“Yes. They cut at least a dozen shards, some no larger than a splinter, some similar in size to this.” Nubiti fished a second piece of sea glass from the sand—green this time, and about the size of a small Lego. “And there is no telling what those stones can do,” Nubiti warned as she tucked the green glass among her fur. “They are new shapes, new sizes—and for some reason we cannot feel them, no matter how thoroughly we search.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Dex mumbled.

“It’s not. Especially given what I now suspect is the source of the stone, after listening to your conversations.” She moved to the wall of the cave, trailing her claws along the jagged edges in the rock. “Some stone comes from the earth. Other stone falls from the sky. Magsidian is a blend of both—something new, created by a dark collision.”

“You mean a meteor?” Sophie asked.

“Yes and no. It was no ordinary rock that fell and fused with all it touched. None of my people have a name for it because none of us witnessed the impact. But the stone tells its own tale. One of shadows and energy. One that feels elemental.”

She left the word hanging there, waiting for someone to grab ahold of it and make the connection that would forever raise the stakes of what they were dealing with.

And as the leader of Team Valiant, Sophie knew it was her job to step up to the task. So she whispered, “You think magsidian is made of shadowflux.”

FOURTEEN

COULD MAGSIDIAN WEAKEN TAM’S ability if it were cut the right way?” Biana suggested, earning a round of murmured agreement from the rest of her teammates as Sophie added the question to the list they were building.

Nubiti had tunneled back into the sand not long after she’d led them to the shadowflux-magsidian revelation, and they’d decided that the meeting with Lady Zillah now needed to be their top priority. Stina had hailed the Shade Mentor as soon as they’d made it back to Calla’s Panakes tree, and Lady Zillah had been her usual intense, uncooperative self. But she’d agreed to have a “brief conversation” with Stina and Wylie the next day if they met her at her office in Mysterium at noon—sharp. And she’d emphasized that it would be brief. Which meant that Wylie and Stina needed to be prepared in order to make the most of their limited time. So Sophie had rushed to her room for a notebook and they’d all gathered under the swaying branches as they brainstormed—with Wynn and Luna trotting around, causing plenty of distractions.

But figuring out what to ask was proving to be more challenging than Sophie had expected.

The problem was, everything they’d discovered seemed so abstract.

So… magsidian was made of shadowflux—at least partially. And the dwarves who’d joined the Neverseen had stolen some pieces of the rare stone before they left. And for some reason, the rest of the dwarves couldn’t feel any trace of those shards the way they could with other magsidian, so they had no way of finding or recovering them.

But what did any of that actually mean?

And what did it have to do with Tam?

Nubiti hadn’t seemed to know, and was very reluctant to say any more about it than she already had.

And since there was no guarantee that Lady Zillah would know much either, they were trying to come up with a mix of specific and broad questions, hoping that something might help them figure out what to do with this new information.

So far, including the question that Biana had just added, they had:

Did Lady Zillah know about the connection between shadowflux and magsidian?

Are there any other physical manifestations of shadowflux that they should be aware of?

What happens if magsidian comes into contact with shadowflux?

Would any of the Shade skills that Tam had learned be more dangerous around magsidian?

Could magsidian weaken Tam’s ability if it were cut the right way?

“Do you think we should ask either the Council or the dwarves to give Lady Zillah a piece of magsidian to experiment with?” Wylie asked after Sophie had finished reading their list out loud again.

“Probably,” Sophie told him. “But I don’t know if it’ll do much good. She knows a lot about shadowflux, but she can’t call for it or control it herself.”

Still, that was why Sophie had already taken the time to talk to Grady, hail Councillor Oralie, and have Flori tell Mr. Forkle what they’d learned from Nubiti. And they’d all wondered the same thing Sophie had—the one question she’d managed to ask Nubiti before she disappeared underground again: Why had Nubiti waited so long to tell anyone about this?

Apparently, that had been King Enki’s decision.

Nubiti had only made the connection between magsidian and shadowflux a couple of days earlier, when she’d overheard Mr. Forkle sharing his fears about Tam and the dwarven city with Sophie. And she’d gone straight to her king to see what he wanted her to do. But he’d disagreed that there was any cause for concern. He felt that the cuts they’d made to repair the damage in their existing magsidian network had not only fixed the sabotage, but had enhanced their overall security so well that it more than addressed any potential threats that might arise from the stone’s origin. So the last thing he wanted was to have the elves demanding explanations for how the system worked. He preferred to keep that information classified.

He’d actually ordered Nubiti not to share her theories with anyone in the Lost Cities. And she’d been trying her best to follow that order—but she was also worried that King Enki had spent too long underground, away from the dangers thriving on the planet’s surface, and was severely underestimating their enemies. So she’d decided that if any elves reached out to her, she’d lead them to the information. That way she wasn’t disobeying, but she was still passing along a warning in case the connection between shadowflux and magsidian was significant. And while Nubiti hadn’t asked Sophie to cover for her whenever she and her friends met with King Enki, she’d looked immeasurably relieved when Sophie had promised to make it seem like they’d made the discovery on their own—since, in a way, they had.

“Anyone have anything else to add?” Sophie asked, scanning their list again and wishing it were longer.

“I think that covers it pretty well,” Dex assured her. “Especially since her answers will probably make them come up with additional questions while they’re there.”

“And you don’t think we should all go?” Sophie had to ask.

When they’d decided to split up for the meeting, the conversation hadn’t felt nearly as important.

“Ugh, don’t go getting all ‘I have to be a part of everything’ now,” Stina grumbled.

“This isn’t about me,” Sophie insisted. “I just think it might be good to have all of us there, since any of us could catch something the others don’t.”

“Eh, I think that’ll freak Lady Zillah out,” Stina argued. “You heard her—she already sounded super suspicious. And I can’t really blame her for that. It’s gotta be weird having your only prodigy working with the enemy—”

“Tam’s not working with them,” Biana interrupted. “He’s basically their prisoner.”