Everything had gone quiet.

Really quiet.

The roaring faded.

The emotions vanished.

The nausea and headed eased.

Keefe took a long, grateful breath.

Then another.

And another.

His pulse slowed in a steady rhythm and his vision sharpened as he scanned the room, realising everything was way too quiet.

He looked up saw he was surrounded by...

...blank stares.

Sophie.

Fitz.

Elwin.

Even Ro and Sandor.

They just stood there, slack-jawed and unblinking.

Then it hit him.

He wasn't numb.

Everybody else was.

Keefe stared worriedly at the statues of what used to be his friends stood there, unmoving and unfeeling.

He managed to sit up and clumsily make his way to Sophie, who stared past him with her gorgeous gold-flecked eyes. She had always been pretty, but now she was model level beautiful, and she didn't even seem to realise it.

He hesitantly took her wrists and shook them, desperately trying to get her to move, to feel. But she didn't.

Instead, she started to fall, not even bothering to brace herself. Keefe caught her and glanced at her with a concerned expression on his face.

"Sophie," he said.

No answer.

"Sophie!" He called, louder.

No respond.

"SOPHIE!" He screamed, certain the Forbidden Cities could hear him at this volume.

"WAKE UP!" he pleaded.

"RELAX!"

"UNDO!"

Nothing he said seemed to work.

"Please," he begged. "Please don't be numb anymore."

Still no change.

He would never forgive himself if he had turned the people closest to him into living statues.

Something tickled at the back of his mind.

The answer.

A command.

"FEEL!" He shouted.

And it worked.

All at once, the emotions crawled back, surging and swirling and swimming, and Keefe had never been so relieved at the storm that hit him. Or to catch the clumsily girl started to fall over.

"Keefe?" she whispered, in a soft hesitant voice, looking up at him. He nodded and burst into tears. What if she had never gotten out of it?

He knew he must look very childish to Sophie but at that moment, he wasn't thinking about that. He just sat down and cried, letting the guilt slowly overcome him.

"Keefe," Sophie said, grasping his hand when he backed away.

He shook his head and pulled away.

"Whatever it was, it wasn't your fault," she promised as he sank down into the cot once more.

"Yes it was," a new voice declared, a voice Keefe didn't hear very often.

He looked up to see Councillor Alina, standing in the doorway wearing a goofy purple gown.

He buried himself under his blankets.

"You told the Council that Keefe was awake?" he heard Sophie ask, feeling the irritation singing through the air.

"Of course she told us," Alina said, adjusting her already straight peridot circlet. "I realise this is a difficult concept for you to grasp, but we're your leaders. We expect to be apprised for all significant developments. And it's a good thing Oralie hailed me, because this is an even bigger disaster than I feared."

Oralie sighed. "There's no need to be so dramatic, Alina."

"Oh, really," Alina replied, the disgust rippling off her in spaced out waves, "then why do I see four unconscious bodies on the floor?"

"Bodies?" Sophie repeated, and Keefe started from the shock of her surprise. Whatever she saw couldn't have been good.

"We're not unconscious," he heard Elwin mumble, but Keefe could hear the pain in his lie. "We're just moving a little slow, from… everything. Plus, this floor is definitely not as soft as I wanted it to be."

"No, it's not," Fitz agreed in his accented voice.

Keefe wanted to kick himself for forgetting about Elwin and Fitz. He'd managed to catch Sophie, but hadn't had time to save the others.

"Normally I'd give you some smooth points for taking care of your pretty little Blondie and leaving Captain Perfectpants to fend for himself," Ro told Keefe as she stood and stretched.

"But next time, how about a little help for the person who knows a hundred different ways to kill you?"

Keefe didn't respond.

"Shouldn't there be another bodyguard here?" Alina asked. "The female assigned to Fitz?"

"Grizel is doing a perimeter sweep," Sandor said, the protectiveness evident in his voice and the air.

"Does anyone know what happened?" Sophie asked, her beautiful voice filling the room.

"No. But I'm guessing this is why Mommy Dearest gave her little Legacy Boy that weird ability that starts with a P," Ro muttered. "What's it again? A Polystar?"

"What I saw had nothing to do with being a Polyglot," Councillor Alina argued. "Polyglots simply have a capacity for language and intonation. They can't affect emotion."

"Does that mean Keefe's a Beguiler?" Fitz asked, and Keefe froze when he heard the word, even though he knew his ability was much much worse than that.

"Beguiling is about suggestion—persuasion. Planting thoughts in someone's mind to guide them to a desired response, preferably without them even realizing what you're doing. That's not what happened here." Alina said.

"How much did you see?" Elwin piped up, probably messing with his glasses or some elixirs or something.

"Not much," Oralie told him.

"But enough," Alina insisted, her negativity seeping into the room. "We arrived right before he gave the command that brought you all out of whatever strange trance he'd put you in."

"It wasn't a trance," Sophie argued. "I was conscious. I just couldn't…"

"Feel," Fitz finished for her.

Woah. Fitzphie finished each others sentences now? Keefe thought.

Oralie shivered, the fear radiating off her. "I've never experienced anything like that numbness."

"You could sense it?" Elwin asked.

Oralie nodded. "There was a strange emptiness in the air. And when he snapped you out of it, the deluge of emotion felt like it was drowning me"

Keefe. Fitz's accented voice swept inside his head and Keefe tried his best to push it out, but Fitz's telepathy had gotten stronger over the years.

"I had to steady her," Alina added, and Keefe heard her poofy silky skirts swish as she made her way closer to him. "Care to shed any further insights on the situation, Mr. Sencen?"

Keefe pulled the blanket even tighter around his head and tried yet again to push Fitz out of his head.

"He's scared to talk," Fitz explained, "in case something goes wrong again."

Alina frowned. "I'm assuming you know this from communicating with him telepathically?"

"Well, he's mostly ignoring me," Fitz admitted. "But that's what he was worrying about when I checked his thoughts—and now he's grumbling about eavesdropping Telepaths."

"It just… doesn't make sense," Sophie said quietly. "Keefe said all kinds of other stuff that didn't have any effect on us. He was talking like normal until…"

Keefe felt her worry grow stronger.

"Did you enhance him?" Fitz asked, and Keefe wished she had. But she hadn't.

"I don't think so," Sophie said, "I feel like I'd know if I had. And I can control the ability now—and I'm wearing gloves as backup. Plus, Keefe was holding my wrists—not my hands—when he snapped us all out of it, so there's no way I could've enhanced him for that."

"Yeah, I guess." Fitz muttered, and Keefe swore he felt jealousy flying through the air, "seems like you must've done something, though, since he was fine until…"

"Until I showed up," Sophie mumbled miserably.

"Okay, I'm definitely not an expert on your freaky elf-y abilities," Ro jumped in, "but I don't think it's anything you did, Blondie."

"Of course you don't," Fitz grumbled.

"Uh, because I know how to use my brain," Ro snapped back. "I've watched her and Hunkyhair together more than anyone, and they always have a calming influence on each other."

Keefe wanted to agree with her, but he knew his new ability was too dangerous. He couldn't expose that to anyone.

"Maybe," Fitz said, interrupting his thoughts, "but that was before…"

Once again, he didn't finish the sentence. And once again, he didn't need to.

Before his dearest mother changed him.

It was time to start acknowledging that, wasn't it?

He was a Polyglot now.

And he could do… whatever it was that had made all his friends go numb.

"I think part of the problem," Elwin said, yanking back the blanket covering Keefe's head, "is that we don't know what Keefe actually did, so we're just speculating and making assumptions."

He snapped his fingers, flashing an opalescent orb around Keefe's entire body as Keefe rolled to his side, keeping his back to everyone.

"It was his tone," a hushed voice said from the doorway, and Keefe recognized it as Councillor Noland—one of the Councillors he rarely interacted with.

His eyebrows scrunched together as he repeated, "It was his tone. Keefe's inflection shifted when he gave the command that brought back your emotions. So it's safe to assume he did the same when he numbed you."

"You're sure?" Alina asked.

Noland nodded. "I know voices."

"So… you're saying Keefe's a Vociferator?" Fitz asked.

"No, I'm saying he can give his words power—which also means he can take that power away and let his words simply be words. It all depends on his tone." He made his way to Keefe's cot. "I understand how it feels to fear your own voice," he whispered but Keefe didn't dare to face him."But hiding behind silence is not the answer. You must learn control. Restraint. Master when and how to use this ability."

"Are you volunteering to train him?" Alina asked.

Noland shook his head. "I doubt I will be of much use. As I said, he's not a Vociferator."

"Okay, so… what is he?" Sophie asked.

Everyone waited for Noland's answer—and Keefe risked a glance over his shoulder.

So the room filled with a collective groan when Noland told them, "Honestly, I have no idea. This is something new to me."

"A new ability?" Alina clarified.

"Why do you say that like it's a bad thing?" Noland wondered. "Every ability begins somewhere."

"Yes, but most begin naturally," Alina argued. "And there was nothing natural about this."

"There wasn't," Noland agreed, shifting his gaze to Sophie and he added, "But I'm staring at someone else with unnatural abilities. And she's proven to be quite a valuable asset. Hopefully this boy will be the same."