Exile Read online

  “Yeah, I’m with you on that,” Dex said as he joined them. He’d changed to a blue tunic and washed away most of the pink slime, but there was still a small patch near his left ear. “I’ve had enough sedatives to last five lifetimes.”

  Kesler coughed—but it sounded more like a choke. He cleared his throat after a second and whispered, “I’d better get back to cleaning up. Dex, why don’t you take Sophie up to your lab?”

  “You have a lab?”

  “Yes—and he uses it to make all kinds of elixirs he shouldn’t.”

  Sophie smiled. She’d seen one of Dex’s special elixirs in action last year when he’d turned Stina bald. She’d just never pictured him with a lab. She’d still never seen his room. He always came over to Havenfield.

  “It’s this way,” Dex said, leading her to a door labeled SUPPLIES.

  Sandor tried to follow them inside, but the cramped aisles of glass shelves in the storeroom were definitely not spaced far enough apart to fit a bulky goblin. After a few steps he sighed and scanned the room. “I suppose I can keep watch from here.”

  Sophie’s smile widened. She’d been trying to figure out how to get some alone time with Dex. Now she just had to figure out how to bring up the subject they’d both been oh-so-carefully avoiding for the last few weeks. . . .

  Dex led her up an iron stairway, clapping his hands when they reached the top. A string of dangling spheres lit up, illuminating a small room under a nook in the store’s crooked roof. The only furniture was a lab table and chair surrounded by a curved wall of shelves, all of which were surprisingly organized. Sophie had expected all sorts or crazy bubbling beakers and flasks, but all of Dex’s alchemy equipment had been shoved to the corner of the table, replaced with tiny circuits and wires and pieces of gadgets.

  “Practicing with your ability?” she asked, glad to see that he wasn’t letting his talent completely go to waste.

  “Just until I manifest something else.”

  “You’re so weird.”

  “That’s why you like me.” He grinned and motioned for her to take the room’s only chair. Then he leaned against the table, grabbing a piece of gadget and fiddling with the wires as he asked, “So, what’s up—and don’t say ‘nothing.’ I know you better than that.”

  All useful words seemed to vanish from her mind. “I, um . . . I was just wondering—hey, is that the card I gave you?” She pointed to a blue notecard standing up in the center of his desk.

  Dex’s cheeks flushed as he snatched the card and set it on the highest shelf he could reach. “Stop stalling.”

  Sophie pulled at the sleeves of her gray-striped tunic. “Okay. Fine. I . . . need to know what you remember.”

  She didn’t say any more, but she didn’t need to. Dex scooted away, folding his arms across his chest. Seconds stretched into minutes—though they felt like hours—before he finally mumbled, “Why? Did something happen?”

  “Sort of. Grady told me something and I’m trying to figure out if it’s true. I’d tell you more, but it’s not my secret,” she added when Dex’s eyes narrowed. “Grady barely agreed to tell me.”

  Part of her wished he hadn’t.

  Dex twisted the wires on the gadget tighter. “You can trust me, you know.”

  “I do trust you, Dex. That’s why I need to know what you remember—if you even remember anything.”

  “Oh, I remember.”

  The shudder in his voice made her mouth taste sour.

  “You really want to know?” he asked.

  No.

  Not really.

  But she nodded anyway.

  Dex nodded too. Then he sank to the floor, making all the vials rattle as he leaned against the shelves. “I only remember pieces. Hearing you scream when we were in the cave. The rotten candy smell of the drugs. Your face as you watched them take me. I remember that part really clearly because you didn’t look scared.”

  “I didn’t?”

  “No. You looked angry—and I knew it meant you were going to fight. So I told myself I had to fight too. As hard as I could. Then everything was black and I couldn’t tell if I was asleep or awake. But the pain felt real so I’m guessing the whispers were real.”

  Sophie hugged herself, trying not to tremble as her own memories rushed back. “Whispers?”

  “Jumbled sounds, mostly. But sometimes it sounded like they were saying, ‘He’s useless.’ ”

  He twisted the piece of gadget so tight the wires snapped.

  Sophie got up and sat beside him. “You’re not useless, Dex.”

  “I was to them.”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  “I guess.” He pulled at the broken bits of wire. “The hardest parts were the times the drugs faded. Lying there, not knowing where you were. I tried to get up once, but they had my feet tied. And they did this . . .”

  He leaned over, lifting the side of his tunic and revealing a faint red oval, about the size of a fingerprint, just below his ribs.

  “Is that . . .”—Sophie leaned closer, squinting at the mark—“They burned you?”

  She’d thought they’d only done that to her, but there was the proof, right on Dex’s skin. She didn’t realize she’d reached out to touch it until Dex jumped.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled, whipping her finger away. But not before she’d felt the coarse puckers of the scar.

  He cleared his throat. “They told me they’d do it to you if I moved again. So I didn’t move. I barely let myself breathe.”

  His words felt heavy.

  Or maybe that was her guilt.

  “Dex, I—”

  “Don’t. It wasn’t your fault, okay?”

  He glared at her until she nodded, but her eyes still burned with the tears she was fighting.

  “It’s okay, Sophie. They did it—not you. And you had it way worse than I did.”

  She rubbed her wrists, wondering how red and blistered they’d been after her interrogation. She’d been blindfolded, and after she was rescued there was no trace of the burns. If she didn’t remember the pain, it would be like it never happened. But Dex . . .

  “Elwin couldn’t heal the wound?” she whispered.

  “He said the burn had been there for too many days. He offered to try yeti pee to see if it would help, but I told him thanks, I’ll pass. Save it for the next time Sophie tries to blow up the school.”

  Sophie forced herself to smile at his joke, but inside she felt like she was breaking.

  Dex had a permanent scar.

  Just like Brant.

  Brant’s haunted face filled her mind and she remembered Edaline’s warning about guilt.

  She buried her own feelings as deep as they would go. She couldn’t let herself end up like him.

  “Anyway, that’s all I remember,” Dex said quietly. “Well, until we were rescued, and all I remember about that is realizing I was being carried and being too scared to move in case it was the kidnappers. But it turned out to be the good guys.”

  “The good guys,” Sophie repeated. She could taste the words on her tongue, but she couldn’t tell if they were true. “You really think the Black Swan are good?”

  “They rescued us, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah, and left us on the street with no nexus, no protection, and no way home except a note with a vague clue.” The bitterness in her voice surprised her. Maybe she agreed with Grady more than she wanted to admit.

  Dex shrugged. “He knew you’d figure it out.”

  “Maybe the clue. But how could he know that I’d figure out how to use my new abilities to get us home safely? I barely did.”

  “I guess he believed in you.”

  Sophie snorted.

  “What? I’m serious. I mean, it’s all kind of a blur, but I do remember that after he made me choke down that awful sludge, he set my head back on the ground, and then I heard him mumble, ‘You can do this, Sophie.’ Said it over and over.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “May
be you were already out. I don’t know. But I know he said it. It was what helped me calm down as the drugs pulled me under. Because I knew he was right.”

  Dex blushed as he said the last part, but Sophie was more focused on the image filling her mind.

  Mr. Forkle—grumpy, bloated Mr. Forkle—whispering, “You can do this, Sophie,” over and over.

  It was a tiny thing, really. Just a small bit of encouragement.

  But it meant something.

  It meant everything.

  SIXTEEN

  MR. FORKLE CARED.

  He may have left them alone and unconscious on the streets of a Forbidden City, but he truly believed Sophie would be able to get them home safe. And that’s exactly what she’d done—even if things hadn’t gone quite according to plan.

  “Does that answer your question?” Dex asked, breaking the silence.

  “Yeah. It actually does.”

  Grady was wrong about the Black Swan.

  Whatever reasons they had for staying secret, it couldn’t be because they were murderers.

  Murderers didn’t care.

  She had a feeling Grady would need more proof to believe her, though. Something he could see for himself. Too bad she had no clue where to find it.

  Unless . . .

  Was that what the clue in the compass was for? To have her clear the Black Swan’s name?

  Was that why they were still hiding?

  Let the past be your guide.

  But whose past would guide her?

  Grady’s?

  “You’re doing it again,” Dex said, nudging her with his elbow. “That thing where you stare into space, totally oblivious to everything around you. Usually means you’re planning some secret thing that’ll end in an emergency Elwin call.”

  “I’m not planning anything.”

  Planning would mean she’d at least have some idea what to do.

  “Yeah, well, whatever you’re ‘not planning’—just . . . if you need me, I’m here, okay?”

  “I know, Dex.” But she’d put him through enough already. More than she’d realized.

  She picked up the broken piece of gadget he’d been playing with. “So what is this thing?”

  “Right now it’s a pile of junk, but I’m hoping I can turn it into a gadget that’ll transmit my thoughts as telepathic signals.”

  Sophie smiled. “There are much cooler things you could do with your talent.”

  Dex shrugged and snatched the piece away from her. He twisted the broken wires together, reconnecting them to other pieces of the metal.

  “You know, if you took technopathy training, you’d—”

  “Not gonna happen. Just a little more than a week and I start ability detecting again, and I’m going to work as hard as I can to make sure they trigger something.”

  “School starts in a little more than a week?”

  She’d known it was coming up, but that suddenly felt very, very soon.

  “Yep. The Opening Ceremonies are next Friday and school starts the following Monday. Didn’t you get your Foxfire uniforms yesterday?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  She told herself to stay calm—that everything had been settled at her final Tribunal. But the Council couldn’t have changed their minds about letting her return to Foxfire, could they?

  “I should go home and look for them,” she said, getting up and pulling out her home crystal.

  “Yeah, you’ll want to make sure your costume fits.”

  She was so distracted by her worries that she didn’t catch what Dex said until the warm light was already pulling her away.

  Costume?

  “PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS a joke,” Sophie begged as she trudged down the stairs into Havenfield’s living room in a tight bodysuit covered in a shaggy brown fur.

  It had sewn-in feet.

  Feet!

  Apparently her Foxfire uniforms, along with the monstrosity they called an “Opening Ceremonies costume,” had arrived the day before. But Sandor—who had given her a twenty-minute lecture on how dangerous it was for her to leave Slurps and Burps without telling him—had insisted on inspecting the package before delivering it to her.

  What was next? Was he going to start searching her laundry before the gnomes delivered it to her room? Worried the kidnappers might attack her with deadly socks?

  “You forgot your headpiece,” Edaline said, picking up a folded piece of brown fabric from the pile on the couch. She slipped the band of fur around Sophie’s forehead, adjusting the narrow strip of cloth attached so that it hung down the center of Sophie’s face and ended just below her waist. “There. Now you’re a mastodon.”

  There were many, many questions racing through Sophie’s mind as she scratched her neck where the furry collar was tickling it. But the most important one was probably, “Why am I dressed like a shaggy elephant?”

  “Mastodons are the Level Three mascot.”

  Right, but . . .

  Edaline fanned out the elbow-length crescents of fabric that draped off the sides of the headband like droopy ears. “It’s part of the Opening Ceremonies.”

  “You’re going to love them,” Grady added as he came in from the front pastures. Neon feathers stuck out of his hair, which made him look more like himself again. “Everything okay?”

  The nervous lines creasing his face told her he wasn’t referring to the elephant-costume-of-doom.

  “Yeah. Everything’s good.” She’d find a way to prove to him that he was wrong about the Black Swan. And in the meantime, she was happy to settle on a truce.

  If only she could find such an easy solution to her furry-bodysuit problem.

  “I seriously have to wear this?”

  “Don’t worry, all the other Level Threes will be too,” Edaline promised. “And you’ll see how fun it all is when you’re at rehearsal on Monday.”

  Somehow she doubted that.

  “Wait—rehearsal? What am I rehearsing?”

  Grady smiled. “The choreography.”

  EXCITEMENT AND NERVES TANGLED IN Sophie’s stomach as she and Dex arrived at Foxfire on Monday morning. The grounds buzzed with strange activity, but it was still the same familiar campus, and walking the paths with Dex safely at her side felt healing, somehow. Like she’d taken another piece of her life back—even if she was currently being trailed by a seven-foot goblin and everyone was staring at her because of it.

  At least they weren’t whispering about “the girl who was taken.”

  Plus, it was nice to have a morning off from bathing the verminion—especially since she was also dealing with a restless alicorn and a jealous imp. Silveny hated to be alone, but she still wouldn’t let anyone except Sophie near her. And Iggy had started hiding sludgers—the giant slimy worms he ate—in Sophie’s shoes and pillows to punish her for spending so much time outside. Grady and Edaline thought it was hilarious, but Sophie kept worrying about Silveny’s slow progress. If she didn’t find a way to make the stubborn alicorn start trusting people, Bronte would have Silveny shipped off to the Hekses for sure.

  Dex knew a shortcut through the fields of purple grass, but they had to weave around gnomes poking the ground with thin metal rods. More gnomes were balanced on the roof of the U-shaped main building, draping the crystal walls with garlands of dark green leaves. Each of the six colored towers now bore a banner with a jeweled mosaic of the mascot for that grade level: an onyx gremlin for the Level Ones, a sapphire halcyon for the Level Twos, an amber mastodon for the Level Threes, an emerald dragon for the Level Fours, a ruby saber-toothed tiger for the Level Fives, and a diamond yeti for the Level Sixes.

  Sophie couldn’t decide which costume would be more embarrassing.

  Then again, mastodons were the only ones with a trunk.

  “What are they doing?” Sophie asked, pointing to another group of gnomes struggling to brush the outside of the five-story glass pyramid in the center of campus with teetering copper poles.

  “Decorating for the Cer
emonies.”

  As they got closer Sophie could see that the gnomes were actually painting a snotlike slime over the pyramid’s walls. She gagged when she caught the musty smell.

  Hadn’t the elves heard of streamers and balloons?

  The Opening Ceremonies would be in Foxfire’s main auditorium, and rehearsal was held there as well. The huge stadium had a gleaming golden dome and thousands of empty seats inside. Mentors in bright orange capes separated the prodigies by grade level, and Sophie felt a little smug as she passed the Level Twos to join the Level Threes.

  Sir Harding—a broad-shouldered elf with warm brown skin and shoulder-length black hair woven into a simple braid—introduced himself as their physical education Mentor and called for everyone to gather around him so he could demonstrate their choreography. Sophie ordered Sandor to try to hide as she lined up with her classmates.

  When Sir Harding finally had their attention, he tossed his cape to the side, held out his hands, and launched into the most complicated dance Sophie had ever seen, stomping and spinning and jumping. He ran through the full routine three times—none of which made any sense to Sophie—and then told everyone to split into small practice teams so they could get a feel for how the choreography worked as a group.

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with school,” Sophie grumbled as she followed Dex and Biana to a patch of empty floor space. Jensi rushed up beside Biana, and for a second Sophie didn’t recognize him. His usually messy brown hair had been slicked with too much gel, making his round face look even rounder.

  “Not everything at Foxfire is about learning,” Biana informed them. “The Opening Ceremonies are about celebrating promise. This is our chance to show the older generations what we can do.”

  “By dancing like elephants?”

  Dex laughed. “It’s weird, but it’s fun.”

  “Yeah, and we get showered with candy at the end—this really cool kind that falls from the ceiling like snow—and it lasts for months and months and months if you take some home,” Jensi said in his usual I had too much sugar this morning way.

  “That’s not the point of the Ceremonies,” Biana corrected, making Jensi blush before she perfectly recreated the stomp-stomp-spin-step-twirl move Sir Harding had shown them. “The mascot dance represents the qualities we’ll be developing this year. Mastodons are fast learners that rely on each other as a team. The choreography is designed to showcase that.”