Page 117 of Heart of Thieves

Maybe a bullet through the head won’t kill Nic. Maybe his magic will keep him alive, just as it always has.

But even as I try to reassure myself, my terror is white and hot and blinding. Because what if it doesn’t? His magic has always healed his wounds, but the one on his arm is still bleeding. There’s no telling if his power is strong enough anymore to restore him if my father puts a bullet through his head.

It’s too high a risk.

I open myself to Nic’s magic, trying to pull it forth.

But it resists like I’m trying to breathe in something solid. Is this because we’ve siphoned away too much of their power to the new moonshard?

No, that wouldn’t make sense . . . I’ve used both magics already tonight, and while it was certainly weaker, it was at least accessible.

I drag at it harder, panic flooding me as it continues to resist. And in its place comes the familiar, obnoxious buzzing from the Unbreakable Lie.

Realization dawns with a rise of acid in my chest.

I can’t use Nic’s magic, nor can I use Enzo’s, because Enzo is here. The Unbreakable Lie won’t let me.

“Well?” my father sneers into Nic’s unperturbed face. “Last words?”

Nic raises a brow. “You have broccoli in your teeth.”

Enzo is steady and unworried next to me. He probably thinks this is no riskier than usual, that Nic does not need saving.

The only one here who can stop this is me, and since I can’t use my magic, the only option left is to face my father without it. Not as Nocturne, but as his daughter.

A deep, primal fear overtakes me. Not of the woman I’ve become, the relentless thief, the cunning liar. No, it’s the fear of the young girl I was four years ago when I was taken from my bed, when my father was supposed to rescue me and never did.

What if he turns the gun on me instead? What if he locks me up? What if he casts me out?

Or, worse, what if he weeps?

“Enjoy the torment of the Deep,” my father snarls, and his finger twitches on the trigger.

I rip my hand away from Enzo and step into the light.

“Father!” I shout, my whole body trembling. “Stop!”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

LOLA

Magnus St. James whips around. His eyes widen, and his mouth drops open. Behind him, Nic gapes. Enzo’s heart is a stunned numbness.

I hold my jaw, set my shoulders, and tamp back the tears already rising to the surface.

I’ve faced my father dozens of times in the past few months as Nocturne. Spoken to him, shaken his hand, come nose to nose with those features that are so like mine. But I was always in a mask. Always shielded from the possibility of rejection—or worse, acceptance—by the magical illusion I wore.

But now there is no smoke, no theatrics, no ethereal voice or snake-like tendrils of hair. It’s just me.

Magnus blinks, then his jaw hardens, and he turns back to Nic. “Nice try, kid, but I don’t fall for your party tricks anymore. Where’d you get the voratium?”

“No party tricks,” I say, voice quavering, stomach churning so intensely I might vomit. “It’s me.”

“Prove it,” he says through gritted teeth over his shoulder.

“When I was little,” I say, “you would visit for a few days at a time, and every visit, on the last night, I would get this nightmare that the next day, your motorcar would dissolve as you drove away. By the time you’d reach the end of the drive, you’d be completely gone. No trace of you, your driver, or your vehicle.”

My father’s hand goes slack on the pistol as he shifts toward me, skepticism bleeding into something I cannot name. Sadness? Joy? Confusion? His eyes are glassy as they search for the seams on this disguise and find none.