Flashback ( PDFDrive )

She really was getting out of there.
She really was going home.
“Last night,” Elwin told her as she worked her way through the
latest round of medicine.
“I know—you’re almost rid of me! Well . . . until all the house calls.”
He grinned and rumpled her hair before handing her Ella. “Get
some rest. Tomorrow will be a big day.”
Silveny must’ve sensed the change coming too. That night she filled
Sophie’s head with dreams of the two of them soaring over snowy
mountains, chasing the coming dawn on the brightening horizon. It
was peaceful and soothing. But also hopeful. And when the sun rose
around them in the dream world, it felt like a new beginning—and
maybe it was, because when Sophie opened her sleepy eyes on her last
morning in the Healing Center, she was no longer alone.
“Back to your Forkle disguise?” she asked, sitting up to study the
bloated, wrinkled figure sitting on the cot across from her. The
ruckleberries he must’ve consumed had made his body swell, stretch,
and crinkle, until he looked much more like an elderly human than an
elf. And no matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t see any trace of
Magnate Leto.
“I have some errands to run,” he told her. “So I had to switch things
up.”
His voice was back to its familiar raspy wheeze, and Sophie knew
how silly it was to feel her heart swell at the sound. The elf sitting
across from her was technically no different than her slicked-haired
principal.
But this was the voice—and the face—she’d known all her life. The
annoying next-door neighbor who asked too many questions but had