Shades of Starlight (Hiatus)

Book Two: Chapter Twenty-Five

"Oh. Great," Sophie said. I fell over laughing. Stormy leaped from Keefe's shoulder to my side, checking if I was okay.

"Try not to be too enthusiastic there, Foster," Keefe said dryly.

"I didn't think you hated having my brother around that much, Soph," I teased. "Or maybe you just can't resist him when he is..."

Both of them went bright red. I snickered, passing Stormy through the bars to greet Silveny.

"It-it-it's... um, it's just, uh..." Sophie spluttered. "It's just that I don't even know where we're supposed to go from here. The only leads we have are a line in an old dwarven song about swans and a tiny piece of an erased memory that the Black Swan has specifically warned me not to investigate." I hated how right she was.

"Whoa-back the T-Rex up. The Black Swan contacted you again and you didn't tell me?" Stormy scrabbled up Silveny's tail and back legs to sit on the sparkling alicorn's back.

"Yeah, and it sucked, but at least they made it rhyme." I explained about the note and the piece of Sophie's old journal.

"Okay, first... I definitely want to know their trick for breaking into lockers. And second, uh, that's not a warning. That's a dare. Now we know they still have the pages. So we just have to figure out a way to steal them back."

"It doesn't work like that, Keefe." Sophie looked slightly defeated.

"All we have to do is think one step ahead of them."

"Or ten. Think about it. How do they even know we have the journal?" I pointed out. "They have to be watching us."

"Now?" Keefe looked skeptical. I shrugged. "But what about security? I think I've seen a few goblins skulking around here before."

"Goblin senses can be fooled," Sophie said.

"They can?" Keefe and I asked in unison. Sandor shot Sophie a death glare.

"Yeah, but it's a secret. Anyway, Cass is right. How do you sneak up on someone who knows what you're doing-and thinking about doing-all the time?"

"Please," Keefe scoffed. "You're talking to the prankmaster general. I'll find a way."

"You do that," Sophie told him. "Cass, you and I should work on flying with Silveny." I nodded. There were more rules for Silveny now that we knew about her teleporting ability. She could only fly inside the enclosure now, something she was not happy about.

I pressed my thumb against the cube-shaped pad that allowed only authorized elves inside the pasture. The sides of the cube parted, and a tiny black sack fell to the ground. I bent to pick it up. The sack was marked with the sign of the Swan.

"What's that?" Keefe asked. Sandor drew his weapons.

"Proof that we're being watched," I said quietly, handing the sack to Sophie. She untied the beaded cords securing the bag shut and dumped the contents into her palm.

A tiny silver alicorn pin with outstretched wings, and a note. Sophie had shown me the Prattles' pin clues that the Black Swan had sent her before. As Sophie flipped it over, the digital readout said '1 OF 2'. Every Prattles' pin represented a different animal, and the number of pins that had a certain animal on them were determined by the population of that species.

So not only had the Black Swan snuck into Havenfield, gotten past the goblins, and opened a lock that required Sophie or my DNA, but they'd somehow managed to get the rarest Prattle's pin of them all as well. Sophie unfolded the note and instantly glared at the paper. I read the message and smiled.

Face your fears.

"Oh, it's totally on." I handed the note to Keefe, who grinned as well.

"No way. I'm not playing their games anymore." Sophie looked so tired. "You hear that? I'm done with the secrets! You want to order me around, you can come out and do it face to face." I held my breath. Could that actually work? I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary.

Sophie sank down to the ground. I wasn't an Empath, but I could sense her fury.

"Woah, easy now," Keefe said, shaking her shoulder. I glanced around quickly, meeting Sandor's eyes. He looked at me pointedly, with an expression telling me to keep an eye on Sophie. I nodded, and he turned, probably to do a perimeter sweep.

"Hey, Captain Mood Swing." I glared at Keefe. That wasn't going to help. "I get what you're feeling. And, well-I feel what you're feeling. I don't blame you, at all. But remember what we're trying to do here. We want to fix Alden." Sophie nodded, flushing.

"Soph, don't feel guilty. Let's just figure out what this means," I told her gently.

"Yeah," she mumbled, examining the alicorn pin she'd been clenching. I stared at it, then the enclosure. What fear was the note talking about? Something to do with Silveny? It had to have been left by her pen for a reason. So... what was Sophie afraid of?

I inhaled sharply, eyes widening, spinning to face her. It was what I was afraid of too. From Sophie's understanding expression, she'd figured it out as well.

"You know what it is, don't you?" Keefe asked. My fingers automatically found the strands of hair I'd dyed green. I remembered looking into a mirror and seeing black. I heard myself panting, screaming, felt a rough cord around my arms, smelled something so sickeningly sweet it made me want to throw up.

"Yes."