((This is my first fanfic, so please don't expect anything spectacular. The world and all characters except for Councillor Alessia are property of Shannon Messenger. Please do not copy.))

Preface
Sophie’s head spun with questions once again.

More betrayals by trusted friends, pretending to help her all while plotting against her.

More secrets kept by everyone she loved, hidden in the shadows until the moment they emerge hideously to dash her hopes of ever defeating the Neverseen.

More soul-shaking twists and turns.

Was there anyone still on her side?

“You can’t trust anyone,” the stranger had said before fleeing into the darkness once again.

Oh, how she wished she had listened.

Someone would conquer, and soon.

Someone else would be conquered.

And with all her heart, Sophie hoped it wouldn’t be her.

ONE
Sophie knocked gently on Keefe’s bedroom door, her heart pounding. Would he answer, after what had happened the previous day? She didn’t know. What Sophie did know was that if it had been her in Keefe’s position, she would definitely be under the Panakes tree 24/7. With Flori to aid the inevitable echoes. And Ella close at hand.

Yesterday had been a success for some, but for others, yesterday had only brought pain.

“Dad? Back already?”

Sophie flinched at Keefe’s voice. It sounded so. . . tired. Weak, even. It spoke a lot about how exhausted he was that Keefe hadn’t even thrown in an insult at Lord Cassius, who was far from the best dad ever. Or even a mediocre dad.

Sophie hated how bad Keefe sounded, but she couldn’t leave now. Keefe needed her.

And truth be told, she needed him.

Sophie opened the door to find Keefe on his bed in bright green pajamas with tiny gulons all over them. He lay on his stomach, propped up by his elbows, and was flipping through the brown notebook.

Happy memories, Sophie remembered from one of her previous visits to Keefe’s room.

The book wasn’t very full at all.

“Keefe?” Sophie asked softly.

He turned.

Keefe looked even worse than he’d sounded. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was more disheveled than Sophie had ever seen it. And she was pretty sure that it wasn’t all purposeful.

“Hey, Foster.”

Sophie tried her best to smile. What was she supposed to say to him?

Hey, I’m super sorry that your evil mom was captured and is going to be executed in a few days? Oh, and I totally would’ve told you about the top-secret substance that I’ve known about for weeks if I hadn’t been sworn to secrecy?

Somehow Sophie didn’t think that that would help anything.

“Are you okay, Keefe?” she said after a few seconds of staring at him.

He nodded, looking away. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Sophie didn’t believe him.

“Keefe—I’m really sorry. If I knew what the reatum would be used for. . .”

She trailed off. Would she have told him? Lady Gisela was Keefe’s mom, but she was also the leader of the Neverseen.

And the killer of Councillor Oralie.

Keefe seemed to know what she was thinking. He focused back on the memory book.

He flipped a page.

“Is there anything I can do?” Sophie asked weakly.

Keefe didn’t answer.

Sophie eventually left the room.

~~~~~

Too much had happened the day before. Way too much. It had been one thing when the Council had explained that they were using a new substance, reatum, to combat the Neverseen—another, when the mysteriously unexplained substance was revealed to her at the last possible moment.

It erased elven guilt.

Sophie hadn’t known what to think of it. Where was the reatum, she had asked, when Alden and Prentice’s memories were shattered?

But there was a catch. A very important catch.

It erased all elven guilt. And it never came back.

Anyone who took it would be immune to the crushing effects of guilt in elves, but at a cost—they’d become a conscience-less psychopath.

According to the Council, for this reason it had seldom been used on anyone for any reason.

Seldom, however, wasn’t never.
And now the Council had a reason to use it: Lady Gisela had finally been captured.

It took every ounce of self-control Sophie had not to check on her every five minutes.

The Council had ruled that she was too dangerous to live—especially after what had happened to Councillor Oralie. So Lady Gisela would be executed, and soon. The reatum would be used on whoever was chosen to do it.

Sophie did not envy them.

Besides the effects of the reatum on the rest of their life, she still didn’t believe that Lady Gisela didn’t have a plan to escape as soon as the time was right. Lady Gisela was not a kind woman; if she wanted something, nothing and no one would stand in her way. She had proved that she would kill, literally, for her freedom. And the executioner would be the closest person to her.

Sophie really had to stop thinking about it before the echoes came back.

TWO
“I’m so overwhelmed,” Sophie confessed to Biana, both girls now in the relative safety of Sophie’s room.

Sophie’s visit to Keefe hadn’t gone well at all, and truth be told, she was more than a little worried about him—and what he might do. He had proved before that he would join the Neverseen if he thought it best at the time. What did he think about Lady Gisela’s impending execution? Would he interfere, or worse, free her?

It wasn’t as if Sophie wanted Lady Gisela dead. But she was afraid of what the Neverseen leader might accomplish if she wasn’t stopped. She had already proved that imprisonment didn’t work for long, so the Council was running out of options.

“I kinda know what you mean,” Biana answered after a while. “The Council had a cure for Dad all this time and never even thought to mention it to us. It might not have been what we chose in the end, but the option at least should’ve been open.”

“You don’t blame me?” Sophie asked, holding her breath.

Biana sighed. “Well, it would be pretty nice to not have to worry about you keeping secrets all the time. But the Council said you couldn’t tell us—so… no, I don’t blame you.”

Much as I want to, she seemed to finish silently.

Sophie guessed that this was as good of an answer as she would get. “Well… thanks,” she said at last.

Biana gave her a quick smile.

Sophie decided it was time to change the subject—in any way she could. “So…” she said, drawing out the word. “You said something about new dresses earlier?”

Biana grinned, coming out of the tense mood. “Oh yeah. You ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Sophie said with a mock grimace.

~~~~~

Sophie didn’t know if she wanted to see the execution. It wasn’t up for debate—every adult she knew had made it very clear that she was to be nowhere near Exile and that she was to stay within the limits of Havenfield for the entirety of the night. But part of her wanted to go anyway, to make sure that Lady Gisela really was gone. She had had so many close calls and so many last-minute plans. Plus, Sophie was the Moonlark. If anyone should be able to see the final defeat of the Neverseen leader, she should.

But of course there was the issue of reatum.

No, Sophie finally decided, she did not want to lose her conscience.

She’d follow the rules—for once.

~~~~~

The next morning, Sophie was awoken by Edaline. A Councillor was here to see her—the newest one. And she didn’t have good news.

~~~~~

“You’re kidding me,” Sophie said bluntly.

“We both know that I am not,” Councillor Alessia shot back.

“So let me get this straight,” Sophie said. “Keefe broke into Exile… somehow. He freed Lady Gisela… somehow. And now they’re both gone. Is that what happened?”

“As far as we can tell.”

“How? Why?” Sophie’s head was swimming with questions. Keefe had looked distraught when she had last checked in on him—but not enough to free his mother!

“I don’t know any more than you do,” Alessia said.

Sophie looked skeptical—the Councillors had had a longstanding tradition of not ever telling the Moonlark a word more than she absolutely had to know,according to them.

“Well, I don’t know much more,” the Councillor amended.

“How about telling me, then?”

“Just because you’re the Moonlark doesn’t mean that you have to know everything. And—” She stopped.

“What?” Sophie asked.

“Did you know that he was going to do this?” Alessia finally said.

Sophie choked. “No!”

“You visited him before he… did this; are you sure he didn’t leave you any clues?”

Sophie thought back to the visit with Keefe. He had been acting strange, to be sure, but nothing that stood out as a clue. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Councillor Alessia looked disappointed. And a flicker of another emotion—was that anger?

“Well, I’ll be going now,” she said.

Sophie sighed after she was gone. “Well, that didn’t go well,” she mumbled.

~~~~~

It wasn’t until that night, a full day after Keefe had disappeared, that she learned more about the situation.

Albeit not in the most convenient way.

“Hey, Foster.”

Sophie nearly had a heart attack. “Keefe?!”

“Yep.” He came closer to her bed. “Okay, so by now you’ve probably heard about what happened—”

Sophie stared. “Keefe, you freed Lady Gisela—”

“—but if I know the Council at all, they didn’t tell you the whole story.”

“So you’re going to tell me what really happened?”

Keefe shrugged. “Most of it.”

“Most of it,” Sophie said sarcastically. “Oh, that makes me feel a whole lot better, knowing most of the truth. I’ll be most of the way satisfied, then, since I know most of the truth.”

“Do you want to know or not?” Keefe said irritably.

“You know I do.”

“Then listen to me.”

Sophie flopped onto her bed. “Okayyyyy…”

“So, yeah, I probably shouldn’t have been at the—in Exile,” he corrected himself quickly.

“Obviously,” Sophie added.

“But as horrid as Mommy Dearest is, I couldn’t let her…” Keefe trailed off.

“I get it,” Sophie said quietly. “I still don’t agree with you, but I get it.”

“So. Yeah. Anyway, I was there when they were prepping everything and stuff. And then suddenly I was freeing Mom. And then she was gone, and I ran.”

Sophie folded her arms. “You’ve told me what happened. Not why.”

“Someone Mesmerized me,” Keefe said shortly.

Sophie barked a laugh before she could stop herself. “Keefe, that is literally the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard. You were Mesmerized? None of the Councillors were Mesmers, and Grady wasn’t there, so how could that even be possible?”

Keefe stuck with his story. “I was Mesmerized, Foster. Why won’t you believe me?”

“Well, for starters, you haven’t exactly been the most stable decision maker. You joined the Neverseen because you thought it was best at the time—”

Keefe threw up his hands. “That was years ago!”

“Still,” Sophie shot back. “You haven’t changed all that much, both good and bad. How do I know that you’re telling the truth?”

“Use the Empath lying thing, then,” Keefe suggested suddenly.

Sophie stopped. “But—”

“But what? If it’s the only way to get you to believe me, then yeah, it’s what has to be done.”

Sophie sighed. “Say it again, then.”

Keefe did. “I was Mesmerized into freeing Lady Gisela,” he said clearly.

His heart didn’t skip.

But Sophie’s did.

“You know what that means, then, don’t you?” she whispered. “There was no one else who was there except for the Council and the dwarves, who can’t Mesmerize. So…”

Keefe’s law dropped, coming to the same conclusion.

“There’s a traitor in the Council,” they said at the same time.

~~~~~

Sophie was still awake hours after Keefe had left.

There was a traitor in the Council.

The thought was unreal, but yet unavoidable. Someone in the Council must have Mesmerized Keefe into freeing Lady Gisela. Someone in the Council was tied to the Neverseen. But how? Who?

Sophie was tempted to start investigating right after Keefe left, but something told her that she would need extra sleep. So instead she stared at the ceiling, her mind whirling.

She never was able to get to sleep that night.

Whoa!! That’s such a cool idea! I love it! :0 ty for sharing it! ^^'' I really enjoyed reading it!

D

I love this SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!!! It's a lot better than my KOTLC fanfic.

Thank you so much!

But what about Grady!! He's a Mesmer! Unless someone eliminated him..