UNLOCKED, kotlc

Chapter 55

Sophie lost track of time.

All she could hear was darkness, crashing into her head, pulling her down, pushing her up against nothing, just nothingness for the rest of eternity.  Her mind replayed every single moment that Keefe had smirked at her and sent those beautiful cool breezes through her mind...

Sophie would give anything, everything for at least one sound of his voice.

She must've looked into his ice blue eyes, drained of its energy for minutes. Hours, even.

But Sophie was too heartbroken to cry.  Every single moment she replayed shattered one bit of her heart, sent it flying to some place she knew she could never reach without Keefe...

And now she had no idea what was worse.

Telling her friends about how he died...

Or admitting it to herself.

__________

"Who is that?" Biana whispered, so quietly that Sophie could barely hear it as she stumbled up the hill.

She cringed as Biana pointed to Keefe's body  a few feet down the slope, and could only manage the tiniest nod to confirm their horrifying suspicion.

For a second, everyone just stared into nothingness, maybe trying to restrain tears like she was, or trying to imagine how terribly dreary life would be without his jokes and his pranks- like she also was -but thinking about it just made her...

"What happened to Lady Gisela? And Adela?" Sophie said, clearing her throat. They'd mourn later- right now they still had a job to do.

"I.. don't know," Fitz admitted. "I think they saw Keefe-" his voice cracked "-you know, and then they looked a little horrified that he never got to complete his legacy or whatever."

Sophie had the not-so-strange urge to find Lady Gisela and kill her for what she'd done to Keefe...

Or what Sophie had done.

That was maybe what made it the worst.  It was thinking, okay, if I had never been alive, would he end up dead?

And the answer was "no" on several different levels.

The Neverseen wouldn't be created if not for Sophie, seeing as Adela created it out of vengeance for her brothers who had messed up her DNA. Then Lady Gisela had joined as well... and maybe Keefe wouldn't come if he hadn't been friends with her in the first place.

And that blast of... whatever it was that she'd done to get the shadowflux out of her head... was that what had killed him? Or had it been something else?

Because if it had been her, she had no idea how she was going to be able to live with herself.

__________

Sophie had dreamed of Keefe's Wanderling.

Maybe not dreamed, but had nightmares.  They were always in constant mortal danger that Sophie was always, always paranoid that somebody was going to...

And the deaths of Calla and Mr. Forkle were still too fresh in her mind to be able to handle another- especially of one so significant -but she had to stay strong.

Because she knew that that's what Keefe would have wanted her to do.

She remembered Keefe talking about his Wanderling, all those weeks that seemed like years ago.  "You'll be like 'wow! I didn't know a Wanderling could have such awesome hair!' And then you'll all sit under my leaves and write poems about my general awesomeness."

Just remembering his voice made her cry, but she forced herself to look forward, anywhere but all the people around her giving her sympathetic looks.

She didn't have time for sympathy anymore.

It was time for a change.

Time to fight back.

If the Neverseen could do this to him, Sophie would do anything, everything to get back at them because.. because........

And then the seven words that changed everything, spoken in her mind, so terrifyingly familiar:

I know how to bring him back.