Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities #8) - Shannon Messenger Page 0,202

was somewhere in Candleshade.”

“Great,” Keefe muttered.

“If you need me to go back there and smash more things, I’m happy to,” Ro generously offered.

“Smashing would be bad,” Keefe said. “We don’t want to break those vials.”

“You think they’re still there?” Sophie asked.

“I don’t know. It’s possible. My mom said, ‘When the timing is right’—and I haven’t fulfilled my legacy or whatever yet.”

“But it wasn’t about your legacy,” Lord Cassius reminded him. “She said ‘our’—hers and mine.”

Ro groaned. “Now you have a separate legacy? Is anyone else getting really sick of that word? Because I swear, every time I hear it, I wanna stab something.”

“Right there with you,” Sandor agreed quietly.

“Oh, I’m there too,” Keefe agreed as well, tearing his hands through his hair. “The good news is—I’m pretty sure all the legacies are the same. Think about it—she talked about their legacy right around the time they made me, so…”

“Wait,” Sophie said, leaning forward in her armchair. “You’re saying you think those treatments were, like…” She wasn’t even sure how to word it—and she really hoped she was wrong when she finished with, “An elvin fertility thing?”

“No, I think they were a mess-with-our-future-baby kind of thing,” Keefe corrected.

But Lord Cassius shook his head. “Actually, I think Sophie might be onto something. Your mother was very concerned about getting pregnant. She went to a number of physicians beforehand, and I never understood why, because it seemed to happen quite quickly and easily—but maybe this is why. Maybe it seemed fast to me because she erased these memories.”

“FYI, I really don’t want to hear about Lord Hunkyhair’s creation,” Ro whined.

“That makes two of us,” Sandor added.

And Sophie waited for Keefe to agree.

But he just leaned his head back against his armchair, staring at the ceiling.

“Sounds like I need to talk to some physicians,” Lord Cassius decided. “See if any of them have heard of this kind of treatment.”

“You should start with Elwin,” Sophie told him. “Those vials almost seemed like they were filled with light—which doesn’t really make sense since you can’t drink light, but…”

Her voice trailed off as a sickening new thought occurred to her.

“I guess they could’ve been quintessence,” she whispered, deciding to throw the theory out there.

The conversation couldn’t necessarily get any weirder.

“I mean… the vials looked a little different than the vials of quintessence I’ve seen before,” she added quietly. “But… there were five of them. And there are five unmapped stars. And each vial was different. And the pain they caused…”

Lord Cassius wrapped his arms around himself. “I’ll hail Elwin and find out where he is.”

“And you’ll tell us what he says,” Keefe said as he stood, making it clear it wasn’t a request. “Feels like this is a good time for us to stop keeping secrets from each other, doesn’t it?”

Sophie frowned when Lord Cassius agreed.

“You don’t want to be there when he talks to Elwin?” she whispered.

Keefe shook his head. “I’m going to Candleshade to see if I can find that compartment.”

“Oh.” Sophie stood up to join him, trying to be supportive—and telling herself to be glad that his plan was something safe. But she still had to remind him, “It’s just… Candleshade is huge—and there was nothing recognizable about that wall in the memory, was there?”

“Not the wall,” Keefe told her. “But there was… a feeling. You probably didn’t notice it, since you’re not an Empath. But every time I replay that memory, I get this, like, prickly sense right here”—he brushed his hands down his arms—“and I think it’s triggered by whatever is in those vials. So if I search for that feeling at Candleshade, I should be able to follow it to that compartment.”

“Assuming the vials are still there,” Lord Cassius noted.

Keefe shrugged. “It’s worth checking, right?”

“Um, just so I’m clear,” Ro jumped in as Keefe dug an old home crystal out from one of his cape pockets, “your plan is to go room by room in a two-hundred-story tower, searching for some random elf-y feeling that might not even be there anymore because the thing causing it might be long gone?”

“It’s either that or go with my dad and listen to him and Elwin chat about fertility stuff,” Keefe reminded her.

Ro groaned again. “Fine. But I’m adding this to the list of things I’ll be paying you back for.”

“You do that,” Keefe told her—and that seemed to settle it.

Sandor sighed as Sophie reached for Keefe’s hand, and grumbled something about needing patience as he joined the light leaping chain.

And she honestly wasn’t