Flashback ( PDFDrive )

Tarina shook her head. “It would be nothing more than an empty
nest—though I believe it was destroyed.”
“You believe,” Sophie emphasized.
“Yes, Sophie. Not every detail about everything gets shared with
me. But I searched for the hive today while we were at Everglen. It
used to be near the lake. And I couldn’t find a single trace of it.”
The words should’ve made Sophie feel better.
But she didn’t like coincidences. And it felt very coincidental
knowing that Alvar was back at Everglen under somewhat suspicious
circumstances while Vespera was now free—especially since it wasn’t
that big of a stretch to think that Vespera might’ve known about
Luzia’s alliance, or at least suspected it. Luzia likely used illusions that
Vespera designed to hide the hive.
Sophie also didn’t love knowing that the whole time Tarina had
been helping search Everglen, she’d had her own secret agenda—or
that she hid that agenda so perfectly.
Tarina was smooth.
Maybe a little too smooth.
“We need to tell the Council,” Sophie decided. “Just to be safe. I bet
it would get them to move Alvar.”
Tarina grabbed her wrist, like she was afraid Sophie was going to
race straight to Eternalia. “You can’t do that, Sophie. Not only would
you be breaching the alliance you just made with me—but you’d be
dragging Luzia into all kinds of trouble. And you’d be endangering the
lives of thousands of unhatched babies—all to address some minor
worry that you have no evidence to support.”
Sophie sighed. “Fine. Then we need to at least tell Grizel—”