Exile

Dex’s memory convinces Sophie that the Black Swan can’t be murderers. She privately wonders if the compass charm is a clue to help clear their name. Dex is working on a gadget to transmit his thoughts technologically. Sophie prods him to accept technopathy training, but he’s adamant that another ability will manifest.

Sophie is horrified to learn that she’ll have to wear a mastodon costume for the Opening Ceremonies at school. Each grade level wears the costume of an animal that represents what they’re meant to learn that year and performs choreography demonstrating it. At the rehearsal, Dex’s presence eases Sophie’s anxiety. A spotlight flashes in her eyes, sparking a headache, and she almost collapses. Stina mocks her, prompting an exchange of insults with Sophie’s friends. Marella notes that Stina’s father was expelled to Exillium, where the talentless are educated. After Stina leaves, Marella reveals that Timkin hides, never having manifested an ability. Sophie comforts Dex, whose father also never manifested an ability. Later, she’s anxious when she sees her schedule and remembers that Bronte will be mentoring her in inflicting and Fitz will be in her telepathy sessions.

Dex is annoyed that Sophie will share a session with Fitz. Mentoring sessions are typically one-on-one. Sophie will be in polyglot training with the elite levels in the Silver Tower, reminding her of her bad experiences as a 12-year-old senior in the human world. In addition, she worries about running into Prentice’s son, Wylie.

After school, she goes to Biana’s house, and they play base quest against Keefe and Fitz. Everyone wants her on their team until she insists they play without abilities, since her telepathy gives her an unfair advantage. While chasing Keefe and Fitz back to base, she gives her legs a mental boost and jumps, soaring into the air and beginning to drop too quickly back down.

She lands high up in the trees. When the branch she’s clinging to breaks, Fitz dramatically saves her, prompting “flutters” in Sophie’s heart. Keefe and the others are amazed that Sophie flew and momentarily hid in the light, but Sophie didn’t do so intentionally. Keefe teases her for being accident prone and is jealous of her telepathic conversations with Fitz.

Later, she has a private conversation with Alden. He’s amazed by the distance she was able to fly. He’s studying moonlarks, hoping they’ll give him some insights into the Black Swan. Sophie notices that he looks tired, and he admits their “world is changing” (121). Her kidnapping unsettled the elves, but Silveny brought hope. Sophie must get her ready as soon as possible. Sophie shows Alden her charm bracelet. He’s intrigued but reveals nothing about what it might mean. Sophie asks if he believes the Black Swan killed Jolie.

Alden admits he doesn’t know. Sophie doesn’t believe it and wonders if the compass charm is a clue that can lead her to clear their name. Alden agrees this is possible, but when Sophie suggests probing Prentice’s mind, Alden refuses. It’s too dangerous: “A broken mind cannot be probed” (123, italics in original).

They join the others for a bonfire that is beautiful but makes Sophie remember being burned. Fitz privately transmits that a bonfire may not have been the best thing to invite her to. She winces at the loudness of his voice in her head, and he blushes, suggesting that Tiergan may help them figure out why. Fitz says that joint lessons were his father’s idea to understand why he can transmit to Sophie. Keefe interrupts them to insist they converse out loud, but Fitz notices when the sparks prompt a headache for Sophie and transmits that she should tell Elwin. She brushes off the headache but privately wonders if something is wrong.

Sophie wakes from a nightmare in a panic after Silveny transmits an image of black-cloaked figures outside her enclosure. Sandor investigates and finds nothing amiss. Edaline suggests that Silveny had a nightmare.

Throughout the night, Silveny sends Sophie panicked pleas for freedom. At breakfast the next morning, Grady asks Sophie to calm Silveny while they fortify her enclosure. She wonders if it would be better to free her, but Grady insists that she’s safer in captivity and that their job is to find out what she needs. Sophie replies that Silveny needs to be free, but Grady says that is what she wants, not what she needs. Sophie concedes that Grady may be right, but robbing Silveny of her freedom means they must ensure her safety. She investigates the grounds thoroughly and finds a set of footprints at the tree line.

Sandor reveals that the footprints carry no scent then admits that a means exists to trick a goblin’s senses but that very few know how to do it, and the procedure is complicated. Edaline and Grady debate who could be responsible, noting that the intruders came for Silveny, not Sophie, so it seem unlikely that it was the Black Swan. Sophie feels an urgent need to prepare Silveny for the sanctuary, where she’ll be secure.

Alden asks Sophie to accompany him on a difficult, classified assignment. No one can know where they’re going, including Sandor, and they leap to a hot, empty, windy, desert, “the Gateway to Exile” (137), where Sophie pledged never to go and where Prentice is held. Alden explains that she must close her eyes and hold her breath for the next part of their journey. He grips her tightly as they’re swallowed into quicksand.

After a terrifying free fall through darkness and sand, they arrive in a round cavern. A dwarf appears out of the sand to give them water and then disappears. They’ve reached the entrance to Exile. The journey involves several steps, crystals, and a willingness to endure discomfort. Few people know where it is, and the crystals required to reach it were given to the 12 Councillors when they signed their treaty with the dwarves. The crystals enable the dwarves to detect the presence of visitors. Anyone who arrives uninvited will be trapped.

Alden asks if the place triggers any memories, but it doesn’t feel familiar to Sophie. He believes the Black Swan intended them to come here. They’ve come to see Fintan, whom Sophie accused of setting the Everblaze and who claimed to be innocent. Sophie is surprised to learn that he’s in Exile, as was Alden when the decision was made to move him, but he’ll reveal nothing further until after they descend a long stairway into darkness, which may bring her closer to the truth about her past.

They descend to the center of the earth because Exile, “the prison for all the worlds” had to be hard to find (150, italics in original). Alden reveals that the Council ordered him to perform a “memory break” on Fintan, the first one on an Ancient mind, since he continues to hide what he knows. Alden brought Sophie because when he travels inside Fintan’s mind to perform the break, he’ll need a guide to ensure his return. Sophie is there to be his guide. He believes that the compass charm was intended to communicate that Sophie should be Alden’s guide.

Sophie is shocked and reticent, fearing she’s not strong enough for the task and worried about something going wrong. Alden assures her that she’s the strongest Telepath in their world. When they reach the bottom, a dwarf, Krikor, leads them to Fintan through corridors echoing with wails of madness.

Alden urges Fintan to reveal what he knows, but Fintan is resigned, saying a life without fire “isn’t worth living” and “[s]ome secrets are worth protecting” (153). He tells Alden that their world is broken. The Council breaks the minds of or imprisons anyone who points out the problems, while they ruin lives by banning talents and preventing those who hold them from developing them. He warns Alden that rebellions are all-consuming, adding that Alden is choosing the wrong side.

Sophie feels sympathy for Fintan’s argument, but Alden ends the conversation and asks Sophie if she’s ready. Fintan warns that he knows how to guard his secrets. Alden soothes Sophie’s fears and tells her to maintain physical contact with him, and then they mentally connect. Just as she wonders how she’ll know when the break begins, Alden’s mind turns cold, and Fintan starts screaming.

Through her connection with Alden, Sophie witnesses Fintan’s memory of calling fire to the earth via five other elves, losing control over it, and leaping away while the five other elves burned to death. The memory then shatters. Alden transmits to Sophie that Fintan is destroying his own memories to prevent Alden from finding them. He needs her to boost his power with her mind. She uses a mental push that reveals a hidden memory.

She sees Fintan help an elf call down Everblaze from the sky, but the elf’s face is blurred. Fintan sends heat up Alden’s arm, burning him and Sophie. The scene shatters, and memories collapse, causing chaos inside his mind. Sophie mentally pulls back but feels Alden slipping away. His wrist slips from her grasp as he slumps to the floor, his head bleeding. Refusing to panic, she finds a quiet nook inside his mind and fills it with images of his loved ones, pulling him back.

Alden apologizes to Sophie, admitting he learned nothing. Fintan drew warmth from Alden’s body to burn them. Although Sophie’s mental push broke down Fintan’s defenses, Alden lost concentration when he was burned. By the time he regained it, Fintan’s mind had shattered, making it too dangerous to search further. Alden asks her how she found him, and she explains the nook. He tells her that he never would have made it back without her.

Leaving Krikor to tend to Fintan, who is now drooling and broken, Sophie reflects that Alden must have been wrong about the compass since the Black Swan’s clues always lead to something. She begins noting the prisoners’ names as they pass rows of doors and stops in front of Prentice’s, sure that he’s the answer. He was a Keeper who “knew how to tuck secrets away in unreachable places” (165). Before Alden can stop her, she pushes herself into Prentice’s mind.

At first, she perceives only shadows, and then distorted sounds and images. She travels through his twisted thoughts as panic and pain begin to pull her under, but she pushes through, remembering that she has something to find. She transmits her name into a strand of light that she can wrap her mind around like a lifeline. A black swan emerges from the shadows, and Sophie releases the light, grabbing onto the swan as she falls. She ends up at the feet of a young blonde woman and recognizes Jolie, who says, “We have to trust” and “You have to go,” adding, “Follow the pretty bird across the sky” (169). The swan flaps its wings, calling up shadows that push Sophie up and out of Prentice’s mind and back into her body. Alden shouts at her never to do that again.

Sophie experiences a terrible headache. When it passes, she tells Alden that she thought Prentice might have tucked away a memory for her to find and asks if Prentice could have communicated with her. She doesn’t reveal that she saw Jolie since her presence might mean that she was part of the Black Swan.

Although Alden insists that Prentice is no longer capable of “rational, coherent thoughts,” Sophie asks if a piece of him could be locked away (171). Alden hopes not, since being “trapped forever in constant madness” (172) would be a worse fate. Privately, Sophie believes that some part of Prentice clung to sanity to communicate this message to her. When Alden asks what else she saw, she recalls a face with teal eyes, which she believes were Alden’s, saying, “No reason to worry” (172). Alden says these were his last words to Prentice and then collapses, unconscious.

Sophie transmits a message to Fitz, revealing that she and Alden are in Exile. Fitz has no way to help, so Sophie enters Alden’s mind and fills it with images of loved ones. He finally wakes up, and they return to Everglen, where Fitz and Elwin are waiting. Sophie has faded again.