Neverseen (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #4)(104)

“So where are we?” she asked again.

“Home sweet home.” Tam kicked a piece of rotted, speckled fruit.

“It used to be beautiful,” Linh said. “We used to feel so lucky to have found it. But that was before the gnomes fell ill.”

“Wait,” Sophie said, climbing on a fallen trunk to get a better view. Farther down the weed-lined path she spotted a grove of black, collapsing trees with colored pieces of wood in their trunks, like doors. “Was this the Wildwood Colony?”

Linh nodded. “They used to bring us dinner every night, and I loved falling asleep to their songs.” She brushed aside a blackened vine as she whispered, “Do you know what’s happened to them?”

“Only that they’re in quarantine—and that they’re all still alive,” Sophie added to reassure her. “But wait . . . you’re the teenagers who made the footprints they found?”

“Who are they?” Tam demanded.

Sophie stumbled back a step as she told him, “The Council investigated after the colonists arrived at Lumenaria.”

The twins might look similar, but their personalities were opposites. Linh was a baby bird. Tam was a stalking tiger.

“I wouldn’t call it an investigation.” Tam snorted. “They didn’t seem to care. They were here for five whole minutes, scraped some bark and gathered a few leaves. They didn’t even ask us about the lights.” He pointed to the speckled forest in the distance. “We’d been seeing white flashes for weeks before the plague hit. We tried to find what was causing them, but it was coming from somewhere across the ogres’ borders.”

“You’ve seen ogres?” Sophie asked.

“Not recently.” He turned toward the dark mountains to the east. “But Ravagog is through that pass.”

The name slipped icy pins into Sophie’s spine. “Do you think the lights were connected to the plague?”

She wondered how brightly a force-fielded tree could glow—enough to be seen from that far away?

“You ask a lot of questions,” Tam said, making a slow circle around her.

“I thought you brought me here to tell me everything you know,” she countered.

“I don’t remember promising everything,” he said.

“She’s trying to help the gnomes,” Linh reminded him. “Just like she helped me today. You must think me so foolish, by the way—a Hydrokinetic afraid of drowning.”

“Hey, having an ability doesn’t mean everything’s suddenly easy,” Sophie told her.

“Said the girl with four abilities.” Tam leaned closer, squinting at her Teleporter pin. “So the big question is—what did you do to get banished?”

“Most of the Councillors wanted me gone the moment they knew I existed,” Sophie admitted. “I just finally gave them a good enough reason. What about you guys?”

Tam started to shake his head, but Linh put her hand on his shoulder.

“She can know the truth, Tam. It was my fault.” She raised her hands and mist swarmed around them, glinting with a million rainbows. “Water pleads for my attention. But too often it’s a trick.”

As she spoke, the mist thickened into a storm that soaked them with a heavy downpour.

“I became the Girl Of Many Floods,” she whispered. “And after too many mistakes, my parents had no choice but to let them banish me.”

“They had a choice,” Tam spat.

“You’ll have to excuse my brother. He carries more bitterness than I do. But he doesn’t have to be here—”

“Yes,” Tam interrupted, “I do.”

His voice had softened. So had the angles of his face.

“No one sentenced my brother to Exillium,” Linh explained. “He chose to stay with me.”

“I didn’t want her to face this alone,” he mumbled. “And I wouldn’t stay with my family anyway. They’d always wished they didn’t have the shame of twins. I wasn’t going to let them pass me off as an only child.”

Linh flinched, and Sophie wished she could hug both siblings. The elves were supposed to be this superior, enlightened species—but they sure had some terrible parents in the mix.

“How long ago was that?” she asked.

Linh’s hand moved to her Exillium necklace. “Twelve hundred and fourteen days.”

A little more than three years, Sophie realized. “That’s a long time to be banished.”

Linh nodded, pulling the water from their clothes and hair with a sweep of her arm. “We should get out of sight. There have been many visitors to the Colony since the gnomes left.”

Sophie froze. “Were any of them wearing black cloaks?”

“Three were, yes,” Linh said. “They came a week ago and checked the roots.”

Sophie ran to the abandoned grove and dropped to her knees in front of the largest tree. Curled red roots jutted out of the ground all around her.

“Did you hear the Neverseen say anything?” she asked.

“The Neverseen?” Tam repeated.

“Remember when you asked me about monsters? They’re who I was imagining. If you ever see them again—hide. They’re involved with this plague somehow. The ogres are too. We just haven’t been able to prove it.”