Page 113 of Heart of Thieves

“Where do you think Nic is?”

“I suppose we can split up and search for clues.”

I finally look at him, raising a brow. “You’d let me out of your sight—here, of all places?”

He offers me a sad smile. “You can take care of yourself. Plus . . .” He pauses, chewing on his lip. “I trust you.”

Those words cleave through me yet again, echoes of the Unbreakable Lie I spoke just four months ago, words that have turned to shackles around my wrists, my heart, my mouth. I wish he would stop saying that.

I swallow the bile rising in the back of my throat and offer him a small smile. “All right, Enz. Let’s do it.”

The mansion is even more dazzling inside. Chandeliers hang in every room and hallway. Glossy floors stretch through the entirety of the home, cloaked in expensive, plush rugs. Massive paintings hang from the walls, interspersed with statues in alcoves and decorative vases. Staircases spill like rippling silk framed by iron-and-gold bannisters. We part ways as soon as we cross through the main entry.

To his credit, Enzo doesn’t even warn me to be careful. He simply gives me a meaningful look—one that communicates he’ll be paying attention to the sensations in our heart in case I need him—before vanishing through the wall into the nearest dining room.

The house does not creak in the night, and the silence raises the hairs on my arms. Opulent furniture hulks like strangers in the dark, lit only by the watching moon in the windows. Cabinets stocked with crystal wineglasses glitter, champagne bottles stacked in diagonal rows on the walls watch me like dozens of eyes, and cold, expansive fire-places yawn wide as though to swallow me whole.

Room after room I scour, only pausing when a butler scurries past, holding my breath even though Enzo’s magic has me noncorporeal.

Nic’s magic pulls me downward, but I can’t find stairs. As I slink along one hall, my attention catches on a deep mahogany door. Its handle glints, the carvings on it worn smooth by use. Frowning, I duck through it.

The room on the other side brings up a memory so sharp it stops me short.

Wall-to-wall shelving on every side. A white tiger-skin rug with a stuffed head baring sharp teeth. A massive fireplace with an intricate mantel.

This was the room in Tomas Hildebard’s secret that was revealed at the Liar’s Den. A corpse wrapped in burlap was dragged through this very door, and my father punched its broken face, holding back an agonized rage that was the first glimpse I ever got that he might have mourned my death.

Is he happy I didn’t die? Or angry I haven’t come back? Does he think I’ve forsaken him?

I do not have time to look through his things. I need to find Nic and get out of here—back to Nocturne’s game, back to Estelle and Laurel, who are surely on their way to the casino now.

I give the office one last, aching look, breathing in deep the scent, so familiar tears film over my vision. As I turn away, my gaze catches on a frame on his desk. I pause. The photo is old, taken with what must have been an ancient camera. A much younger image of my father—with darker hair and fewer lines around his mouth—smiles up at me. A woman with pale blond hair nestles against his side wearing a simple cardigan and a dress cinched around her narrow waist with a belt. His arm rests around her shoulders, and she looks up at him with an adoring smile on her rosebud mouth and a sparkle in her eyes.

I frown, picking up the frame to inspect the image closer. Could this be my mother, perhaps? I’ve never seen a photo of her before— Father rarely spoke of her. All I know is that their relationship had been short and forbidden, a secret from the public, and that she’d died giving birth to me. That was all he would say before promptly changing the subject.

I run my thumb along the image. She certainly has my hair color— my natural color, that is. And the line of her jaw is exactly like mine. Her nose even turns upward slightly the way mine did before it was broken.

Scrawled at the bottom of the photo are the words Love you forever. Nell.

Chewing on my lip, I set the frame down, dazed.

Nell Lightsworn? As in . . . the woman whose notes Enzo and I have been studying for weeks? The one who created the moonshard that cursed him and his brother?

What had Enzo’s book—the one I found in the hidden compartment— called her? A conduit? I frown, trying to recall what the definition had said . . . Hadn’t it been that while starblesseds were altered by unstable soullight, conduits were altered by it in its pure form? That’s right; they essentially become like voratium, able to channel magic from the skies.

I wheeze.

Enzo hid that book, likely to keep me from ever seeing it. Does he know Nell is my mother?

Puzzle pieces rain into place. Perhaps this is how he found out about me—through my father. He might have scoured this office much like I am doing now, come across this photograph, and learned of my mother’s involvement with the moonshard that cursed him. Discovered Nell had a daughter.

And if Nell was a conduit because of her exposure to starlight during the crafting of the moonshard—her very genetic code being rewritten to be able to channel magic—then wouldn’t it make sense for her offspring to carry that same genetic code?

I’m a conduit, like my mother before me. That is why I can channel Enzo’s magic. And Nic’s. And perhaps others’, too.

As though on cue, the Unbreakable Lie rattles under my skin. Enzo is looking for me, and I’ve been too distracted to notice. I immediately zero in on his emotions—a ball of trepidation growing stronger by the second.

He’s on his way.