And she was tired of wasting time.
She turned to Fitz, glad to see he was already ahead of her.
He lifted the gnome over his shoulder and carried him to the cliff’s edge.
“Lumenaria’s on the other side of the world,” the purple Coach told them. “You can’t levitate there.”
“No,” Sophie said, reaching for Fitz’s hand. “But we can teleport.”
They jumped without another word, holding tight to each other as thunder crashed and they slipped into the void.
Sophie started to envision Lumenaria, but all she could picture was the burly goblin guards, blocking the city’s gates with their deadly swords.
“Do you think the Council will have us arrested?” Sophie whispered.
“I don’t know,” Fitz admitted. “I want to say no—especially since we still have the cache. But last time we were around them it didn’t go so well.”
His hand moved to his chest, rubbing where the arthropleura barb had pierced him.
Sophie decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
She’d also realized there was a safer place they could take the gnome, where he could get medical treatment, and they could count on a few allies.
“Change of plans,” she said, then pictured their destination so vividly that white light cracked the darkness.
They launched out of the void and Sophie focused on the force of their fall, using her newfound levitating skills to make her first gentle landing.
Their feet touched down on the soft purple grass outside the glass pyramid in the center of the Foxfire campus.
FORTY-SEVEN
SOPHIE HAD NEVER thought she could feel more conspicuous than she had on her first day at Foxfire, when Dame Alina had literally shined a spotlight on her to introduce her to the other prodigies.
But as she and Fitz clomped through the glittering main building in their crazy Exillium uniforms, she felt like they might as well be carrying a sign that said WE DON’T BELONG HERE!
Instead, they were carrying a very sick gnome, so she was glad it seemed to be the middle of session. The colorful halls were vacant, and Sophie was very familiar with the path to the Healing Center. They rushed through the doors in record time.
Sophie called for Elwin as she surveyed the three rooms—a treatment area, a working laboratory, and the physician’s office.
All three were empty.
“Now what?” Fitz asked, setting the gnome on one of the beds in the treatment area.
“I don’t know,” Sophie admitted. She’d never considered that Elwin might not be there. “I guess we could leave him here and go find Magnate Leto.”
But then she imagined the gnome waking up all alone, not knowing where he was or what had happened to him.
“Should one of us stay here?” she asked.
The slamming of the Healing Center’s doors saved them from making a decision.
“This is why you’re not supposed to catch more than one lightning bolt at a time,” Elwin said, leading a familiar round-faced boy into the treatment area.
“I thought I’d found a way to do it,” Jensi said, patting the ends of his brown hair, which was sticking out in every direction.
Both Jensi and Elwin froze when they spotted Fitz and Sophie—and the panic in their eyes reminded Sophie they still had their masks on.
“It’s okay,” she said, tossing back her hood and shoving her mask up on her forehead.
Fitz did the same, and Jensi and Elwin each did a double take.
Then Elwin laughed. “Should’ve known you’d find a way to end up here,” he said, wrapping them up in a group hug.
Sophie hugged him back, remembering how once upon a time she’d been afraid of Elwin. It hadn’t been Elwin’s fault—she’d been afraid of all doctors after growing up with needles and hospitals and scary human medicine. But now she knew that Elwin was a giant teddy bear, with dark, messy hair, and smiling dragons all over his tunic.
“Yeah—they told us you were banished,” Jensi said in his trademark rapid-fire manner. “But I knew they couldn’t keep you away—and cool—you have to tell me about Exillium—are those the uniforms—they’re awesome—but what are the masks for?”
The happy reunion lasted about ten seconds, until Elwin noticed their patient.
“What happened?” he asked, scrambling for his crazy iridescent spectacles and flashing a blue orb of light around the gnome. “Where did you find him?”
“We were in Bosk Gorge today,” Sophie said.
Elwin frowned. “Bosk Gorge?”
“It’s in the Neutral Territories,” Fitz explained.
“I know. But that doesn’t make any sense. I heard the goblins reporting in when I was working in Lumenaria a few days back, and Bosk Gorge was still on their safe list.”