Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities Book 3) (10 page)

It took him several seconds to untangle the string, shredding it to bits as he sank into his chair, pulled out a fist-size blue cluster, and shoved it into his mouth. Blue drool trickled down his lips and he struggled to chew the oversize mouthful, but that didn’t stop him from saying, “I guess this is almost as good—but next time I want custard bursts.”

“Edaline will bake a double batch,” Grady promised.

“And I want more of these, too.”

Brant shoved another in his mouth, covering his bottom lip with blue slime. Sophie had no idea what Indigoobers were, but she was pretty sure she never wanted to try them.

“So, are you going to tell me why you’re here?” Brant asked, spraying spittle with each word. “Or do I have to guess? Actually, that might be fun.” His sharp blue eyes bored into Sophie’s like laser beams. “It has to do with
her
, doesn’t it? You never made surprise visits before she came along. So what would
she
want?”

He rubbed his chin, smearing blue drool into his scars.

Sophie had to look away.

She studied the room, looking for any clues to how Brant spent his long, lonely days. There were no books or paper. No gadgets or tools. Nothing but bare walls and empty space, like a really clean prison.

“You can’t have it!” Brant screamed, sending Sophie scrambling to her feet.

Grady rushed in front of her, but Brant was backing slowly away.

“You can’t have it,” he repeated, sinking to the floor in the corner. “It’s mine.
Mine.
”

He said the word over and over, making Sophie realize what he meant. The last time she’d been there, Brant had tackled her and stolen her Ruewen crest pin.

“I gave the pin to you,” she reminded him. “I don’t want it back.”

“Mine,” Brant agreed, rocking back and forth. “Mine mine mine.”

“Yes, Brant, it’s yours. So can we calm down and get back to why we’re really here?” Grady asked him.

Brant’s eyes slowly cleared. “Sorry,” he mumbled, crawling back to his chair. “Carry on.”

Grady wrapped his arm around Sophie, keeping her at his side as he said, “Okay. You know how you get headaches sometimes? Sophie might be able to find the cause of them.”

They’d decided not to tell Brant what they were really doing, not wanting to get his hopes up until they knew if the healing was a possibility.

Brant shoved another Indigoober into his mouth. “Oh, really?”

Sophie nodded. “It’s a trick I learned a little while ago, and I think it might work on you.”

“And what would I have to do?” he asked as he licked the blue slime off his lips.

“Just hold still for a second while Sophie sends a little warmth into your mind,” Grady told him.

Brant shook his head, whipping it from side to side so hard it looked like it would detach from his neck. “Nothing warm! Nothing nothing nothing—”

“It’s not really
warm
,” Sophie jumped in. “More like a tingle. Like if you’ve ever had your leg fall asleep.”

She had no idea if that was true. But that was how she imagined it would feel, and it seemed like a good enough explanation. It was enough to make Brant stop shaking.

“Okay,” he said, a hint of a smile curling one side of his lips. “Let’s see what you can do.”

Grady squeezed Sophie’s shoulder as she closed her eyes, reaching out with her consciousness for the feel of Brant’s mind.

All she could find was heat.

A fire inside her head.

Sweat beaded on her skin as she stretched her mind further, but no matter how hard she strained, she couldn’t break through the wall of flames to make contact.

“I need to place my hands on your temples,” she told Brant. “It won’t hurt. It’ll just help me focus the energy.”

She moved slowly as she reached for his temples, like she was reaching to pet a wild dog that could bite her hand any second. But Brant held still, not even flinching when her fingers came to rest on his fever-hot skin.

The rush of heat was stronger this time, but Sophie was able to shove her way through, collapsing into a suffocating darkness with sharp edges that scratched at her mental barriers. She ignored the pain and rallied her concentration, pushing deeper into the mire.

A vivid scene rampaged into her mind.

Jolie, clinging to Brant as a firestorm explodes around them. The force tosses Brant backward, but Jolie is surrounded, the wild flames strangling tighter and tighter until her face is lost in the smoke and her screams fade to nothing.

“Stop!” Brant screamed, grabbing Sophie’s wrist.

Pain launched up her arm as she tried to pull free, but she couldn’t get away until Grady grabbed Brant and tossed him backward, slamming him into the wall.

Brant crumpled to the floor, pressing his hands over his ears and mumbling, “Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop.”

“Are you okay?” Grady asked Sophie.

Before she could answer, Sandor charged into the room, waving his sword and demanding to know what was going on. Brant covered his face and screamed.

“You’re making it worse!” Grady shouted, shoving Sandor back toward the door. “I have everything under control.”

“That’s not what it looks like.” Sandor’s eyes focused on Sophie’s wrist. She covered the wound with her hand, but he still insisted, “I’m taking Miss Foster with me.”

“No,” Sophie told him, relieved at the steadiness of her voice.

All of her instincts were telling her to run—flee—get far, far away.

But she couldn’t ignore what she’d seen in Brant’s mind.

His memory of Jolie’s death had been sickening and horrifying. But it had also been
clear
—not scrambled up or shattered, like the broken memories she’d seen.

There had to be something left of Brant’s consciousness.

“I can help you,” she told Brant, waving Sandor back as she took a cautious step closer. “I can
heal
you.”

“Heal me?” he asked, as Grady gasped.

The shadows seemed to crawl deeper into Brant’s scars as he uncovered his face and asked, “What do you mean
heal
me?”

“Heal your mind,” Sophie said quietly. “Make you better.”

“Better,” Brant repeated. “How will healing me make me
better
?”

“You’ll be able to think clearly again,” Grady jumped in. “Go back to normal—”

“Normal?”
Brant screamed. “There is no
normal
!”

He whipped his bag of Indigoobers at Grady, and one of the clusters splattered Grady’s cheek.

“Brant, please,” Grady said as the goo slid down his face. “If you would just listen.”

“No—you listen. Nothing will
ever
be normal because
nothing will ever bring her back
!”

Grady closed his eyes, and his voice was impossibly sad as he said. “I know you miss her. I do too.”

“No, you don’t. If you did you would’ve broken like me.
Then
you’d know that there’s nothing without her. Nothing . . .” Brant’s voice cracked and he buried his face in his hands. “Get out.”

“Brant, please—”

“I SAID GET OUT!”

The words were so sharp, Sophie could practically feel them prick her skin.

But they weren’t as scary as what Brant whispered while Sandor dragged her and Grady out the door.

“I never want to be healed. Never never never never.”

Sophie didn’t feel Grady take her hand, or the warm light whisk her away.

She didn’t feel the pain in her wrist—though she was sure that would hit her when she got home.

All she felt were the claws of fear and doubt raging inside her, twisting and tearing and shredding her resolve.

Because if Brant didn’t want to be healed, Prentice might not want to be either.

THIRTEEN

B
UT PRENTICE IS THE PLAN,
Sophie told herself for what felt like the hundredth time, as she pulled her memory log from its hiding place in the bottom drawer of her desk.

Alden had given her the teal book with the silver moonlark on the cover after she’d accidentally bottled quintessence—the highly dangerous fifth element, which could only be collected from one of the five unmapped stars—and he’d revealed the truth about her past. She’d been created as part of Project Moonlark, the Black Swan’s secret genetic experiment, and after she’d been born they’d hidden classified secrets in her brain. The memories only resurfaced with the right trigger, so she’d been recording her dreams in her memory log, along with any clues that might lead her to her kidnappers, and any memories she’d recovered in the minds she’d probed.

She flipped to Prentice’s pages, her clammy fingers sticking to the paper as she studied the twisted, nightmare scenes she’d recorded. Searching his mind had been one of the most terrifying things Sophie had ever experienced, and she couldn’t imagine Prentice would want to live that way forever.

But he doesn’t know what he’ll be waking up to,
she reminded herself.

A
lot
had changed since Prentice’s mind had been broken.

Years had passed—more than a decade. His son, Wylie, had grown up without him. And his wife . . .

Sophie didn’t know all the details—only that something had gone wrong while Cyrah was light leaping and she’d ended up fading away.

And Prentice had no idea. He would wake up expecting to find his wife and son waiting for him. Instead he’d learn his wife was dead and his son had been raised and adopted by an old family friend.

Would he be able to handle all of that tragedy?

Or would the grief and guilt and anger simply shatter him all over again?

Sophie sighed, stuffing the memory log away.

Mind healing was turning out to be
way
more complicated than she’d thought. And of course the Black Swan hadn’t given her any guidance except, “Wait for instructions and stick to the plan.”

Unless . . .

She ran to her door, threw it open and—

—slammed into a muscley goblin chest.

“Ow,” she complained, pinching the bridge of her smashed nose. “You don’t have to barricade me in.”

“Actually, I do. I figured it was only a matter of time before you tried to sneak away.”

“I’m not sneaking away. I was going down to check the caves to see if the Black Swan replied to my note.”

“So you weren’t going to pay a secret visit to Elwin on the way back?”

“Why would I . . .”

Sandor reached for her wrist, pointing to the ugly reddish bruise she’d forgotten about.

“It’s not a big deal,” she said, trying to pull her arm away.

“If you don’t mind, I think
I
should be the one to decide that.”

She rolled her eyes as Sandor sniffed the injury. “If you lick me I’m going to kick you.”

“That would be like a kitten kicking a bear.” His smile faded as he took another whiff. “This is more than a bruise.”

“I think he twisted the skin as he squeezed—or maybe it happened when I tried to pull away.” Her little sister used to do that to her all the time. It always stung like a burn.

Sandor frowned. “Well, it
does
seem like a surface wound, so it will probably clear up with a salve. But if it’s still there tomorrow I will insist we stop by the Healing Center on your lunch break. Agreed?”

Sophie nodded, hoping one of the billions of ointments Edaline kept around the house in case of “Sophie Emergencies” would work. She was already holding the record for Most Physician Visits that year—and Foxfire had only been in session for a few weeks.

“Can I go now?” she asked, pulling her wrist free.

Sandor shook his head. “I’ll check the cave. You stay here and treat that wound before it starts to fester.”

“How do I know you won’t hide their reply if you don’t like it?”

“Because secrets hinder my ability to protect you—whether
I’m
keeping them, or you are. We need to work
together
. I know you’re not used to trusting people, Sophie. But I’m on your side. I wish you would believe that.”

Sophie touched the edge of her bruise. Her skin really was stinging. And she didn’t exactly love going to that creepy cave. “Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.”

“Good. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Sandor said, already on his way to the door. “And I hope when I come back I’ll find you sleeping peacefully.”

“It’s the middle of the afternoon,” she reminded him.

“Sounds like a perfect time for a nap. Trust me—you need one.”

He left before she could argue, and Sophie checked her reflection in her floor-length mirror, surprised at how shadowed her eyes were.

“Ugh, what’d you do—get into a fist fight with your pillow?” Vertina asked as her tiny face appeared in the upper corner of the glass.

Sophie knew spectral mirrors were just a clever bit of Elvin programming. But she was always surprised by how lifelike Vertina seemed—and how much she wished she could reach through the glass and strangle her. If Vertina hadn’t been such close friends with Jolie, Sophie would’ve left the obnoxious talking mirror to gather dust for all eternity.

“You should really think about using glimmer dust,” Vertina told her, tossing her long black hair. “It worked wonders on Jolie—and she had the worst dark circles I’ve ever seen.”

“Was Jolie having a hard time sleeping?”

“Toward the end, yeah. But that was when . . .”

“When what?” Sophie asked.

“Have you thought about trying gold eye shadow? It would really bring out the flecks in those freaky eyes of yours.”

“When
what
?” Sophie pressed.

She’d been trying to get information out of Vertina for weeks, but so far all she’d gotten was snippy makeover advice.

Vertina chewed her lip. “I . . . can’t tell you. Jolie said I couldn’t tell anyone, even if she was gone.
Especially
if she was gone.”

“Wait—are you saying she knew she might die?”

Vertina squeaked and tossed her hair to hide behind it. “I can’t say any more. Not unless . . .”

“Unless what?” Sophie asked.

“If you don’t know, I can’t help you.”