Linh blushed.
Tam headed for a thicket of gnarled trees, which didn’t look particularly inviting, but at least the grove hadn’t been infected yet. He waved a clump of shadows away, revealing a gap hidden in the branches. Sophie followed Linh through, finding herself in a nook of green grass with two weathered tents. The threadbare quilt Linh spread out for them to sit on had been patched together from the craziest bits of fabric—old human T-shirts, lace doilies, the butt pockets of a pair of jeans.
“This is really where you guys live?” she had to ask.
“We don’t need much,” Linh said.
Maybe not, but the twins didn’t seem to have anything.
An idea formed then—one Sophie knew would be gloriously complicated. But it could give Tam and Linh a better life, and make use of their incredible talents.
“How long are you going to wait before you tell her the rest?” Linh asked her brother, reminding Sophie she should be paying attention.
“Tell me the rest of what?” Sophie asked.
Tam shook his head. “We still don’t know her well enough.”
“Okay, so what do you need to know?” Sophie said. “Ask and I’ll answer.”
Tam smoothed his bangs over of his eyes and gave her his most defiant stare. “Answers can be lies. If you really want me to trust you, I need to read your shadowvapor.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” Linh promised. “He just has to let his shadow pass through your mind.”
“That . . . might be a problem,” Sophie said. “It’s hard to explain without getting into a bunch of crazy stuff about my genetics. But my mind is impenetrable. Even Councillor Terik couldn’t descry me.”
“Shadowvaper is simpler to sense than potential,” Linh said.
“Since when are you the expert on my ability?” Tam asked her.
“Same reason I know you’re stalling,” Linh told him. “I’ve lived with you for almost fifteen years. And this is why we brought her here. Do the reading and we’ll tell her—assuming you don’t mind,” she added, turning to Sophie.
Sophie wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but she knew she needed their information. “You can try the reading,” she told Tam. “But you have to promise you’ll tell me even if you can’t understand what you see in my head.”
“Deal,” Linh said, earning a glare from her brother. But he moved toward Sophie without further argument.
“Hold still,” he said as Sophie flinched away from his shifting shadow. “Linh’s right—it won’t hurt. But it will give you chills.”
Chills was an understatement. It felt like a blizzard blasting through her head. But once his shadow retreated, the freezing thawed immediately.
“I can see why Terik struggled with his descrying,” Tam said, rubbing the spot between his brows. “You have a lot of shadowvapor. But you also have a lot of illumination, and they cancel each other out.”
“Is that a good thing?” Sophie asked.
“Balance is good,” Linh agreed.
“But it can be hard to hold on to,” Tam countered.
“Which only matters for her future,” Linh pressed.
The words felt like a warning, and Sophie wanted to pick them apart. But Linh was urging her brother to share his secret, and it looked like Tam was finally ready.
He moved across the clearing, staring at Wildwood through a small gap in the trees. “Before I tell you, you should know that what I’m going to say technically counts as treason. And you told me you still have a few friends in the Lost Cities, so you’re probably hoping to go back someday.”
“I still want to know,” Sophie said.
Tam nodded and turned to face her. “When the Council was here gathering samples, they didn’t think I could hear them. But I used my shadow to carry my consciousness to where they were working. I couldn’t tell which Councillors it was—only that it was a male and a female. And the female Councillor said, ‘We should’ve warned them this could happen.’ Then the guy said, ‘No one can know.’?”
FIFTY-ONE
OH GOOD, SHE’S back,” Keefe said as Sophie arrived in the Crooked Forest. “Now we can clobber her.”
Fitz stalked forward. “We’re supposed to be a team! That means you take us with you when you run away with strangers, not give me four lousy words and disappear!”
“I’m sorry,” Sophie said, her brain still reeling from the afternoon’s revelations. To know the Council could’ve prevented everything that was happening was too terrible of a thought to settle.
But she couldn’t tell her friends with Calla nearby. So she focused on safer explanations. “Tam only gave me a second to decide and—”
“Tam?” Dex interrupted.
“Yeah. That’s the Shade’s name. And his sister is Linh.”
“They’re brother and sister?” Biana asked.
“Twins,” Sophie agreed. “They’re also the teenagers who left the footprints near Wildwood.”