Шеннон Мессенджер - Keeper of the Lost Cities

He paused, like he was waiting for her to speak. But she didn’t know what to say.

“Do you miss your human life?” he asked.

She thought about the headaches, the fear of discovery, how out of place she always felt, and opened her mouth to say, “No.” But, “Sometimes I miss my family,” slipped out instead.

His expression softened. “That’s good, Sophie. You, of all people, should never forget where you came from. If you ever need reminding, let me know and I’ll bring you here.”

She nodded.

“Do you wonder why you were hidden with humans?”

Her mind darted unwillingly to Prentice. “My real parents must’ve wanted to get rid of me,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes, and pain seeped into his features. “Trust me, Sophie—no one ‘got rid of’ you. Don’t you know how special you are?”

“Yeah, special enough to have secret information stored in my brain without my permission,” she mumbled. Which was probably why Prentice got rid of her. Who’d want a freak for a daughter?

Or maybe he was the one who planted the information. Her hands clenched into fists.

“That’s not the only reason you’re special, believe me.” Tiergan cleared the strain out of his voice. “Have you remembered anything else since the tribunal?”

She watched an ant crawl across the dirty pavement.

“I understand if you aren’t ready to talk about it. But don’t be afraid to explore your memories. They might be the only way to understand who you really are.”

“What if I’m someone bad?” she whispered, putting words to the fear that had consumed her since yesterday.

“I can assure you you’re not,” he promised.

She shook her head, refusing to believe him. “What do you know about Prentice?”

Tiergan shifted in his seat.

“I know that’s classified information, but I think I deserve to know who he was.” She took an extra breath for courage. “He was my father, wasn’t he?”

Tiergan sucked in a breath. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“He was a Keeper, and he was exiled because of me. It’s not hard to put the pieces together.”

“Sophie, look at me,” Tiergan said, waiting until she did. “Prentice was exiled because he was hiding your existence—not because he was responsible for it.”

“What do you mean?”

He hesitated, and she could tell he was warring with himself, deciding how much to say.

“Please,” she whispered. “No one will tell me anything about my past.”

He sighed and looked away. When he spoke, his words were hurried, like he was forcing them out before he could change his mind. “Prentice was a Keeper for a group called the Black Swan, and the information he was hiding was you . Where to find you. I’d warned Prentice there would be consequences for helping the Black Swan, but he didn’t listen. And when he was captured, he sacrificed his sanity to keep you hidden. Now he lives in exile, his mind a shattered, useless mess.”

“That’s why you’re so upset with Alden?”

He nodded. “Alden was the one who found him. I pleaded for mercy on Prentice’s behalf, but the Council demanded to know what Prentice hid in his mind, so Alden oversaw something called a memory break. It’s a type of probe that shatters someone’s sanity in order to access their hidden memories.”

Sophie shivered. She couldn’t picture Alden carrying out that kind of order—unless he knew he was right. But why wouldn’t Prentice just tell them where she was? “What exactly is the Black Swan?”

“Something our society doesn’t know what to do with.” He wrung the edge of his cape between his hands. “The name is a metaphor. For thousands of years humans were convinced there was no such thing as a black swan. So when a black swan was found, it became a symbol of something that shouldn’t exist but does. A small group of insurgents in our society adopted the name. A brewing rebellion—a black swan—in a society where rebellion isn’t supposed to exist.”

“How do you know so much about them?” she had to ask.

“You’re not the only one with secrets you’d rather not share.”

Sophie swallowed, realizing how little she knew about her favorite Mentor. He couldn’t be involved in anything . . . wrong, could he?

No. Tiergan was one of the kindest people she knew. He could never be bad.

Bad.

“So, the Black Swan are the bad guys, right?” she whispered, staring at her hands. “And if they have something to do with me . . .” She couldn’t bear to follow the thought to its end.

Tiergan took her hands and waited for her to meet his eyes. “Whatever the Black Swan is, it has nothing to do with who you are. When I look at you, I only see good. You came forward when you cheated—you even chose to serve your detention when you didn’t have to. Whatever’s in your mind is just information. And whatever secrets lie in your past do not change who you are now. I have no doubt you’ll make the right decisions, whenever the time comes to make them.”

His words felt more healing than the balm Elwin used to cool her burns. Her voice was thick when she spoke. “Thank you, Tiergan. I’ll try to remember that.”

She wasn’t sure what to do with the other things he told her. The bits and pieces belonged to a puzzle she didn’t know if she wanted to solve. For now she tucked them away, clinging to the hope that Tiergan was right—that she was good . As long as that was true, she could survive pretty much anything else.

DESPITE TIERGAN’S ENCOURAGEMENT, SOPHIE DIDN’Tfeel ready for anyone to know about her revelations. Especially Bronte.

She kept the memory log with her at all times and only took it out to work on when she was alone. Grady and Edaline were used to her practicing alchemy in the caves, so they didn’t question her disappearing after school every day with Iggy. And Dex was so busy with the added ability-detecting exercises, he didn’t notice they weren’t hanging out as much. The only one who seemed concerned was Biana.

She cornered Sophie in the hallway. “Are you mad at me?”

“What? No. Why?”

“You haven’t come over in at least three weeks. It was before the school was evacuated.”

Had it really been that long? “Sorry. I’ve been superbusy.”

“Do you want to come over this weekend?”

“I don’t think I can.” She needed to avoid Alden, so he wouldn’t ask to see her memory log.

“What about next weekend?”

“Uh . . . sure.” Biana seemed so insistent, and she could always cancel.

Biana straightened, like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. “Cool. I’ll tell my parents so they know to be home.”

“Oh. Good.” She was sure her smile looked more like a grimace.

Deep down she knew she was overreacting. Other than Elementine and the photo of the sand castle, she hadn’t found anything significant. She’d poured through her scrapbook for anything elf-ish and recorded every dream, but there was nothing worth hiding. Maybe Elementine was a one-time thing. She wasn’t going to stop searching, but maybe she didn’t need to stress so much about the memory log.

So she didn’t cancel her plans with Biana. She went to Everglen. And it felt like coming home.

They played base quest, and this time she was on Fitz’s team. His eyes held a tiny bit of envy when Sophie showed him the way she tracked thoughts to an exact location. She tried to teach him, but his mind couldn’t master it, so she did the tracking and transmitted the location to him so he could tag Keefe and Biana out. She was so familiar with the feel of Fitz’s mind after all the times she’d transmitted to him across the campus during her telepathy sessions, she barely had to concentrate to find him.