Legacy (Keeper of the Lost Cities #8) - Shannon Messenger Page 0,94

her nose like those words pained her a little. “I think we should let her and Wylie handle this. If we feel like they missed something, we can always ask for another meeting—and if Lady Zillah won’t agree, we’ll just show up at her office and not leave until she answers our questions.”

“I guess.” Sophie studied the questions one more time to make sure her photographic memory had completely captured them before she tore the page out of her notebook and offered it to Wylie. “You’re meeting briefly with Lady Zillah at noon, right? Then I’m going to hail you guys at one for an update—and I want to know everything she said. Take notes if you don’t think you’ll be able to remember it all.”

She wouldn’t let go of the paper until he nodded—even when Stina mumbled something about bossy Droolmonsters.

“I’m assuming you’ll update Dex and me after that?” Biana asked.

“Of course,” Sophie promised.

“Good. And I’ll hail Bronte as soon as I’m home to see if I can set up a meeting—but I doubt he’ll agree to anything right away. And I should probably update my dad about some of this and see if he has any thoughts or advice—or, wait, am I allowed to do that? Is all of our team information classified?”

“From the general populace, yes. But Alden’s an Emissary with the highest level of clearance, so it won’t be a problem,” Grady told her, making all of them jump—and making Sophie wonder how long he’d been eavesdropping.

Apparently long enough for Grady to also know to ask, “Why do you need to meet with Councillor Bronte?”

Biana’s eyes darted to Sophie, and Sophie gave the tiniest possible head shake.

Grady and Edaline were being way cooler about the search for her biological parents than Sophie had ever expected them to be. But she had a feeling the Bronte theory might be a bit too… head-explode-y, given the implications. So it seemed better to wait until she had confirmation before she hit them with that kind of bombshell.

Plus… she really didn’t want to have to live through any more Bronte-related conversations. She’d already had enough of those to last two lifetimes.

“I wanted to see if he knows when we’ll be announcing our appointment as Regents,” Biana told Grady—which sounded like a perfectly legitimate explanation to Sophie.

But Grady did not look convinced.

Sophie was bracing for him to call them out when Dex jumped in. “So does that mean I can’t tell my parents about anything we’re working on?” he asked. “Since they’re not Emissaries?”

“If you were a normal Regent, the answer would be yes,” Grady admitted. “But your age might change things. Your family may have a right to know at least a little about what you’re investigating, in case it puts you in danger. So you should probably double-check with the Council.”

“What about the Black Swan?” Wylie wondered. “The Council must assume I’m going to tell Tiergan.”

“Probably. But it can’t hurt to verify,” Grady suggested. “They may want all communication with the Black Swan to funnel through Mr. Forkle.”

“I guess I can ask,” Wylie said, shoving some Panakes blossoms into his pocket as he stood and pulled out his home crystal. Stina and Biana did the same, right down to collecting some of the healing flowers to take with them—which was smart, considering how many lives the Panakes blossoms had saved.

But Dex stayed seated in the soft grass, and it was clear that he was lingering for a reason.

Sophie had no idea what he needed, but for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel any awkward worry about it. Even when Biana noticed—and frowned a little—Sophie just smiled and asked her to let Fitz know she’d hail him as soon as she caught up on a few other things.

And once Biana had leaped away—and Grady had wandered off to help the gnomes with the gorgodon feeding—Sophie almost wanted to hug Dex again, so they could marvel at how far their friendship had come.

But that probably would’ve been a little weird.

Plus, she didn’t want to distract him from whatever he’d stayed there to tell her.

“So what’s up?” she asked as Dex stood and offered a hand.

“I checked in with Keefe this morning,” he said, helping her to her feet, “to find out when he wanted to go to the Forbidden Cities so I could set up the cameras to watch for that guy he remembered. But Ro started shouting in the background about chaining him to a porch