A/N: Hello hello, I'm back! Here's Ch35—the fanfic's first non-awkward Sokeefe chapter! So take that as a blessing or a warning, whichever team you're on.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"You had no right!" Stina was screaming when the three of them arrived back in Perspeculum.

"It wasn't my idea!" Keefe put his hands up in the air. "Dex thought of it!"

"Oh, real smooth, landing all the blame on the guy who isn't here."

"What did we walk into?" said Dex. "Apparently I'm not here?"

"He set the imp on me!" she shrieked. She pointed to one of the windowsills. Iggy in all his feathery glory was sitting on a pink cushion, happily munching on one of Stina's curls.

Stina marched up to Sophie. Her angry face was an inch away from hers. "If you don't control that pest—"

"I wish I could," Sophie said calmly. "But Iggy won't listen to anyone. Actually, if Keefe had told him to attack you, he wouldn't have listened. The only reason for him to rip out your hair would have been if he—well, if he hated you."

"You—you—" Lost for words, Stina brushed past Sophie and stomped out of the room.

Keefe locked eyes with Sophie. "Foster, I would very much like to send her back."

Sophie sighed. "So would I, Keefe. But that's the Black Swan's decision, not ours. So she stays."

She looked around. Counting her and Dex, there were only six people in the room.

"Where are Tam and Linh?"

"At Physic's," said Fitz. "Linh finally agreed to get her leg checked out."

"Thank goodness I was getting worried. What did they do to her?"

"It wasn't the Council," said Lia. "She injured her leg testing her strength. She told us while you were gone. She'd coat her knee in a layer of water and ram it against the hinges of her cell door, over and over again. But she couldn't make the water strong enough to break the door. And the day she figured it out, Oralie happened to catch her right in front of the door. No, the Council threatened her in other ways. They told her that they had Tam. And her mother."

"Her mother?"

"Yeah. It was weird. When she was telling us about it, she was like, 'My mother . . . I didn't want them to . . . I cared . . . I didn't want to take any chances,'" she said, mimicking Linh's sweet voice perfectly. Not only that, but Lia also copied her mannerisms, right down to the nervous curling of her toes.

"Please don't do that, Lia."

"Why not?" she asked in her normal voice. "Keefe says it's part of a Polyglot's training."

"It's not part of my training, and I'll tell you why. It's a horrible skill that's meant to trick people."

Lia blinked. Then she shrugged. "If you say so. What did you find in those Neverseen hideouts?"

"Lots of Nightfalls," said Dex. "Lots of them."

"Wait. Are you saying there's more of me?"

"No, Nightfall runes. They were everywhere. And we found the door."

"The door?!" Keefe, Fitz, and Biana gasped in unison.

"I'm confused," said Lia. "'The door'? Wasn't that a Game of Thrones episode or something?"

"The Nightfall door," Sophie explained. "The one I told you about—you know, the one that says, 'The star only rises at Nightfall'. We found—actually, it'll probably be easier to show you." She grabbed her memory log from a shelf.

She flipped it open to a blank page and focused on projecting her memory. The scene in Keefe's bedroom appeared on the page.

"You saw my mom?" Keefe gaped.

"Sophie Foster," the memory of Lady Gisela was saying. "I've been expecting you."

"Why were you waiting for me?"

"Oh my God, is that what my voice sounds like?" Sophie cringed. She sounded so . . . whiney.

"I never said I was waiting for you. I said I was expecting you. In fact, the person I was waiting for was Keefe. It never crossed my mind that you'd decide to bring Juline's son instead of mine."

"Then you don't know me very well."

"Oh, I have no doubt of that. But I know Keefe."

He winced at the sound of his name coming from his mom.

"He was my creation, after all. You're just a poor copy."

The memory replayed the entire scene up until Candleshade fell. The only place that had problems was when Sophie had gone into Gisela's mind. The memory log had kind of fritzed out for a second, then skipped to Sophie's "You lied to me".

Once it was over, she closed the memory log shut. She could tell from the pained expression on Keefe's face that he didn't want to watch it again.

"When we find her," he said, "I am going to stab her the way Gethen stabbed Mr. Forkle."

"Keefe . . ." Dex hesitated. "I'm pretty sure she's already dead."

"No, she's not. If she was dead, I would feel it."

"I'm with Keefe on this one," said Biana. "Everyone thought Fintan was dead, and look where we are now. The Neverseen seem, like, almost invincible—"

"Brant wasn't," Sophie and Fitz joked at the same time. Dex rolled his eyes.

Lia yawned. "You all can argue about Lady Gisela for the rest of the night, but I'm going to bed."

"You're right. It's late," said Fitz. "We should all get some sleep."

Sophie lay awake in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. At Havenfield, hundreds of star crystals had hung from her bedroom ceiling, lighting up the darkness. But this ceiling was completely plain, and the only sound in the room was Lia's even breathing.

She heard Keefe shout from the room next door. Why was he awake? It had to have been past midnight.

Keefe? she transmitted. Are you alright?

His thoughts were a scattered, panicky mess.

I'm okay, he managed to think. Just a nightmare—oh, gosh, please come, Foster, he thought as his emotions took over his thoughts. I can't stand it.

I'm coming, Keefe.

She slid out of her bed. After making sure Lia was asleep, she tiptoed through the archway and into the room next door.

Keefe was sitting upright in his bed. He was clutching the blankets so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

"Foster," he whispered. "Please. Help me."

She walked to his bedside and peeled off her gloves, one by one. She took his fingers between her own two hands. His hand was clammy and covered in a cold sweat.

"Can I go inside your mind?" she asked. He nodded.

She closed her eyes and entered Keefe's consciousness. Images swirled all around her. They were all of Lady Gisela. And the same words were being repeated in his inner voice, over and over again.

When you see my son again, Sophie, tell him to come to Fintan's new hideout. Not to join the Neverseen, but to end it. He has to. It's his legacy.

She found the nook of light in Keefe's mind easily. She poured in all the happy memories she could think of—and a few that weren't exactly memories. Keefe riding Silveny's foal under a starlit sky. Linh smiling as she tested out her leg, good as new. Marella and Maruca, holding hands.

She felt Keefe's scattered pulse even out. The warmth returned to his hands.

"Thank you," he said simply as she opened her eyes.

Keefe Sencen had run out of jokes.

She got up to leave.

"Wait." He locked eyes with her, and she couldn't look away. His ice-blue eyes weren't teal, but you could still stare into them forever.

"Stay," he said.

All at once, Grady's lecture about boys and every uncomfortable class talk she'd had at her human school flooded into her head. A little alarm was going off in her brain. But Sophie stared into his eyes and she could feel herself getting lost in them, drowning in them.

"Okay."

She climbed on top of the covers, with Keefe underneath. He leaned back against the pillows. He was still tense.

"You don't have to listen to her," said Sophie. "Gisela's been manipulating you."

"But what if my mom is right? What if I'm destined for some grand plan—some legacy—and it's going to come whether I try to avoid it or not?"

"We all have the power to change our own future. To shape our own legacies. We don't have to follow what some stupid adult has said we have to do."

"You're right, Foster." He sounded resigned. "I'm being irrational."

Sophie yawned. She could feel sleep taking over. Somehow, her head made it onto Keefe's shoulder.

As her eyes finally closed, Sophie remembered the dead girl in Lady Gisela's mirror. And why that girl had freaked her out.

Minus the eyes, she looked almost exactly like Sophie.

What if Lady Gisela was . . . Sophie's mother?

A/N: Thanks for reading and please review! Ch36 should be up shortly.