“Grady!” Edaline gasped.

She’d been standing by the farthest wall next to Cadoc—her hulking new bodyguard, who almost made Sandor look skinny—staring so silently at the pastures of grazing dinosaurs and other crazy creatures that Sophie had forgotten she was there.

“Need I remind you that Keefe’s doing the same thing our daughter tried to do?” Edaline asked him.

The words knocked Grady back a step.

They hit Sophie pretty hard too.

Jolie had tried to infiltrate the Neverseen, and the plan had been working—until they ordered her to destroy a human nuclear power plant to prove her loyalty. A few days after she refused, she was dead.

Grady moved to Edaline’s side and wrapped his arm around her waist. “I’m sorry. I guess I have some trust issues, after Brant.”

He said something else, but Sophie didn’t catch it, her mind too stuck on the huge reality Keefe was facing.

As much as she’d worried and fretted and stressed, she’d never truly imagined the impossible choices he’d have to face—or the worst-case scenario:

A tall, lean tree with blond shaggy leaves and scattered ice-blue flowers growing on a grassy hill in the Wanderling Woods—the elves’ version of a graveyard.

Each Wanderling’s seed was wrapped with the DNA of the person it had been planted to commemorate, and it grew with their coloring and essence.

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Sophie mumbled as the knot of emotions under her ribs twisted a million times tighter. “We need to get him out.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Magnate Leto asked.

Sophie wished she had suggestions. But she didn’t even know where Keefe was. She’d been trying to track his thoughts for weeks, like she used to do when she played base quest. But all she could tell was that Keefe was very far away.

“He’ll come home when he’s ready,” Magnate Leto told her. “In the meantime, I suggest we make use of the information he’s gone to such lengths to bring us.” He turned to Grady and Edaline. “I trust that you’ll allow your new bodyguards to do their jobs?”

“Brielle and Cadoc are some of our regiment’s best,” Sandor added.

“Do you think the Neverseen will guess that Keefe warned us if Grady and Edaline suddenly have goblins following them around?” Sophie had to ask.

“I’m sure Mr. Sencen has a plan for that,” Magnate Leto promised.

“Uh, we’re talking about the same Keefe, right?” Sophie asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Grady told her. “I don’t need a bodyguard.”

Brielle cleared her throat. “With all due respect, Mr. Ruewen, there’s a reason the elves rely on goblin assistance. Are you truly prepared to kill if the need arises?”

Grady looked more than a little green as Brielle unsheathed her sword and slashed it with a deadly sort of grace. The elvin mind couldn’t process violence. Their thoughts were too sensitive—their consciences too strong. It was why the Neverseen were so unstable—though Fintan held his sanity together far better than Brant.

“What if we stay here?” Edaline suggested. “The Council hasn’t given Grady an assignment in weeks, and we have plenty to keep us busy with the animals. We can pass Cadoc and Brielle off like they’re additional guards for Sophie—which shouldn’t seem strange after what happened.”

“That,” Magnate Leto said, “is a brilliant solution.”

“Except it puts us on house arrest,” Grady argued.

“Isn’t it worth it to be safe?” Sophie countered.

“Hey—that works both ways, kiddo,” Grady reminded her. “If I agree to this, I need you to agree that there will be no more one-on-one meetings with anyone associated with the Neverseen—especially That Boy.”

Sophie groaned. “His name is Keefe!”

“Not right now, it isn’t. He has to earn that back. And if he’s really on our side, he won’t mind you having your bodyguard around as backup. Understood?”

Sophie agreed, mostly because Sandor would clobber her if she didn’t. “What do you think the Neverseen want with you guys?”

“I suspect this is primarily a power play,” Magnate Leto said quietly. “Much like their attempts to capture the alicorns. If they possess something you love . . .”

“They can control me,” Sophie finished.

Magnate Leto nodded. “I’m betting that they—like myself—assume Kenric would’ve known his cache is far more valuable to you if you have a way to access the information inside. This could be their plan to force you to open it for them.”

“Oh good—so the thing That Boy stole is putting all of us in more danger,” Grady muttered.

“If it weren’t that, it would be something else,” Magnate Leto assured him. “They’ve been after Miss Foster from the beginning. And honestly, the more valuable they see her as, the safer she is—relatively speaking.”

“I don’t even know how to open the cache,” Sophie reminded everyone—though technically she’d never tried. She had enough crazy information stored in her head. The last thing she wanted was to fill it with secrets even the Council couldn’t handle.

Still, Magnate Leto’s theory raised other questions—the kind that made her voice get thick and squeaky.

“I know you don’t want to tell me who my genetic parents are—”

“Wrong,” Magnate Leto interrupted. “I can’t tell you.”

Sophie glanced at Grady and Edaline, trying to decide if she should leave the conversation at that. She rarely mentioned her genetic parents around them—or her human family. It was complicated enough having three different moms and dads—especially since one pair no longer remembered her, and another was a complete mystery.

But she needed to know.

“Was Kenric my father? He was a Telepath. And he was always so kind to me.” Her throat closed off as she remembered his bright smiles.

The red-haired Councillor had been one of Sophie’s strongest supporters, right up until the day she’d lost him to Fintan’s inferno of Everblaze.

Magnate Leto reached for Sophie’s hand, tracing a finger across the star-shaped scar he’d accidentally given her when he healed her abilities. “Kenric wasn’t involved with Project Moonlark. And that’s all I can tell you. Some secrets must remain hidden. Besides, we have much more pressing matters to discuss, like the other significant piece of information we learned from Mr. Sencen. Did he really say that Gethen was the Neverseen’s only Telepath?”