrable mind. That’s why we’re alone right now. Can’t have you searching for things you’re not yet ready to understand.”
Sophie glared at him. “I deserve to know what you’re hiding from me. And I want my memories back—and my journal pages!”
“It’s not a matter of deserving, Sophie. Knowledge is a dangerous thing. Trust me when I say that it’s better for you not to know.”
“All I ever do is trust you!”
“I know, Sophie. And we appreciate it.”
“Then trust me. Give me some answers!”
He fell silent, and Sophie wondered if she’d gone too far. But then he said, “All right.”
“All right, what?”
“I’ll give you one answer. One.”
“I . . . okay . . .”
“Choose your question wisely, Sophie. I won’t give you another.”
She nodded, trying to make sense of the tornado of questions swirling inside her head. There were so many things she wanted to know. But what did she need to know? What single piece of information would change everything?
“Okay,” she said, straightening up. “I have my question—and you have to promise to answer honestly.”
“You have my word.”
She nodded, taking a deep breath before she met his gaze and asked, “Did the Black Swan murder Jolie?”
The question knocked him back a step. “Is that what Grady thinks?”
“Yes. The fire happened right after someone slipped him a note that said, ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with.’ ”
“That . . . is not what that message meant,” he said quietly.
“So that’s a no, then?” she asked after several seconds of silence.
“Yes, Sophie, that is most definitely a no. Though it explains many things.”
Relief poured through her in warm waves—though she was tempted to point out that if they were clearer with their messages, they wouldn’t have these problems. And she couldn’t help wondering, “What does it explain?”
His lips formed a word, then switched to a smile. “I said one question. And we have wasted enough time as it is. We have a bigger problem to address. You.”
The warmth faded as quickly as it came.
Mr. Forkle moved closer, and the smell of dirty feet made Sophie gag. It was the ruckleberries he ate to disguise his identity. They made the skin swell and wrinkle, like an overweight, elderly human. “I’m afraid your mind is broken.”
The room tilted sideways—or it might as well have. “Broken like Alden . . . ?”
He shook his head, running a pudgy hand down his face. “No, not like Alden. And if we’d known you were damaged, we never would’ve sent you down there. It was a miscalculation on our part. I should’ve expected that something happened when you faded—especially since I did think it was strange that the Vacker boy could transmit to you after that. But I wrongly assumed he’d found the way through.”
“Wait.” She rubbed the temples of her still foggy head. “There’s a way through my blocking?”
How else do you think I gave you your memories? he transmitted.
His mental voice didn’t sound screamy like Fitz’s, but hearing it in her head made her want to claw the words back out.
“It’s a secret way only I’m supposed to know,” he said out loud, “but he’s a talented boy and I thought maybe he’d figured it out when your mind was weakened by the leap. But that was my mistake. If I’d checked, I would’ve realized there are two gaps in your barriers now. And the new gap has absolutely no defenses. It’s like a chink in your armor. A weak spot where things you should be able to block push through—some easier than others. Like Fitz’s transmissions. Or Bronte’s inflicting. Or the dark shards of the broken minds you were meant to heal.”
She shuddered at the memory. “So, you did want me to fix Prentice. That was what your first clue meant?”
“In part. We needed Alden to take you down there in order for you to have access to Prentice, so the message was also meant to convince him that you should be his guide. But yes. We knew when we started Project Moonlark that we could very well endure some casualties—especially with our Keepers—so we gave you the ability to heal broken minds. That way you could recover anyone who was lost.”
“But everyone told me that healing minds is impossible.”
“As are most of the things I’ve enabled you to do, Sophie. I’ve done extensive research, and I discovered a safe place inside the mind. A nook where things can be hidden. We trained our Keepers to hide a part of their consciousness there during a memory break, so that we could rescue them later.”
The words triggered such a mix of relief and terror Sophie didn’t know what to do with them.
She could fix Prentice—finally set that right!
But what if she couldn’t fix Alden?
He hadn’t been trained to retreat to the nook—and she hadn’t felt his presence the way she’d felt Prentice’s when she tried the probe.
What if there was nothing left to rescue?
“How does it work?” she asked, hoping there was still a chance. “How do I rescue them?”
“The rescue is the easy part. The hard part is getting there. That’s why we designed you the way we did. We needed a powerful Telepath with an impenetrable mind to probe past the madness without getting lost. Then once you’re there, all you have to do is inflict powerful, positive emotions to build their strength back.”
“But I can’t inflict positive emotions.”
He gave her a knowing look.
“I can?”
“Only in theory—though it’s looking much more likely now that I’ve seen the connection between you and Silveny. I modeled many of your genetic manipulations on alicorn DNA.”
“What?” She was on her feet without deciding to stand. “Are you saying I’m part horse?”
A horrifying image of her as some sort of mutant-Sophie-centaur flashed through her head, and she wanted to reach inside her brain and tear it out.
“Of course not, Sophie. I just needed something to base my research on, and Silla Heks had noted all kinds of interesting observations about the way her alicorn had affected her emotions. I suspected it meant that alicorns have a way of inflicting their feelings on others—both bad and good—so I decided to model some of my tweaks on their DNA. But you’re still one hundred percent elf.”
Sophie sank back down, too overwhelmed to even begin to process tha
Sophie buried her head in her hands. How was she ever going to look in the mirror and see anything but a horse face now?
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Mr. Forkle grumbled. “This is not the tragedy you’re making it out to be—”
“Really? So you wouldn’t care if someone played Dr. Frankenstein with your genes?”
“Are you any different right now than you were five minutes ago, before you knew?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbled miserably. “It feels like it.”
“Well, you’re not.”
She rolled her eyes. Her stupid, freaky, horse eyes.
Mr. Forkle started to pace, stepping in and out of the shadows as he moved. “We’ve gotten off track. What’s important is that all my careful plans hinged on your mind being impenetrable. And it was, until you nearly faded away. Then your guard cracked, leaving an opening that light—and somehow Fitz—knows how to get through. I’m guessing you bonded with the light as you were fading, let it become a small part of you. And that bond has turned into a weak point where light—or darkness—can push through. That doesn’t explain Fitz, but maybe you pulled him through as you dragged yourself back, and his mind learned the way. Regardless, you made a special pathway straight into your brain, and things have been pushing through or slipping away because of it.”
That made almost zero sense—but Sophie supposed it didn’t matter. All that mattered was, “You can fix it, right?”
“In . . . theory.”
“No—that’s not what you said.” She fumbled in her pocket for the note and shoved it at him. “See—right there. We. Can. Fix. You.”
“We can fix you, Sophie.” He held up a tiny bottle made of glittering green crystal. “Drinking this will reset everything that’s been undone. But you need to understand the risk first.” He stared at the bottle instead of her as he said, “The only thing that will fix you is limbium.”
She scratched at her arms thinking of the hives. “You know I’m allergic.”
“I do. And believe me, I’ve tried to find another way. But alternatives like this”—he reached for the vial of Fade Fuel dangling from her neck—“simply aren’t strong enough. They’ve helped with the symptoms, which tells me I’m right about the cure. But the only true remedy is real limbium. A very strong dose.”