Fintan.

Ruy.

Gethen.

And . . . who?

She’d assumed it was Brant, but now she knew he’d been dead by then. So who else could it have been?

It was possible that Alvar had met up with them. But Sophie had a much more terrifying theory. The goblins had told her there was another prisoner in that dungeon—connected to a Forgotten Secret.

And no other bodies had been found in the rubble.

When she’d told Oralie her theory, the pink-cheeked Councillor had blanched and made Sophie promise not to tell anyone. But Sophie would always share things with her friends.

None of them had been happy to hear they might be facing a mysterious new enemy, but Keefe had been quick to point out that the caches could hold the prisoner’s identity. Dex was already working hard, trying to break through the caches’ security, and Sophie had no doubt he’d figure it out.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Fitz said, silencing her thoughts as he closed the memory log and set it aside for the day. “You owe me a favor.”

“I do?”

“Yep! We made a deal—remember? If you didn’t call in your favor from me in one month, the favor became mine. And I hate to break it to you, but it’s been way more than a month.”

Sophie sighed. “I knew that deal was going to come back and haunt me. I should’ve just made something up and gotten the favor over with.”

“You probably should have. But you didn’t, so . . . I win!” He shook his hair, flashing his most adorably confident smile, “And I gotta say, I kinda get why you hesitated with this. It’s a big decision. I mean, on the one hand, I could go for the obvious and make you share whatever secret you keep almost telling me.”

Sophie’s mouth turned to sandpaper.

“So that still freaks you out, huh? That might be proof that it needs to happen.”

His eyes locked onto hers, refusing to let her look away. And when she swallowed, it was so loud, she was sure the entire world heard it.

“Or,” he said. “We could skip the talking.”

“And do what?” she asked, hating her voice for cracking.

“Any ideas?”

He was so close now, she could feel his breath warming her cheeks.

He leaned a tiny bit closer and someone cleared his throat—very loudly.

“Am I interrupting something?” Keefe asked. He’d raised one teasing eyebrow—but he wasn’t smiling. And he was fidgeting. A lot.

Fitz leaned back against the tree again, his casual posture not matching his scowl. “Just finding new ways to drive Sophie crazy. I had to step up my game while you were gone. What about you?”

“Is that another list?” Sophie asked, pointing to the paper in Keefe’s hands.

Somehow the question made Keefe look even more miserable, and he twisted the page so tightly, it looked ready to shred.

“Okay—this is just a theory, so . . . try not to freak out until we really think it through,” he said carefully. “I almost don’t want to tell you, but I don’t want to find out I was right and regret it later.”

“Yeah, you’re definitely freaking me out,” Sophie told him.

He took a deep breath. “Fine, here goes. You told me King Dimitar thinks the ogres who attacked Havenfield were actually after Lady Cadence. And I couldn’t figure out why that bugged me. But I realized today that if Dimitar’s right and that attack wasn’t about Grady and Edaline, then that means the Neverseen never went after your family. And I know I heard them talk about it. A lot. That’s what this whole list is—eleven different times where they mentioned a plan for your family.”

“So what are you saying?” Fitz asked.

Keefe closed his eyes, looking a little green when he spoke again. “The thing is, when you look at this list, I wrote down verbatim what I remember them saying. And . . . they never once said ‘Grady and Edaline.’ They always said ‘family.’ I just assumed, since you live with them—and Grady’s so powerful—that it had to be them. But . . . they’re not your only family.”

Everything turned cold as Sophie jumped to her feet. “You think they meant my human family?”

“I’m just saying it’s possible. But you check on them pretty regularly, right? So—”

She shook her head, rubbing the knot under her chest to keep her panic at bay. “I haven’t in a while. There’s been so much going on, I forgot and . . .”

She ran inside, with Fitz and Keefe right behind her as she sprinted up the stairs and dug her round silver Spyball out of her desk drawer.

“Show me Connor, Kate, and Natalie Freeman,” she whispered, using her family’s new names.

The Spyball flashed warm in her hands, before red letters blazed across it.

Two terrifying words.

Not Found.

EIGHTY-THREE

BREATHE,” KEEFE SAID, and it took Sophie a second to realize she wasn’t.

She sucked in a sharp breath, coughing as her chest tightened. “Why would the records not be found?” she whispered.

“It could mean lots of things,” Fitz promised. “Maybe their names were changed. You weren’t supposed to know them, right? So maybe the Councillors found out you did, and changed them. Or maybe my dad changed them after the Neverseen broke in to the registry, since it was hard to tell which files they’d accessed.”

Or maybe finding out where her family had been hidden was the reason the Neverseen broke in to the registry in the first place. . . .

“I’ll hail my dad to see what he knows. Hang on.” Fitz ducked into the hall, and Sophie could hear him whispering into his Imparter as she clung to Keefe, staring blankly at the Spyball.

“Okay—I was kinda right,” he said, stalking back into the room a couple of minutes later. “Their names weren’t changed—but their registry files were deleted after the break-in, just to be extra safe. And Spyballs pick up registry feeds, so that’s why it’s saying ‘not found.’ There’s no feed if there’s no record to match it to. Make sense?”

Sophie nodded, taking lots of slow, deep breaths and trying to convince herself that the crisis was over.

But it didn’t feel over. And it wouldn’t. Not until . . .

“I need to see them,” she said. “Can you get their address from your dad? I don’t care if he gets mad. I need to see them.”