Mirrored Conflicts (a Sokeefe story)

Chapter 4: Protecting

"You're telling me it just exploded? Out of nowhere?" Magnate Leto checked.

"Yeah. I was in there, waiting for you, since you had presumably sent me a note to meet you there," Sophie explained. For some reason she didn't want to tell Magnate Leto about Keefe. She knew she should say something about the boy who was supposed to be her nemesis, and she definitely wasn't happy at him for somehow getting her to let her guard down before exploding the place.

But she could tell that Keefe wasn't really a bad person. He was only doing what he was born to do. Sophie understood that better than anyone.

And she had a feeling Magnate Leto wouldn't see it that way.

So she kept quiet about that part.

"The explosive must have been planted then," Sandor reasoned. "Specifically for Sophie, since they left a note telling her to go to the site that would soon blow up. The Neverseen want to kill her, and very nearly succeeded."

"Yet there's hardly a scratch on her," Magnate Leto noted. "And that room was full of a lot of glass."

Sophie shrugged, though she could feel his skepticism even before he transmitted to her telepathically: I know you aren't telling me something.

I'm not, Sophie admitted. Telling at least part of the truth might make it easier to make her story believable, assuming he wasn't planning on violating the rules of telepathy—which was a very big assumption. I just didn't want to say the rest with Sandor here. Since he's so protective.

Magnate Leto turned to her goblin bodyguard. "You should enhance security at Havenfield, just in case. Now that we know they're targeting Sophie, we can't be too careful."

He waited for Sandor to leave before turning back to Sophie. "It really would be better for you to let him know everything, Sophie. But for now, since I want you to tell me the truth, he doesn't have to know, okay?"

Sophie sighed, rapidly thinking of something to say that was partially true enough to make the story believable without revealing that she kinda sorta met up with her nemesis. "There wasn't anyone there when I arrived, but there was a Neverseen cloak on your chair and a handwritten note. Someone was sent to blow up the place, but didn't think it would be right to actually hurt me —they just wanted to hit the Council somewhere it hurt. They told me to use their cloak to protect myself from the glass, which is why I'm not that hurt."

"That doesn't make any sense though. There was more in that note you mentioned, wasn't there?" Magnate Leto said.

Sophie was relieved he'd at least bought that part. "What do you mean?"

"If they didn't want to hurt you—which I find really doubtful, by the way—they at least wanted to contact you, since they left a note to make sure you'd be there, and another message to read once you arrived."

Sophie sighed. Okay, maybe she could vaguely mention Keefe's existence. "The note said something about finally wanting to say something to their nemesis after so long."

She held her breath.

Magnate Leto's lips pressed into a line. "So it's true. They made their own Moonlark."

"You knew?"

"The signs were there, and we were starting to suspect. I'm not surprised this person is behind this, either—the reason I wasn't in my office was because someone put gremlins in the level three lockers. If that kind of distraction isn't the work of a teenager, I don't know what is." He sighed. "I thought perhaps there were simply young people working with the Neverseen, since you and your friends are with the Black Swan—but it turns out we were right. And until we know how dangerous your 'nemesis' is, and what his abilities are, you need to promise me you will be very careful."

"I will," Sophie promised.

"I don't believe you. I don't even know why I asked for your word." He cracked a smile. "But if you understand the gravity of the situation, you really will be careful—and no sneaking off anywhere without Sandor. Do you understand?"

"I do. I get why this makes things dangerous," Sophie said, though inside her head a million thoughts were racing around. She did know his abilities, or some of them at least, and he did seem very powerful. His existence diminished the edge that Sophie gave the Black Swan, and if he was like her... "We have a lot to fight against."

Did his presence make her less important, or more important than ever?

When she arrived at Havenfield, Grady and Edaline had clearly heard about the explosion at Foxfire, because the huge they attacked her with were tight enough to strangle her. "I need to breathe," Sophie laughed as they pulled away.

"Sophie, when we heard what happened, we were so worried," Edaline said, and Sophie could tell. She was a mess.

"All we heard at first was that the Neverseen attacked Foxfire, and then Magnate Leto contacted us," Grady added. "I can't believe someone made an attempt on your life so directly like this. It makes me never want to let you out of the house again."

"Yeah, about that..."

"If you're about to tell us we can't keep you home because you have a dangerous plan—" Grady began, but Sophie shook her head quickly.

"No, it's not that. It's just that... the attack really wasn't targeted at me. Whoever planted that explosive wanted to protect me from the damage." Sophie related she same half-true story she'd told Magnate Leto.

"That doesn't make sense. Why would someone working for the enemy want to protect you?" Edaline wondered—and it was a good question.

Sophie had actually been wondering about that, too.

"Respect, I think. Supposedly, he and I are... more personally enemies than just the Neverseen and the Black Swan." Reluctantly, Sophie explained what Magnate Leto had said about the very little they knew about the Neverseen's version of her, and reiterated her lie about him addressing her as his nemesis in the note he left her.

"Then you'd think he'd want you dead even more," Grady pointed out.

"Not necessarily. Maybe he thinks it's anti-climactic that way. He's around my age. He's not necessarily going to make the most effective decisions."

Grady and Edaline seemed to understand this, and for once, Sophie was grateful that they believed teenagers had a tendency to make bad choices. "Besides... he was born into his situation, too," Sophie ventured. "So it's possible he's not a completely evil person."

"That's a dangerous road to go down, Sophie," Grady warned. "If you think he might be 'redeemable,' or open to switching sides, or..."

"I don't," Sophie quickly lied. "Don't worry about it, really. I'm just... considering different reasons he might have chosen to keep me safe."

Besides, all these conversations were placing quite a lot of emphasis on the fact that he'd saved her and not enough on the fact that he'd used his powers on her to keep her from screaming before blowing up the room she was in and leaping away. But she'd chosen not to say anything about that.

She hadn't even told them he'd been there at all.

Why was she protecting him?

(She wondered if he was thinking the same thing about her.)

"I'm not going to let you get hurt," she whispered, echoing his words to her back in Magnate Leto's office right before he blew the place up—and realizing she meant them right back.