keep your friends close

(40)

Candleshade looms out of the horizon. Its dark towers resemble a clawed hand reaching towards the sky. Sophie's not sure what she expected from Keefe's family home, but this wasn't quite it.

Inside, she follows him past hallways of crystal walls and polished black floors. There must be hundreds of rooms, all heavily furnished and decorated, yet there were hardly signs of life within any of them—fireplaces without a trace of ash, dull mirrors, plush couches with perfectly undented cushions. It seemed too big a place for an only child to grow up in. Too lonely.

She pushes away those thoughts, not wanting Keefe to mistake her swirling emotions for pity. "Where's your dad?" she asks him.

"He usually doesn't come back here until he has to," Keefe answers, and doesn't elaborate. "Watch your step."

Sophie heeds the warning a heartbeat too late, and she finds herself grasping at the railing of the Vortinator right as it begins accelerating. The stairs lurch out from under her feet.

Lightning-fast, Keefe reaches out and grabs her arm. "I said to watch your step," he tells her with a joking lilt in his voice.

Sophie steadies herself by gripping onto his arm, not used to feeling clumsy. "Thanks," she says, a little breathless as she looks up at him. They're standing so close that she can spot the darker flecks in his irises. It reminds her of the day they were at Everglen and she called him out for being scared—he was all dilated pupils and white knuckles and defensive body language. She still hasn't been able to pinpoint why. Maybe she had misread something. She hasn't been sure of herself in a while.

What reason would he have to be scared of her, anyway?

The Vortinator slows, and Keefe hastily lets go of her. "We can use the study on this floor," he says. "Thankfully it's not crowded right now."

Sophie follows after him and sets her things down on one of the tables. "Must be our lucky day." The 'study' is actually a massive library, packed with bookshelves and cozy armchairs. She has to crane her head back to even see the ceiling.

"Are you hungry?" Keefe asks as he wanders amongst the bookshelves. "I usually keep a stash of snacks somewhere in here—aha!"

He comes out with an armful of candies and other elvin sweets and dumps them on the table. Sophie's eyes immediately go to the box of Prattles.

Keefe sees her looking and snatches the box out of reach, grinning impishly. "Not so fast. Alchemy first, then snack break."

She makes a face. "Worst tutor ever," she grumbles under her breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

He smirks. "Thought so."

This time around, Sophie's pleased to find that she's becoming more familiar with the Alchemy procedures, even the more advanced ones. But once it comes to Keefe's trick questions—which he designed specifically to test her skills, not her photographic memory—she begins to get flustered.

"A sample of yeti pee has been stored improperly at room temperature," Keefe reads from the textbook. "How might this affect elixir preparation?"

Sophie wrinkles her nose. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"You're doing great," he insists.

"Maybe I'll just drop out and help Grady and Edaline raise T-rexes for the rest of my life."

Keefe looks mildly horrified. "Yeah, not happening. I have to make sure you're in top shape for midterms, otherwise we'll both look bad and Dame Alina will send me back to weekly detention." He pauses, then reaches for the box of Prattles. "Here. You just need some motivation."

Sophie lights up. "Can I have—"

"Not yet. I'll read the question again." Keefe clears his throat dramatically. "A sample of yeti pee has been stored improperly at room temperature. How might this affect elixir preparation?"

She wracks her brain for the answer. "Yeti pee. Yeti pee. Um—hey!"

Keefe tosses a Prattle at her. The candy bounces off her head and lands on the table with a small clatter. He grins cheekily. "Too slow."

Sophie stares at him, open-mouthed. "You did not just do that."

"Then answer the question." His blue eyes sparkle challengingly.

Sophie narrows her eyes. "Yeti pee at room temperature... loses viscosity and thins the elixir..."

Keefe picks up another Prattle.

"... and also gets smellier!" she blurts out, but not before the Prattle is already hurtling towards her. She ducks, and the candy bounces off the bookshelf behind her. "Hey! I answered it!"

"You have to be more confident than that," he chides. "Lady Galvin will show you no mercy during the exam."

Sophie glares at him. "I don't think Lady Galvin will be throwing candy at my face."

He shrugs innocently. "I'm just trying to do my job."

Keefe reaches into the box again. Before he can react, she picks up the other Prattle off the table and chucks it at him. It hits him right between the eyes with deadly accuracy.

He blinks in shock.

Sophie claps a hand over her mouth to smother her grin.

A slow smile stretches across Keefe's face. "You are so dead, Foster," he says, grabbing a fistful of Prattles. Sophie shrieks with laughter as she jumps out of her chair to avoid the spray of caramel candy that scatters across the floor. She picks up another Prattle to hurl over her shoulder as she and Keefe chase one another throughout the library, giggling and flinging candy around the shelves like schoolkids. Sophie can't remember the last time she had laughed this much.

"Okay, okay, truce!" Keefe exclaims, his hands flailing in front of his face when Sophie aims a particularly large glob of Prattle at his head. "You win!"

She narrows her eyes at him. "No more Alchemy?"

"No more Alchemy," he promises. He slides to the floor against one of the bookshelves. After a second of hesitation, Sophie joins him. They sit beside each other and catch their breath, watching the clouds drift by outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.

"I have a peace offering," he says, and holds something out in his fist.

She lets him drop it into the palm of her hand; it's cool and shiny. "The Prattles pin?" she exclaims, turning it over in her hand. "It's a sabertooth! Are you sure?"

He smiles. "It's all yours—as long as you honor the truce."

"No promises," she shoots back, smoothing a finger over the pin thoughtfully. At least this way she wouldn't show up at the Heks' place empty-handed. That was one promise Sophie could finally fulfill.

She glances over at Keefe. "Thank you," she says warmly.

He just smiles back, looking almost rueful. "It's the least I can do."

Sophie can feel his gaze on her like a physical touch, warming the blood under her skin. She can't bring herself to look away—Keefe is devastatingly beautiful, more than most elves naturally are. He's holding his breath, cheeks flushed and hair golden in the sunlight, affection clear as day in his eyes.

Her heart stutters in her chest. How had she not seen it before? The revelation pierces through her like an arrow, iron-tipped and dangerous.

As if sensing the shift in her emotions, Keefe closes his eyes. "Sophie—"

She doesn't bother to let him finish before she leans over and presses her lips to his. Keefe melts into the kiss like he had been waiting for it, reaching up to cup her face in his hands, and something clicks into place for Sophie. She feels like she's freefalling, or drowning, or flying, or doing all three at once, and she never wants it to end.

In hindsight, she never should have kissed him at all, because then they could have avoided everything that happened after.