“I guess they could’ve been quintessence,” she whispered, deciding to throw the theory out there.

The conversation couldn’t necessarily get any weirder.

“I mean… the vials looked a little different than the vials of quintessence I’ve seen before,” she added quietly. “But… there were five of them. And there are five unmapped stars. And each vial was different. And the pain they caused…”

Lord Cassius wrapped his arms around himself. “I’ll hail Elwin and find out where he is.”

“And you’ll tell us what he says,” Keefe said as he stood, making it clear it wasn’t a request. “Feels like this is a good time for us to stop keeping secrets from each other, doesn’t it?”

Sophie frowned when Lord Cassius agreed.

“You don’t want to be there when he talks to Elwin?” she whispered.

Keefe shook his head. “I’m going to Candleshade to see if I can find that compartment.”

“Oh.” Sophie stood up to join him, trying to be supportive—and telling herself to be glad that his plan was something safe. But she still had to remind him, “It’s just… Candleshade is huge—and there was nothing recognizable about that wall in the memory, was there?”

“Not the wall,” Keefe told her. “But there was… a feeling. You probably didn’t notice it, since you’re not an Empath. But every time I replay that memory, I get this, like, prickly sense right here”—he brushed his hands down his arms—“and I think it’s triggered by whatever is in those vials. So if I search for that feeling at Candleshade, I should be able to follow it to that compartment.”

“Assuming the vials are still there,” Lord Cassius noted.

Keefe shrugged. “It’s worth checking, right?”

“Um, just so I’m clear,” Ro jumped in as Keefe dug an old home crystal out from one of his cape pockets, “your plan is to go room by room in a two-hundred-story tower, searching for some random elf-y feeling that might not even be there anymore because the thing causing it might be long gone?”

“It’s either that or go with my dad and listen to him and Elwin chat about fertility stuff,” Keefe reminded her.

Ro groaned again. “Fine. But I’m adding this to the list of things I’ll be paying you back for.”

“You do that,” Keefe told her—and that seemed to settle it.

Sandor sighed as Sophie reached for Keefe’s hand, and grumbled something about needing patience as he joined the light leaping chain.

And she honestly wasn’t any happier about the project ahead of them.

But Keefe shouldn’t be alone after everything they’d discovered. There was too big of a risk that he’d change his mind and run off somewhere much more dangerous.

And he’d endured an awful lot of boring, tedious things for her.

“Remind me to hail Dex, Biana, Stina, and Wylie a little later,” she told Sandor, realizing she’d promised her teammates she’d be checking in on them that day.

“If you have other things to do—” Keefe tried to tell her.

But Sophie shook her head, channeling Sandor when she told him, “I go where you go.”

* * *

Candleshade was somehow even bigger than Sophie remembered.

The glittering crystal skyscraper basically blotted out the sun.

And boy, was it depressing.

Keefe’s house had always felt cold and unwelcoming—but now the once shimmering rooms were coated in dust and grime and were in total chaos from all the hasty previous searches. There was also quite a lot of smashed stuff that seemed to say, Ro was here.

If Keefe was bothered by the mess, he did a good job hiding it. But it probably helped that his search required his full concentration.

Room by room he’d close his eyes, feeling for whatever he’d picked up on in that memory, before he shook his head and moved on.

And Sophie tried not to sigh, or shuffle her feet—or do the math on how endless the search was going to be.

Ro was doing plenty of that for everyone.

But by the time they reached the fifth floor, Sophie had to at least voice a new theory she couldn’t get out of her head. “So… if I’m right,” she said quietly, wishing her voice didn’t sound quite so echoey, “and those vials your parents took had some form of quintessence in them, that probably means the dark vials are—”

“Shadowflux?” Keefe finished for her. “Way ahead of you there, Foster. Why do you think I’m bothering with this? If it’s shadowflux, we’re finally on our way to figuring out how she’s planning to have Bangs Boy off me.”

“We are?” Sophie asked, not really seeing the connection.

If Lady Gisela already had bottles of shadowflux, what did she need Tam for?

And if she’d already drunk the bottles and needed more, couldn’t Umber have provided that a long time ago?

“Yeah, okay,” Keefe said, “I’m picking up on your skepticism loud and clear, Foster. And I do realize that even if we find the black bottles, they’re going to raise a whole lot more questions than they answer. But at least it’d be progress, you know? An actual clue that ties right into Tammy Boy’s Shade stuff?”

“True,” Sophie agreed, trying to stay positive.

But after five more floors, positivity was feeling impossible.

They’d been there for at least an hour—and they still had one hundred and ninety floors to go.

“If we don’t speed this process up, I’m going to start stabbing things,” Ro warned when they made it to floor thirteen, and Sophie had to bite her tongue to stop herself from agreeing.

Sandor had no such qualms—and had apparently been working on the math in his head—and spelled out exactly how many hours they had ahead of them if they continued at their current pace.

“No way!” Ro informed them. “I seriously will murder someone long before that. You mean to tell me our pretty little Blondie doesn’t have some sort of elf-y ability to make this go faster?”

Sophie stopped walking. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. We should use my enhancing!”

“You sure you’re up for that?” Keefe asked as Sophie peeled off her gloves. “You’ve kinda done a lot with your abilities the last few days, and you’re still recovering from the reset.”

“Enhancing doesn’t do anything to me,” she promised, tapping her fingers to turn off Dex’s gadgets. “It’s automatic, remember? Besides, it can’t be more exhausting than spending ten million hours searching this place room by room. I bet you’ll be able to search two or three floors at a time if I enhance you.”

“Please let that be true!” Ro begged when Sophie held out her hand. “Please please please please please.”

Sophie mentally made the same pleas as Keefe reached for her.

And as soon as her fingertips brushed his skin, the jolt nearly knocked them both over.

Ro and Sandor managed to steady them—but Keefe couldn’t stop shaking.

“You okay?” Sophie asked when he closed his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m just… wow,” he breathed. “I don’t even know how to describe this. I swear I can sense the entire tower.”