Exile (Keeper of the Lost Cities) (39 page)

“Why don’t you let me look through the journal? Maybe I’ll find something else.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” she told him, hating the way Keefe’s dad was so obviously listening to them. Plus, they were moving forward again.

Her chest tightened when she realized she was next to see the Vackers, and she could barely breathe as she took the final steps.

Biana and Fitz were mid “thank you for coming” when they realized who they were speaking to. Biana’s voice trailed away, and Fitz’s jaw clenched so tight it looked like he might crack a tooth.

“I’m so sorry,” Sophie whispered, forcing herself to meet Fitz’s gaze.

He didn’t nod. Didn’t say anything. Just stared at her.

Sophie hung her head. She thought about walking away, but
she couldn’t. Not without saying the one thing that needed to be said.

I miss him.

“Don’t!” Fitz snapped. “You don’t get to—”

“Whoa, chill, man,” Keefe said, stepping between them. “This is Sophie.”

“Keefe, it’s fine.” Sophie looked at Della, who’d come out of her daze to notice what was happening beside her. “I guess I shouldn’t have come.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Fitz agreed.

Biana just glared at her.

There were dozens of things Sophie wanted to say, but she knew none of them would help. So she gave Della the tightest hug she could, curtsied to the Councillors, and hurried away, with Sandor right behind.

“Hey, wait up,” Keefe called, running after her.

“I don’t want to talk, Keefe.”

“I know—I can definitely feel that. But I thought you should know that I could tell what Fitz is feeling, and he’s not angry at you.”

She gave him a look.

“Okay, he’s a
little
mad at you. But mostly his dad. And the world. He’s freaking out—which I get, but . . . he has no right to take it out on you.”

“Yes, he does.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Sophie rubbed her temples. She knew Keefe meant well—and in some ways what he was saying did help. But not enough.

“I’m sorry, I just want to be alone,” she told him, jogging away.

“I guess I’ll see you on Monday, then,” he called behind her.

She didn’t look back until she’d crested the first hill. Keefe was on his way to the Vackers.

“Are you ready to go home, now?” Sandor asked.

“Not yet.”

The last time she’d been to the Wanderling Woods the Black Swan had left her a message at her grave. And as she wound through the forest, searching for her tree, she couldn’t help hoping that they might do it again. She was starting to think she was heading the wrong way, but then she rounded a bend and two narrow saplings appeared on a hill ahead.

A lone figure stood between them.

“Dex?” Sophie asked when she got closer.

He sniffled and scrubbed at his eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbled, hiding his flushed face. “It’s stupid to get upset, right? I mean, it’s just a tree.”

“I cried when I saw them too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Her tree still didn’t have any fruits or color, and it looked like it hadn’t grown at all. Dex’s was twice as tall and covered with tiny periwinkle flowers. She tried not to read anything into that, but she couldn’t help worrying her
malfunctioning
DNA might have something to do with it.

She saved the worry for later, scanning her scrawny sapling and looking for any sign of a clue. It was nothing more than a tree.

Dex reached out, plucking a flower from his tree and sniffing it. “Wow, this really
is
me. It smells just like I do when I don’t shower for a few days.”

Only Dex would have a tree with stinky flowers.

“I hate that they’re still out there,” he whispered.

“Who?”

“The ones who tried to . . .”

“Oh.
Them.
”

“Sometimes I’ll think I see them or hear them,” he added quietly, glancing over his shoulder.

“We’re safe, Dex.”

“No—
you’re
safe. You have the Council and the whole world trying to protect you.”

“The world doesn’t want to protect me, Dex. They see me with Sandor and freak out, like being near me will get them taken too. Just like what happened to you.”

She didn’t mean to say the last part, but it slipped out anyway.

“Yeah, well, they’re dumb. The only time I feel safe is around you.” His cheeks flamed and he quickly added, “You have the bodyguard, after all.”

“Yeah,” Sophie mumbled, staring at Sandor. She never realized Dex was wishing for a goblin of his own.

Dex dropped his eyes to his feet. “I guess I know what you
mean, though. My parents worry now. A lot. I have to fight them to go places—even to see you. Not that I’ve had to do that much lately.” He kicked the ground, but then his head snapped up. “Oh! This is what you’ve been busy with, huh?”

Sophie nodded.

“You could’ve told me.”

“I wasn’t supposed to talk about it.”

“But you told Keefe?”

“Fitz is his best friend, and the Vackers are like his family. He needed to know.”

“So now that the news is out, though—you guys won’t be hanging out so much, right?”

“We might be. We’re still working on something.”

She thought about telling him what, but Dex had always chosen to stay away from the Vackers. He’d never wanted to know them—any of them.

Dex sighed and dropped the flower he’d picked, crushing it with his shoe. “I thought things would be different after we got back home,” he mumbled.

“Different how?”

“I don’t know. I mean, we went through this
huge
thing. And then I came back and everyone just expected me to go back to normal and act like it never happened.
But it happened
.” He pointed to his tree. “I was there too. I almost died too. It’s like no one cares except my family.”

“Lots of people care, Dex.” She hesitated a second and then
took his hand, waiting for him to look at her. “I care.”

“Really? Then how come ever since school started, it’s like I don’t exist? Before that, actually—ever since that day when Alden . . .”

When he spoke again, it was almost a whisper. “Is that when it happened? To Alden?”

She could barely manage to nod. “It got really bad the next day.”

He tightened his grip on her hand. “It wasn’t your fault, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You can’t say that. You don’t even know what happened.” She tried to pull away, but he held tight.

“I know you. And I know you would never let anything bad happen to anyone if you could help it.”

Tears burned her eyes. “Thanks, Dex. I hope you’re right.”

“I am. And see—when you tell me stuff, I can help. I bet if you told me what you and Keefe are working on, I could help with that, too.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe I’m right or maybe you’ll tell me?”

“Maybe I don’t know.” She turned back to their trees, their small, weak little trees that were growing stronger by the day. “Come on, we should probably get back to our families.”

Dex kept hold of one of her hands as they walked, and Sophie couldn’t decide how she felt about that. But she didn’t try to pull away, even when they made it back to Alden’s grave.
Most of the crowd had left—as had the Councillors—but the Vackers remained. Grady and Edaline seemed to be trying to get them to go home, but Della didn’t want to leave the tree.

Dex went to join his parents and Grady caught Sophie’s eye.

I’ll be waiting at the entrance
, she transmitted, hurrying away as fast as she could without actually breaking into a run. She couldn’t face Fitz and Biana again, and they wouldn’t want her to. At least they knew she came to the ceremony. That would have to be enough.

The entrance to the Woods was as empty as it had been that first day Sophie had been there, and she leaned against the pillar of the arched entrance, trying to clear her head. But she caught a slight movement in her peripheral vision.

Up the path, a dark-skinned figure paced in the shade of a nearby tree. A bright red tree with tiny purple flowers—the same tree Grady and Edaline had shown her.

He wiped his eyes as he bent to run his hands over the stone marking the grave.

His mother’s grave.

“Wylie.”

Sophie didn’t realize she’d said it out loud until he turned toward the sound. He squinted at her. Then his eyes widened and he backed a step away, like he knew exactly who she was.

“Sophie?” Dex asked, running to catch up with her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I . . .” Sophie took a step toward Wylie. Just one—just to see how he’d react.

He didn’t move.

“I need a second,” she told Dex. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he held it back. Sandor didn’t follow either.

Wylie’s skin was lighter than his dad’s, and his features were more pinched. But his eyes.

His eyes were Prentice’s eyes—only full of life and a million conflicting emotions. He looked about twenty—which she should’ve figured, but it’d been easier to imagine him closer to her age and growing up never knowing his real dad. If he was twenty, he would’ve known him and loved him for seven or eight years before he died. He would’ve felt every heartbreaking second of his loss.

Because of her.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Wylie asked when she got closer. “You’re the one.”

Sophie forced herself to nod.

Wylie nodded too.

She waited for him to yell, scream, fling random things, something—anything. Instead he stared at her long enough to make her squirm and then whispered, “What are you waiting for?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re supposed to make it right. He said you would make it right.”

“Who did? Your dad?”

“Who else would it be?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Wylie’s hands clenched into fists and Sandor was instantly at Sophie’s side.

Wylie backed away. “He told me before it happened—
if
it ever happened—that I wouldn’t have to worry. That you would make it right. So what are you waiting for?”

“I . . . don’t understand.”

Did he think she could fix his father? She wasn’t even sure if she could fix Alden—and the only reason she still had hope was because his mind was shattered by guilt, not a memory break.

She’d seen Prentice’s mind. A tiny part of him was still there—maybe. But the rest of him had clearly slipped into madness. How was she supposed to fix that?

Unless that’s what he’d been trying to tell her. The clue from the poem—could he have been telling her how to fix him?

But how could following a bird fix a broken mind?

“You were supposed to make it right,” Wylie repeated.

She didn’t know if that was true, but she supposed it didn’t matter because there was one truth that overpowered it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how.”

Wylie sighed. A thick sort of sigh that was part snort and part sneer and heavy on the disgust. Then he turned and stalked away without another word.

Sandor placed a meaty hand on Sophie’s shoulder. “Do not let what the troubled boy says affect you.”

She wanted to agree, but . . .

What if
that
was why the Black Swan sent her to Exile? Not for Fintan, like Alden thought. For
Prentice
.

But not to probe his mind.

To fix him.

It would explain why Prentice submitted to the break. Why he was willing to sacrifice himself and leave his family and give up everything.

What if he thought he would get it all back—that she would “make it right”—and he’d been waiting all this time for her to come and fix what happened?

Which led to the bigger, scarier question.

If that had been the Black Swan’s plan, why didn’t it work when she probed Prentice’s mind?

“What if I really am malfunctioning?” Sophie whispered.

She’d hoped saying it out loud would make it seem wrong and impossible and shake the possibility away.

Instead it felt . . .
right.

“Miss Foster?” Sandor asked as a tear streaked down her cheek. “Do you need me to find Elwin?”

She shook her head. This was something Elwin couldn’t help with.

If Wylie was right, the problem went deeper than her skin or her cells.

It was in her genes.

Y
OU’VE BEEN STARING AT YOUR
reflection so long I’ve counted all of your eyelashes,” Vertina announced, making Sophie blink. “Did you know you have one hundred and twenty-seven on your left eye, and only one hundred and nineteen on your right?”

“No,” Sophie mumbled, tugging out a loose one from the left side.

“I didn’t say you had to even it out!”

Sophie flicked the eyelash away and went back to searching for some sign that Wylie was wrong—some proof that she was perfectly healthy and normal and all of her talents
were working the exact way they should be.

But all she could see were her eyes.

Freaky, brown eyes—eyes that made her stand out from everyone else. The Black Swan couldn’t have given her those intentionally, could they? Why would they do that? And what about her allergy? Surely they wouldn’t have
chosen
for her to have that. And if those things weren’t planned, what other fun surprises did her genetic manipulation have?

She stared at the vial of Fade Fuel hanging around her neck as she replayed Wylie’s words for what felt like the ten-zillionth time. They still made her queasy and shaky—but they held a tiny hint of hope, too. If he was right—and if she
was
malfunctioning—then it meant there definitely
was
a way to fix Alden. And Prentice. And who knew who else.

She just had to figure out how to fix herself first.

But how? It was too late to change her genetic code. And she didn’t even know where the problem began, or how deep it went.

Or maybe she did . . .

She moved toward her wall of windows and stared directly at the sun.

The light swelled in her mind, making her brain throb and the room tilt sideways and somehow she was on the floor, even though she didn’t remember falling.