Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities #8) - Shannon Messenger Page 0,203

any happier about the project ahead of them.

But Keefe shouldn’t be alone after everything they’d discovered. There was too big of a risk that he’d change his mind and run off somewhere much more dangerous.

And he’d endured an awful lot of boring, tedious things for her.

“Remind me to hail Dex, Biana, Stina, and Wylie a little later,” she told Sandor, realizing she’d promised her teammates she’d be checking in on them that day.

“If you have other things to do—” Keefe tried to tell her.

But Sophie shook her head, channeling Sandor when she told him, “I go where you go.”

* * *

Candleshade was somehow even bigger than Sophie remembered.

The glittering crystal skyscraper basically blotted out the sun.

And boy, was it depressing.

Keefe’s house had always felt cold and unwelcoming—but now the once shimmering rooms were coated in dust and grime and were in total chaos from all the hasty previous searches. There was also quite a lot of smashed stuff that seemed to say, Ro was here.

If Keefe was bothered by the mess, he did a good job hiding it. But it probably helped that his search required his full concentration.

Room by room he’d close his eyes, feeling for whatever he’d picked up on in that memory, before he shook his head and moved on.

And Sophie tried not to sigh, or shuffle her feet—or do the math on how endless the search was going to be.

Ro was doing plenty of that for everyone.

But by the time they reached the fifth floor, Sophie had to at least voice a new theory she couldn’t get out of her head. “So… if I’m right,” she said quietly, wishing her voice didn’t sound quite so echoey, “and those vials your parents took had some form of quintessence in them, that probably means the dark vials are—”

“Shadowflux?” Keefe finished for her. “Way ahead of you there, Foster. Why do you think I’m bothering with this? If it’s shadowflux, we’re finally on our way to figuring out how she’s planning to have Bangs Boy off me.”

“We are?” Sophie asked, not really seeing the connection.

If Lady Gisela already had bottles of shadowflux, what did she need Tam for?

And if she’d already drunk the bottles and needed more, couldn’t Umber have provided that a long time ago?

“Yeah, okay,” Keefe said, “I’m picking up on your skepticism loud and clear, Foster. And I do realize that even if we find the black bottles, they’re going to raise a whole lot more questions than they answer. But at least it’d be progress, you know? An actual clue that ties right into Tammy Boy’s Shade stuff?”

“True,” Sophie agreed, trying to stay positive.

But after five more floors, positivity was feeling impossible.

They’d been there for at least an hour—and they still had one hundred and ninety floors to go.

“If we don’t speed this process up, I’m going to start stabbing things,” Ro warned when they made it to floor thirteen, and Sophie had to bite her tongue to stop herself from agreeing.

Sandor had no such qualms—and had apparently been working on the math in his head—and spelled out exactly how many hours they had ahead of them if they continued at their current pace.

“No way!” Ro informed them. “I seriously will murder someone long before that. You mean to tell me our pretty little Blondie doesn’t have some sort of elf-y ability to make this go faster?”

Sophie stopped walking. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. We should use my enhancing!”

“You sure you’re up for that?” Keefe asked as Sophie peeled off her gloves. “You’ve kinda done a lot with your abilities the last few days, and you’re still recovering from the reset.”

“Enhancing doesn’t do anything to me,” she promised, tapping her fingers to turn off Dex’s gadgets. “It’s automatic, remember? Besides, it can’t be more exhausting than spending ten million hours searching this place room by room. I bet you’ll be able to search two or three floors at a time if I enhance you.”

“Please let that be true!” Ro begged when Sophie held out her hand. “Please please please please please.”

Sophie mentally made the same pleas as Keefe reached for her.

And as soon as her fingertips brushed his skin, the jolt nearly knocked them both over.

Ro and Sandor managed to steady them—but Keefe couldn’t stop shaking.

“You okay?” Sophie asked when he closed his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m just… wow,” he breathed. “I don’t even know how to describe this. I swear I can sense the entire tower.”

“I’ve never loved anyone as much as I