Stina shrugged. “Just because he’s not doing it by choice doesn’t mean he’s not still helping them. And hey—I’m not judging. I’d probably make the same decision if the Neverseen were threatening my parents. But that doesn’t change the fact that every time he cooperates, he’s technically contributing to their plans. And I’m sure Lady Zillah’s not happy that the stuff she taught Tam might be used to hurt someone—or lots of someones, depending on what the Neverseen are getting ready for. So I’m betting she’s a little nervous to answer questions about Tam’s lessons. And if five of us show up when she’s only agreed to meet with two of us, I think she’ll freak out and refuse to cooperate.”

“Stina’s right,” Biana agreed, crinkling her nose like those words pained her a little. “I think we should let her and Wylie handle this. If we feel like they missed something, we can always ask for another meeting—and if Lady Zillah won’t agree, we’ll just show up at her office and not leave until she answers our questions.”

“I guess.” Sophie studied the questions one more time to make sure her photographic memory had completely captured them before she tore the page out of her notebook and offered it to Wylie. “You’re meeting briefly with Lady Zillah at noon, right? Then I’m going to hail you guys at one for an update—and I want to know everything she said. Take notes if you don’t think you’ll be able to remember it all.”

She wouldn’t let go of the paper until he nodded—even when Stina mumbled something about bossy Droolmonsters.

“I’m assuming you’ll update Dex and me after that?” Biana asked.

“Of course,” Sophie promised.

“Good. And I’ll hail Bronte as soon as I’m home to see if I can set up a meeting—but I doubt he’ll agree to anything right away. And I should probably update my dad about some of this and see if he has any thoughts or advice—or, wait, am I allowed to do that? Is all of our team information classified?”

“From the general populace, yes. But Alden’s an Emissary with the highest level of clearance, so it won’t be a problem,” Grady told her, making all of them jump—and making Sophie wonder how long he’d been eavesdropping.

Apparently long enough for Grady to also know to ask, “Why do you need to meet with Councillor Bronte?”

Biana’s eyes darted to Sophie, and Sophie gave the tiniest possible head shake.

Grady and Edaline were being way cooler about the search for her biological parents than Sophie had ever expected them to be. But she had a feeling the Bronte theory might be a bit too… head-explode-y, given the implications. So it seemed better to wait until she had confirmation before she hit them with that kind of bombshell.

Plus… she really didn’t want to have to live through any more Bronte-related conversations. She’d already had enough of those to last two lifetimes.

“I wanted to see if he knows when we’ll be announcing our appointment as Regents,” Biana told Grady—which sounded like a perfectly legitimate explanation to Sophie.

But Grady did not look convinced.

Sophie was bracing for him to call them out when Dex jumped in. “So does that mean I can’t tell my parents about anything we’re working on?” he asked. “Since they’re not Emissaries?”

“If you were a normal Regent, the answer would be yes,” Grady admitted. “But your age might change things. Your family may have a right to know at least a little about what you’re investigating, in case it puts you in danger. So you should probably double-check with the Council.”

“What about the Black Swan?” Wylie wondered. “The Council must assume I’m going to tell Tiergan.”

“Probably. But it can’t hurt to verify,” Grady suggested. “They may want all communication with the Black Swan to funnel through Mr. Forkle.”

“I guess I can ask,” Wylie said, shoving some Panakes blossoms into his pocket as he stood and pulled out his home crystal. Stina and Biana did the same, right down to collecting some of the healing flowers to take with them—which was smart, considering how many lives the Panakes blossoms had saved.

But Dex stayed seated in the soft grass, and it was clear that he was lingering for a reason.

Sophie had no idea what he needed, but for the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel any awkward worry about it. Even when Biana noticed—and frowned a little—Sophie just smiled and asked her to let Fitz know she’d hail him as soon as she caught up on a few other things.

And once Biana had leaped away—and Grady had wandered off to help the gnomes with the gorgodon feeding—Sophie almost wanted to hug Dex again, so they could marvel at how far their friendship had come.

But that probably would’ve been a little weird.

Plus, she didn’t want to distract him from whatever he’d stayed there to tell her.

“So what’s up?” she asked as Dex stood and offered a hand.

“I checked in with Keefe this morning,” he said, helping her to her feet, “to find out when he wanted to go to the Forbidden Cities so I could set up the cameras to watch for that guy he remembered. But Ro started shouting in the background about chaining him to a porch swing. So he said I needed to talk to you, and then he launched into this long speech about how we both needed to bring him back a bunch of biscuits to apologize for ditching him—at least that’s what I think he said. There was a lot of talk about Jammie Dodgers and Jaffa Cakes and Digestives—no idea what those are. But he said you’d know—or that you should, and if you didn’t, I needed to tell you to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Uh, except I grew up in America, not England,” Sophie argued, even though she actually had heard of a few of those cookies—biscuits—whatever she was supposed to call them. But she doubted Dex cared about human regional snack variations. So she focused on the actual important subject. “When do you want to go?”

He shrugged. “Totally up to you. I know we have a ton going on.”

“We do. But Keefe’s missing memories are super important too. So whenever you’re ready, we should get moving on that.”

“I’m ready,” Dex assured her. “I know exactly what I need to do. I just need to get there. We could seriously go now if you wanted.”

“Now?” Sophie repeated. “You don’t need any tools or—”

“Nope, got all the tools I need right here.” He held out his hands, wiggling his fingers with a proud grin. “And it shouldn’t take me long either. Five to ten minutes, tops.”

“I’m going to interrupt right there,” Sandor said, stalking over with his hand gripping his sword. “Because I know what you’re thinking. And no.”

“I wasn’t—” Sophie tried to argue, but Sandor shook his head.

“Yes, you were. And I repeat: no.”

“I agree,” Lovise added. “No one is going to any Forbidden Cities right now. Don’t even think about it.”

Sophie hadn’t been—at least not seriously.

But… now that they were making her really consider it, she had to ask, “Why not?”