Neverseen (52 page)

“Interesting,” King Dimitar said, tracing a claw over the black Neverseen armband. “They claimed only their own knew this detail. And you do look familiar.”

“Must be the family resemblance,” Keefe said. “Which is also how I know about this.” He pinched his Neverseen armband before covering it with his cape. “My mother is Lady Gisela.”

The king didn’t blink.

“Okay, maybe you know her better as the elf you tortured a few weeks ago, and had dragged into the mountains,” Keefe told him.

“Oh,
her.
” King Dimitar sounded so gleeful it made Sophie want to vomit. “The disappointment.”

Tam shadow-whispered in Sophie’s ear, “This isn’t going well.”

Too early to tell,
she transmitted back, hoping she was right.

She didn’t know how Keefe found the strength to stay so calm as King Dimitar circled him, studying him from all sides. “Please, King,” Keefe whispered. “I came here to know if she’s still alive.”

“Of course you did.” He tilted Keefe’s chin up with a claw. “The question is, why would I tell you?”

“Because I can tell you a secret about the alicorns.”

Sophie’s hands curled into fists. It was what she’d told him to say—but she still hated it.

She knew Keefe would have to offer King Dimitar a secret he would actually consider valuable. And it couldn’t be something that would cripple the elvin world, either. So, she’d chosen the secret she knew could only be kept for so long.

“Why do you think I have any interest in a pair of winged horses?” King Dimitar asked.

“Because you know the Council would do anything to protect them,” Keefe said. “They care about them even more than they care about that.” He pointed to the locked chest. “They know they can keep at least a few colonies of gnomes alive. But if you take the alicorns, they have no other options.”

Now he had the King’s attention, and Sophie hoped he’d be able to keep stalling long enough for the next phase of the plan.

Ready?
she transmitted, slipping into Fitz’s mind.

Think this is going to work?
he asked.

It has to. If he catches us, we’re all dead.

With that cheerful prospect, they locked eyes and stretched their consciousness toward King Dimitar.

It’ll feel soft,
she warned Fitz.
Almost smothering.

We can do this,
Fitz told her.
It’s what we’ve been training for.

Together they pushed into King Dimitar’s mind, falling through a sea of feathers. It felt like they’d been plummeting forever, but then they crashed into a pillow stuffed with dandelion fluff and suffocated in the fuzz.

Someday Sophie wanted to understand why ogres’ cruel, murderous minds felt like giant marshmallows. But for the moment, she just wanted to survive.

Fitz’s consciousness stuck close to hers and they pooled their energy, bracing for King Dimitar to discover them.

Thirty seconds ticked by. Then a full minute.

When another minute passed, Sophie decided they were safe.

They couldn’t transmit to each other without giving themselves away, but Fitz knew to follow her lead. She imagined the fractals of his emotional center and without even trying, a portion of her consciousness drifted there. The other portion of her mind waded deeper into the sweltering cotton candy.

Hopelessness swelled as the softness seemed to expand around her, but Fitz beat it back
with a rush of confidence. And when his emotions turned weary gray, she boosted him with a rush of energy. Together, they balanced each other and kept pushing, pushing, pushing until finally, with a firm tug, Sophie peeled back the last veil of King Dimitar’s mind.

Darkness lurked beyond—an inky pool of poison waiting to drown her.

Fitz sent her another burst of energy as Sophie plunged into the swamp of memories alone. She’d been in some sludgy minds before, but this was a boiling tar pit, and each bursting bubble unleashed a revolting memory.

Sophie had expected to witness evil. But nothing could’ve prepared her for the devastating truths she scooped out of the mire.

Did you get it?
Fitz asked as she pulled their minds back to the eerie green light of Ravagog.

Sophie wanted to lie—spare him the heartache. But they were a team. He needed the truth. So she gathered what little courage she had left and transmitted,
The cure is a hoax.

D
OES THAT MEAN
the chest King
Dimitar has is a fake?
Fitz transmitted.

Yes
, Sophie said, feeling tears leak down her face. But it was so much worse than that.
It was all a lie, Fitz. There is no cure. The one they gave the gnomes in Eternalia wasn’t real.

And even
that
wasn’t the worst thing she’d discovered. But before she could crush Fitz’s spirit any further, she heard Tam’s shadow voice whispering in her ear.

“I hope you guys got what you needed, because your boy is about to lose it. Biana’s already on her way down for retrieval.”

Sophie couldn’t decide which of those facts was more
terrifying as she looked down and found Keefe getting choked again, this time by King Dimitar himself.

“That’s where I’ve seen you!” the king shouted. “You were with that foolish girl who thought she could get away with invading my mind. Is she here?”

And that—unfortunately—was the exact moment Biana chose to steal the silver chest.

The second the chest moved King Dimitar dropped Keefe and lunged, snatching Biana and shaking her until she appeared.

“Another one!” he bellowed, as Dex shouted, “EMERGENCY PLAN—GO!” and flung one of his cube gadgets at the king’s feet.

King Dimitar scrambled back as the gadget exploded, and Sophie couldn’t see through the smoke to know if Biana got away. More gadgets flew—smoke bombs, stink bombs, sound bombs—as Sophie and the rest of her friends levitated into the fray.

Fitz had Calla in his arms, but he set her down and charged into the smoke screaming, “Biana, where are you?”

“Over here!” Keefe shouted, Sucker Punching the ogre who was trying to grab both of them. The punches barely elicited a grunt from the ogre, but Keefe kept fighting anyway.

“Duck!” Linh shouted, and Keefe and Biana dropped to their stomachs as a stream of water blasted the ogre like a fire hose.

The ogre swayed off balance and toppled off the cliff.

“Don’t worry,” Sophie told Linh when she screamed. “Ogres can phase shift as they fall—you didn’t kill him.”

“TIME TO GO!” Tam shouted, running toward them with ogres lunging after him. He grabbed his sister’s hand and ran full speed off the edge of the platform.

Fitz and Biana followed, carrying Calla between them.

“Come on, Foster,” Keefe said, pulling her toward the edge.

“What about Dex?”

“Right behind you!” Dex threw a modified obscurer and whited-out the world.

“Next time warn us that you’re going to blind us,” Keefe said, clinging tighter to Sophie. “Nothing like jumping off a cliff you can’t even see.”

“I can see,” Sophie said, pulling Keefe forward. “Jump right . . . now!”

They leaped together, and for a horrifying second Sophie couldn’t concentrate enough to levitate. Keefe held her up with him until she got control. Her steps were shaky, but she remembered her Exillium training, and they put a good distance between themselves and the mountain. If only it were safe to teleport through Ravagog’s force fields. Instead, they’d have to make it back to the tunnel.

“Are you okay?” she asked, noticing the bruises forming on Keefe’s neck.

“I’ll live,” he said. “Well . . . assuming we survive
that
.”

He pointed to where dozens of heavily armed ogres had
phase shifted to the dusty ground below. More ogres were swarming over the bridge, moving shockingly fast for such bulky creatures. They stormed the empty playa, waving their swords and snarling, waiting for their victims to land.

“Uh, Dex, I hope you have some of those exploding gadgets left,” Keefe said, “because I’m not sure how much longer Fitz and Biana can carry Calla.”

Dex flung two more gadgets, and he must’ve boosted his arm strength, because they launched to the other side of the bridge. Sophie worried it was a mistake, until one explosion created a crater near the bridge’s first arch, and the other erupted with an ear-splitting screech that sent the ogres scattering away.

It stemmed the tide of incoming reinforcements—but they still had more ogres than they could handle. And Dex had to ruin the small victory by saying, “That was all I had.”

“Then it’s my turn!” Linh shouted, spinning in midair and thrusting her arms toward the mountain. Jet streams blasted out of the waterfalls, flooding the playa and washing the ogres over the edge of the canyon.

Before Sophie could celebrate, Fitz, Biana, and Calla collapsed into the crashing waves.

“Linh!” Tam screamed, and Linh whipped her arms again, sweeping the water back toward the mountain in a massive tidal wave.

Fitz, Biana, and Calla dropped into the mud, coughing the water out of their lungs.

Keefe, Dex, and Sophie landed as close as they could get, sinking up to their knees in the paste-thick muck. Tam set Linh down beside them.

“Wow,” Keefe and Dex said—a “wow” Linh definitely deserved. Somehow she was holding the tidal wave steady, keeping it as a wall between the mountain half of the city and where they stood.

Across the canyon, the ogres stared at the wave with a mix of fear and fury, none daring to cross the bridge and risk getting washed into the river like their brethren.

“You guys okay?” Sophie asked, stumbling through the mud to help Fitz and Biana to their feet.

“I think so.” Biana tore off her soggy Neverseen cloak and flung it away. Her clothes underneath weren’t as muddy, and Fitz and Calla quickly copied her. Sophie did the same. Dex dropkicked his cloak across the soggy plain.

And then Biana asked the question Sophie hadn’t thought to ask: “Where’s Alvar?”

A moment of silence passed—followed by frantic shouting as they fanned out to search.

Sophie explained to a hysterical Biana that she was going to track Alvar’s thoughts, when a deep laugh behind them sent them spinning around.

“Didn’t mean to freak you guys out,” Alvar said as Biana tackled him with a move that seemed more strangle than hug. “I just wanted to see if I’d figured out how to fool Calla’s eyes. Looks like I have.”

“Dude, now was
not
the time,” Fitz said, and even Keefe nodded in agreement.

“Oh, relax. I also grabbed this!” He kicked at a pile of mud, revealing the silver chest.

He seemed so proud of himself, Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him the chest was useless. Plus, she knew what
was
in the chest, and it wasn’t something she wanted the ogres having their hands on.

“Uh—are you guys forgetting that my sister is holding back a
tidal wave
over here,” Tam yelled, pointing to Linh’s trembling form. “She’s not going to last much longer, so you’d better figure out how to get us out of this place before it crashes.”

Sophie checked the other side of the canyon, where hundreds of ogres paced impatiently. “We’ll never make it back to the tunnel,” she said.

“Gee, you think?” Alvar asked. “But you’re the girl with all the plans. I’m sure you’ll figure out something.”

“What if we let the tidal wave go?” she said. “Would it wash the ogres away?”

“The canyon is too wide,” Linh said, her voice strained. “All it will wash away is the bridge.”

“Then we’d
really
be trapped,” Alvar said.

“Would we?” Sophie asked, turning to Dex. “I know it’s not a gadget, but what do your Technopath senses say. Could we survive it?”

“Survive what?” Biana asked.

Dex knew. His eyes widened as his brain seemed to work the problem through. He nodded slowly. “Yeah . . . I’m pretty sure we would. Depending on where this river ends up.”

“It’s the same river we used to live by in Wildwood,” Tam said.

“And the flood would be strong enough to break down the gates?” Sophie asked Linh.

Sweat poured down her face as she nodded.

Sophie turned to her friends. “What do you guys think? Linh can’t hold on much longer.”

“Just so I’m clear,” Keefe said. “You’re suggesting we unleash the tidal wave and destroy the bridge while we’re
on
it, and hope the broken pieces smash through the gates without squishing us and carry us out of Ravagog like a raft?”

“Unfortunately . . . yes,” Sophie said. “I don’t see another option, do you?”

Everyone stared at the bloodthirsty ogres.

“I guess it’s time for you to flood another city,” Sophie told Linh. “And this time, let’s destroy everything while you’re at it.”

N
EED ME TO
help?” Sophie asked Tam as he carried Linh toward the bridge.

“I’ve got her.” But every time he lost his balance, Linh’s concentration would falter and the wave would swell higher.

“Hang on, Linh,” Sophie told her. “You can do this.”

“I can,” Linh said, gritting her teeth so hard they looked ready to crack. “There will be no flood until we’re ready.”

The ogres roared to a frenzy when Sophie’s group reached the bridge. A few even crept to the first fiery arch, hovering near the crater Dex had made, eager to spill the first blood.

“Let’s try to stay in groups through this,” Fitz said. “No one should be alone.”

Keefe hooked his arm through Sophie’s, and Biana took his arm. Fitz stayed with Tam and Linh, helping hold Linh steady as she clung to the edge of the bridge and kept her eyes fixed on the wave. Dex, Calla, and Alvar made a small circle, the two boys each holding Calla with one hand and the silver chest with their other.

“Don’t take any risks to save that thing,” Sophie told them, pointing to the chest. “It’s not worth it.”

“Why not?” Alvar asked.

“Brace yourselves!” Tam shouted before Sophie could answer. “Linh needs to let the water go.”