Page 25 of Heart of Thieves

The bed is still rumpled, the way it was when I last saw it, the orchids nodding in the golden sunlight, and Nic’s old hoop leaning against the wall next to a pile of aerial silks.

Movement draws my gaze to a shape on the other side of Nic’s bed.

A cloaked stranger crouches next to the mattress. They shove their hand beneath to feel around between springs before sighing and turning to riffle through the nightstand drawers. I slip closer, trying to peek around their hood, when they gasp, pulling out the leather bag full of old, worn playing dice I myself once found in the same drawer.

A slick of ice clamps around my heart.

Last time I entered this room and stole a tawdry, unassuming die, it turned out to be one of Nic’s secrets disguised to look unremarkable. Could this bag be another set he might have left behind on accident?

The intruder raises their hand to toss the dice onto the bed.

I react before I can even think, relinquishing my grasp on noncorporeality and wresting them from their hand. My heart roars in my ears, but I don’t allow myself to consider why it matters to me if this person invades Nic’s privacy.

The intruder grunts, swinging a fist into my jaw. I hook a leg behind their knees, slamming them onto the bed, pinning them beneath me.

Their hood falls away, and I blink, taking in the familiar features.

“Lola?” The stranger’s eyes widen. “What the depths are you doing here?”

Her face registers, and a laugh bubbles out of me. I scramble off, yanking her upright so I can throw both arms around her shoulders. “Estelle!”

CHAPTER NINE

ENZO

Panic yanks me out of a deep, terrified slumber. I jolt upright.

I’m in my room in the Brig. I was asleep. Something woke me.

I shove my blanket off and push to my feet. I was having the nightmare again. The one that’s less a dream and more a memory of those first weeks after the curse took hold and deprived me of everything that made me human. It’s been months since the last time it made an appearance.

But the panic that roused me wasn’t mine. It was Lola’s.

I try to focus on the emotions coming from her, but my mind is still whirring with the horrible nightmare, my brain muddied with the past.

As far as I can tell, Lola isn’t panicking anymore. Perhaps she, too, was dreaming. Crossing to my desk, I pull out my pocket watch. It’s nearly nine in the morning—much earlier than my typical noon wake-up time—but the idea of going back to sleep and returning to my nightmare has me yanking on my shoes and dashing to the kitchen.

The bitter aroma of freshly brewed coffee soothes my nerves, and I cross directly to where a percolator bubbles over a small cookfire.

“It’s probably steeped long enough,” Arden says, oversize limbs poking out of one of our leather chairs like pins in a cushion. “Would you bring me a cup?”

“ ’Course.” I carefully remove the percolator from the heat and carry it to the stone ledge we use as a countertop—the detail that prompted me to designate this part of the Brig’s cavernous system of old lava ducts as the kitchen. (Well, that, and the fact that the ceiling features one of the vents from the original volcano that reaches all the way above the surface of the ocean. Perfect chimney for cookfire smoke.)

“We really need to get Isla to tinker somewhere else,” I say, pushing her assortment of car parts out of the way so I can set the percolator onto the counter. “Did she dismantle an entire engine here?”

“I think two, actually,” Arden says with a chuckle.

After handing him his mug—black, the disgusting way he prefers it—I dump a healthy measure of sugar into my own, then fish into a small hole in the wall we’ve insulated as a makeshift icebox for a jar of cream, which I pour into my cup until my coffee reaches the perfect golden color.

With a sigh, I settle onto the armchair I personally lifted from the mayor’s house. “Couldn’t sleep?” I ask. “Soren’s snoring keep you up again?”

Arden smirks, sipping at the steaming drink. “I was worrying.”

I furrow my brow, as though puzzled. “You? But you never worry.”

He gives me a facetious glare, then chucks a pillow at me, which I block with a kick.

“What’s giving you stomach ulcers this time?” I tease, leaning back into my chair.