Page 53 of Heart of Thieves

“Go get Lola,” I say. “Get her now.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

LOLA

I’ve barely made it back to my bedroom before Arden is pounding on my door.

“Lola!” he shouts.

“What?” I pull open the door, pretending to be irritated at having my hoop practice interrupted.

“Enzo needs you,” he says breathlessly. “You should have seen it.” His face is still as pale as it was when I glamoured myself rising out of smoke in the other room.

“Seen what?”

“Enzo wants to tell you himself, I imagine.” He motions for me to follow him to the kitchen area, where Enzo and the rest of the Tentacles are all huddled around my invitation on the table.

“Look at this.” Enzo holds out his hand. In his palm is the pile of rings I removed soullight from as Nocturne, still black as midnight.

I fake confusion as shame burns inside me. The Unbreakable Lie curse faintly thrums, more of a crackle in the periphery of my awareness. A warning. Now that we’re both here, I need to be careful.

The memory of pulling his soullight into me is still sharp as ice on my skin. It’s something I realized I could do a few weeks back when I was practicing at the Liar’s Den . . . not only pull soullight out of a piece of voratium, but do so while also simultaneously channeling it into a second piece of voratium like a funnel.

“A bunch of empty rings?” I ask as though I have no idea what he’s going on about.

“They weren’t empty a few minutes ago. Nocturne came.”

“And . . . used your magic?”

“That’s the thing,” he says, eyes dancing. “She didn’t use the magic. She extinguished it.”

Isla hands me the invitation. “And she personally requested we enter this game.”

I pretend to read. “Did she say why?”

Enzo shakes his head. “But she took the magic out of my rings without using it, Lola. Snuffed out the soullight like it was a candle.”

I widen my eyes. “Do you think . . . ?”

“She could be the answer.” Our heart gallops like a death knell. It’s a hope I’ve never felt in him before, one that feels within his grasp. My stomach sinks.

I shouldn’t give a damn what my lies do to him. He deceived me for four years, and he’s still doing it. Still holding me prisoner and claiming to love me at the same time.

The Unbreakable Lie prickles as my heart rate rachets up.

Pretending I’m just overwhelmed with what he’s told me, I sink into one of the chairs, imagining the stars, imagining nights on my roof at home, imagining the smell of orange blossoms, soothing my emotions until they calm and the curse’s magic fades.

“Are you going to do it?” I ask him. “I mean . . . you have to, right?”

His eyes meet mine, and an understanding deeper than our shared heart passes between us, one borne of thousands of hours chasing the same desperate goal.

“We all are.” He gestures to the rest of the Tentacles. “As a team.”

I blink at him. “I don’t think it’s a team game—wouldn’t the invitation have said so?”

“The invitation didn’t say anything about what kind of game it is,” Jade points out. “And Nocturne didn’t specify, either.”

How on earth am I supposed to run the game while also pretending to play it? The idea of casting illusions, perhaps even sneaking off to be Nocturne when needed, while also working through the challenges with them is enough to make my head spin.