Page 123 of Heart of Thieves

Tears sting in my eyes as I turn back toward where Enzo’s still pressing his pendant to Soren’s neck. No one has noticed me, here in the back. Not yet, anyway.

As though dredged up through the haze of delirium, I glimpse the photograph of my mother in my mind’s eye.

She was a conduit. Not a starblessed, like the brothers, but voratium made human. If that is what I am as well, then perhaps I don’t need a bracelet to channel the brothers’ power. Perhaps all I need is myself.

I claw past the buzzing and the agony for that trace of ice just out of my reach. I grit my teeth as a cry tears out of me, as terror burns my veins, as darkness stains my vision.

And then . . . there it is. Frigid, beautiful, terrible magic, flooding into me.

My whole body vibrates as though it’s about to explode. A fresh wave of torture strangles my heart, and Enzo’s head whips around, eyes landing on me.

Our pulse stutters.

My mind whirls.

The world goes fuzzy.

I’m dying. I can barely see him anymore—all that remain are the magic threads in my mind’s eye, pulsing with violet-blue light. Pain spasms as the Unbreakable Lie’s mounting pressure fills my soul.

The buzzing rises to a fever pitch, as though the magic does not know which way to pull me. My bones are about to splinter, my blood about to boil.

I grit my teeth and grasp with every fragment of myself I have left onto Enzo’s magic, hauling it toward me, cutting it off.

The flow of threads resists for one heartbeat. Two.

I scream as my soul rips apart. As the world fractures. As shards of ice rain through me.

Enzo jolts backward, slamming to the cobblestones with a roar that punches through my eardrums.

My vision clears enough to see Enzo and Nic both gaping. I follow their gazes to where multicolor light bleeds out of my every pore—the same multicolor light I saw that night I rolled the Unbreakable Lie. It pelts from my skin, twisting and terrible.

It detonates.

Pressure balloons outward, stealing the breath from my lungs, rippling through me in a wave of heat. The world shudders. I hit the ground. My body convulses. Stars explode.

And then they go dark.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

ENZO

I trust you.

Those three words echo as though Lola’s speaking them now. But she’s not. They’re from the night I found her on the beach after the tournament. The night I thought I’d lost everything and she reassured me I hadn’t.

Except . . . it wasn’t true, was it?

A cacophony of bells clangs in my ears.

I trust you. I trust you. I trust you.

She didn’t. She found out about her magic and didn’t tell me.

Other moments over the past several months hit me like blows one after the other.

Lola sneaking out of the Brig.

Defying me during the University of Aethera heist.