Sacrifices

Chapter Twenty-nine

Could this symbol mean 'a'? Sophie wondered as she pored over the complex symbols that Fitz had asked her to help him decipher.

If that was 'a', and the other three symbols she was guessing were 'e', 'i' and 's'...

Then that phrase was -a-- -ise-a

Which... those two symbols matched! If that symbol was 'l'...

La-- -isela

She couldn't pass off the chance that it seriously read Lady Gisela. So if that was D and Y... she slowly started deciphering the rest of the paper, using the letters she'd already found to decipher the others. She scribbled the hidden message down but didn't get it. Why would they be talking about this?

𝒟𝒶𝓇𝓀 𝒽𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓉𝓈 - 𝐿𝒶𝒹𝓎 𝒢𝒾𝓈𝑒𝓁𝒶 𝒾𝓈 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹𝓎. 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝑀𝑜𝑜𝓃𝓁𝒶𝓇𝓀 𝒾𝓈 𝓊𝓃𝒹𝑒𝓇 𝒸𝑜𝓃𝓉𝓇𝑜𝓁. 𝒩𝑜𝓉𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒽𝒶𝓈 𝑔𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝑜𝒻 𝓅𝓁𝒶𝓃. 𝐼𝓉 𝒽𝒶𝓈 𝒷𝑒𝑒𝓃 𝒾𝓂𝓅𝓁𝒶𝓃𝓉𝑒𝒹.

Sophie mumbled to herself the message, over and over. "Dark hearts - Lady Gisela is ready. The Moonlark is under control. Nothing has gone out of plan. It has been implanted." Over and over.

Then she flipped it. There was another page!

She read it aloud, decoding it as she went. "Sending Ruy to collect the potion. In a few days, our poor Moonlark will be breathing fire."

She looked horrified. "So Fitz was right! They gave me Pyrokinesis! But... how? And... in a few days? But this is an old letter..."

She flipped it, over and over, and found a date.

The 5th of October exactly seventeen years ago.

Around the time the Black Swan had been developing her.

And they'd implanted Pyrokinesis somehow?

Were there any more pages? She needed -

The first page peeled, revealing a hidden one underneath.

Her heart quickened as she read it out loud, "The Moonlark will have her ability triggered when she is exposed to Pyrokinesis." She frowned. "No, that can't be. I've been with Marella and Fintan."

Did that say Pyrokinesis?

Or did that say...

Elysian?

What was Elysian?

And why were they using it to trigger her Pyrokinesis?

Unless...

Elysian was a person?

And... he or she would trigger her ability?

"But I don't want to be a Pyrokinetic," Sophie muttered. "So I just have to pretend I never read this? What's Elysian? And... why..."

Unless... they had known they would lose Fintan, and they needed a replacement. That made sense. They needed a new Pyrokinetic, and they hadn't known that Marella would manifest as one.

But now that she had, wouldn't they simply take Marella instead of exposing her to this Elysian?

"Miss Foster," Sandor said, "Mr Vacker is here."

"Let him in," said Sophie, although she had no idea what she was going to say to Fitz.

But it wasn't Fitz. It was Alden. Which made Sophie kind of which Sandor would just call them by first names.

"Something happened, Sophie?" he asked. "Fitz told me about the decoding - you didn't happen to succeed in deciphering it, did you?"

Sophie handed her deciphered version to him.

"This is only the first page," Alden pointed out.

"You can't tell what the code is by looking at that?"

"No. It doesn't have individual characters, you see? It's joined here and here and..."

Sophie drew several lines. "These are each one character. That one's A, and this one is E, and I." She pointed out the rest and named them.

"I think they're exposing me to someone called Elysian. And is Dark Hearts some sort of swear word?"

Alden laughed. "No, there's nothing wrong with dark hearts. It's the fact that there's a hyphen after that. It basically says 'Dear Dark Hearts', like that's a name."

That... was true. Dark Hearts could be someone's name or code name. But it didn't sound like anyone she knew. Then again, the Neverseen had many members they didn't know, particularly on Lady Gisela's side.

"Thanks," Sophie mumbled, turning back to her homework.

"Oh, there aren't any more pages? You mean Fitz didn't give you all of them?"

Sophie sat bolt upright. "There were more?"

"Ha, ha, of course there were more, Sophie, there were like ten of them. And you found a hidden page so that makes eleven. Do you want me to go back and ask Fitz for the others?"

She was dying for answers, so she gave him a quick yes and he light leaped away, returning a short while later with the other eight pages.

She managed to get them in order. The first to fourth began with her two pages.

It began with:

'Dark hearts - Lady Gisela is ready. The Moonlark is under control. Nothing has gone out of plan. It has been implanted.

Sending Ruy to collect the potion. In a few days, our poor Moonlark will be breathing fire.

The Moonlark will have her ability triggered when she is exposed to Elysian.

Almost ready back here. The concoction is still in the midst of being approved by the Council. They really are nuts - poison and DNA-altering solutions under their noses, and they still think it's a cough potion. Hopefully they don't get Kesler Dizznee to check it because otherwise we're done for.

Approved - we've got Council approval! Sabotaging Project Moonlark is underway.'

But then the code changed. And she couldn't read it anymore. Alden saw her sigh.

"I guess it wasn't anything helpful?" he asked.

"No, I just got to the helpful part! But then they changed their code."

"Aaaaaaand I knew it," Alden said unhappily. "They never make our job easy. But there's no reason to worry about this, Sophie. The Neverseen don't know we have this, so we've got quite a bit of time to decipher it."

"And quite a few headaches," Sophie pouted. Alden gave her a wry smile.

"A few headaches are a small price to pay for information, don't you think?"

"You're not the one with the headache," Sophie grumbled.

"Do you want me to tell Fitz what you've found? Or... you want to tell him in person? By the way, is something going on between you?"

He had utterly failed to sound as though he didn't care, but Sophie didn't mind answering the question. Fitz deserved to be blabbed on after he had lied to her and broken his promise.

"Sure. He hid these from me after he promised me to keep no more secrets. Sure, Magnate Leto asked him to, but so what?"

"Sophie..."

"I'll tell Fitz myself." Her lips curled into a wicked smile. "When I feel like it."

Alden didn't seem to find it worth arguing about, and with a heavy sigh, he light leaped away.