18 || they know

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"...But like her, we will all rise out from the ashes and destroy you from within."

//

Keefe winced as the light shining on them started burning. It was so hot, he was accumulating sweat without even knowing. He felt like he was going to burn to death.

Then he heard Ruy, "Mother!"

He looked around searching for the Councillors, his Councillor. Clarrette, her small black beach waves flattening into something limp in the devastating heat. Her turquoise eyes flashing towards him, it was like she was pleading with him to get out of it. He kept staring at her as he heard Marella yell at everyone.

"Move! Get out from under the light!"

Keefe was frozen in place though, as what looked to be everyone else too. But then a strong wave knocked everyone out of the way. It was a good thing and then too, because everything went up in flames.

"Is everyone okay?" Then it dawned on him, Councillor Darek used his telekinesis on them.

The Councillor got back groans and moans as a response, but that was better than dead silence--literally.

//

"Okay!" Dex yelled when they were all alone, "I am done with all of this!" In his rage he cleared everything from a table in the office. Ink pots to pens to papers to gadgets crashed to the ground.

"Dex, don't." Cautioned Marella, it was like the two of them knew something that everyone else didn't.

"No, don't tell me what to do Ella." The anger was barely controlled, "They deserve to know the truth, no matter how disappointed they'll be."

Then something clicked in his mind.

Her poker face when she saw him at Slurps and Burps.

They way she was walking on eggshells near them.

How she never reacted to any threats made at herself.

Bronte's words: "Will someone tell me why in the stars a Sophie Foster look alike is in this room?"

Her judgment on his drawings about Sophie Foster.

"She's Sophie, isn't she?" He whispered.

The air was filled with unspoken words and remarks. Ruy was the first to break the tension, "So that was why she was so amused when I asked her who she was...that's why she told me to save you all."

"She told you to save us?" Marella asked quietly.

"Not directly, but she was. All those warnings at dinner, then warning me again and telling me not to be a coward..." He paused, "I just don't understand why she of all people would be with the bad guys."

"To stop a bad guy with a blade, a good guy wields it as well." Biana mumbled, "There is no good or bad, it's just the lesser of two evils. And for her, it's them."

Her eyes went blank, like she was no longer in the room with them. He believed that she was, but she was stuck reliving the past.

"Well that doesn't matter," Fitz seethed, "Hindsight is a bitch and now it's biting me in the ass. How is it that the person who ruined my family is the same person we took in years ago."

He barely finished his sentence before Dex spoke up. Matching Fitz's anger, maybe even more. "I may be pissed at her right now, but none of that is her fault. You may be my friends now, but you weren't all those years ago. You all played Sophie like a violin and thought she'd just be okay when the fiddle somehow managed to stab her in the back."

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