Forbidden ~ after unlocked

Chapter 32 - Sophie

The sound of a chime echoed through the Wanderling Woods, blanketing the trees with a melodic sound.

Sophie felt her stomach twist when she realized it was coming from where all the elves were gathered, signaling everyone to line up to pay their respects.

She glanced at Dex to see he was also looking in the direction of the chime, dread showing painfully in his eyes.

Dex let out a long sigh. "Do you think we should..."

Sophie nodded, her voice barely a whisper. "Probably."

Without another word, they made their way through the wanderling-lined paths. Each step closer to the crowd of elves made the ache in her heart grow deeper. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to face everything again. But some sense had returned to her, making her realize there would probably be more problems if she indeed avoided everything.

After a long few minutes of silence, Dex spoke. "I've still been working on something to help Keefe with his ability."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Dex scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "I don't know if it's going to work though, since there's no way I can really test it. We might not end up needing it anyway."

Sophie knit her eyebrows in confusion. "What do you mean we won't need it?"

"Remember? You and Oralie figured out that all we had to get was shadowflux and sunlight to get rid of Keefe's ability."

"Oh... right." The two elements combined specially would hopefully destroy the stellarlune fueling Keefe's power if the information in Kenric's cache was correct.

Sophie couldn't believe she had forgotten about that. There was just so much chaos recently it hadn't crossed her mind. But now that she thought about it, Sophie still hadn't heard from Oralie about their bottling sunlight dilemma, if it was even possible to do so.

"Yeah well, both of those plans are useless without Keefe," Sophie said.

Silence again for several minutes.

"I was able to set up cameras in a few cities," Dex said. "Like we did for the Ethan dude from Keefe's drawing. Remember that too? But we had to come back early because Keefe was in the New York Times."

Sophie felt like smacking herself. She really needed to stop forgetting about all these important things that had happened.

"Did you find anything through the cameras?"

Dex sighed. "No. We only made it to a few places before we had to return. But... I thought I'd just let you know I'm still watching for him."

Sophie was about to thank him, but they both stopped in their tracks.

They had reached the clearing where everyone was standing, groups of elves everywhere whispering and sobbing quietly.

The reality of it all seemed to rush back in on her, and Sophie had to force herself to take deep breaths to calm down.

She scanned the crowd for any of her friends, but couldn't seem to find them. Sophie knew they were all here: Linh, Tam, Marella... heck, probably even Stina showed up. Grady and Edaline were standing in the long line a little ways off, which grabbed Sophie's attention. She wanted to be with her parents, but also really didn't want to talk to Grady. If she thought about it, the reason for this whole funeral was technically his fault. Sophie didn't care if she was being harsh. If Grady had stopped Keefe from leaving, none of this would have been happening. Edaline caught Sophie's eye, but Sophie looked away quickly.