Page 52 of Heart of Thieves

“I’m not here for apologies.” Her tone is a faraway storm. “I’m here to invite you to a game.”

“A game?” I repeat like a damned fool.

She raises her hand, and tiny tendrils of smoke curl around her fingers, fashioning themselves into a piece of white parchment, which she then holds out for me to take.

Shoving the pistol into my belt, I approach, keeping my eyes on her face as it mists to and fro. And there, I see it again. Though her features are indistinct, the outline of her jaw and the curve of her nose match those of my memories of Lenora, the priestess who once dined with my family and swept into my father’s parish like she was a goddess herself.

But how? And why?

I take the parchment. I saw flyers just like it all over the city tonight falling out of newspaper stands and stuffed into jacket pockets, but I figured it was some kind of advertisement.

It’s a letter. From her.

I scan the words quickly, excitement thrumming through me.

“A game,” I repeat again as I lift my gaze to Nocturne’s, handing the invitation to Soren, who reads with the rest of the Tentacles clustered around him. “Why do you want me to compete?”

“You’re the Thief,” she replies, as though that explains everything. “Think what they’ll say.”

The way she emphasizes “they” doesn’t seem to mean the city or even the world. It’s like she means something grander, something bigger than people. Perhaps history? Perhaps the stars themselves or the demons of the sea?

“You don’t strike me as one to care what anyone thinks of you,” I say, throat dry.

“And you,” she murmurs, “don’t strike me as one to cower in the face of a challenge.”

“I see what you’re doing.” I point a finger at her. “You’re trying to flatter me. I’ll have you know that I am very receptive to flattery.”

“So I hear.”

“This prize,” I continue with a wink. “One magical favor. What are the possibilities?”

She lets out a coy laugh. “I’m sure you’ve done your research.”

Warmth prickles in my cheeks with a sudden awareness of how desperate I must have appeared last night. I hold my jaw, keep my gaze steady. “Many believe you to be the spawn of the goddess of obscurity. But what can you do with such darkness besides”—I quirk a brow— “make it dark?”

The tendrils of smoke curl, moving her closer to me, and she grasps my left hand with fingers like frostbite. My voratium rings glow sharp in contrast to her shadows. She raises her other hand and taps her fingertip to the ring on my thumb. The soullight within extinguishes, its color leeching out until it’s dark as pitch.

“Hey,” I say, “I just refilled that . . .”

But she continues as though she hasn’t heard me, tapping the three rings stacked on my first finger. Each one darkens immediately.

I stare, the protests dying in my throat as she makes her way from finger to finger until all twenty rings are empty. Then she raises her gaze to mine.

“You are full of moonlight.” Her voice is a shadow’s exhale. “I can choke it out.”

My fingers curl instinctively around hers. “You can . . . get rid of my curse?” It comes out a desperate, wretched gasp.

Her hand disintegrates. Then her wrists. Then her forearms. “If you win my game.”

Panic, terror, and desperate hope war within me, keeping me rooted to the spot as the rest of her arms mist away. The smoke at her feet braids up her body, swallowing her into night.

“Consider, Lorenzo,” she whispers. “You will not get another chance like this.”

Ebony envelops her. Lightning crackles within, and the clouds evaporate.

Nocturne is gone.

“Boss . . . ?” Arden says, his voice no more than a croak.