Page 124 of Heart of Thieves

Offering to gather intel on her father when she’d been avoiding him for weeks.

The missing lumenoring equipment.

My Tentacles begging me to see her duplicity.

Lola knowing about Laurel, about Nic, about how to craft a moon-shard. Things that should have tipped me off that she was up to something, that she was not confiding in me the way someone who trusted me would.

I trust you.

A yawning, swallowing ache blooms in my chest right where Lola’s heart beats.

She lied.

A gunshot blasts in my ears, slamming me back into the present, and I blink, suddenly blissfully in control of my body again. I look up.

Smoke rises from Nic’s pistol. I swivel to see what he shot. The crowd has erupted into chaos—clearly the magic that was holding me captive has released everyone else as well. But there, in the back, I glimpse someone I haven’t seen in years.

Laurel.

She sways as strangely iridescent blood spurts from her chest. “Nic,” she gasps.

“No!” comes a scream from the right, and a woman I vaguely recognize pelts toward Laurel as she topples.

“That’s it?” I say, my voice weaker than I wish it were. “Laurel’s dead?”

Nic shakes his head, shoving the pistol into his belt. “She’s like us. She’ll heal soon. Though if her healing has slowed down as much as ours, it may take a couple hours.”

“We’re going to run, right?”

“She’d come after me.” He shoves past me, elbowing through the crowd not toward Laurel but toward . . .

“Lola!” I shout, diving after him as the memory of light detonating from her chest hits home. Thankfully, her heart still beats steady and sure inside of me, so I know she’s alive, but in what state?

“She’s unconscious,” Nic says, lifting her into his arms.

“I can carry her.” I reach for her.

He scowls at me. “No.”

“You’ve got to carry Laurel.” I jab a thumb back at where the familiar woman is kneeling over the bleeding one on the ground. “You’re the only one somehow impervious to her control. If she wakes up, she won’t be able to take over your body. Least risk.” I hold out my arms. “Hand Lola over.”

He glowers, chewing on his lip, then finally concedes, settling Lola carefully into my grasp. Once he’s released her, he cuffs me on the back of the head. “Don’t drop her.”

“I would never.”

He stalks over to the weeping woman. “Don’t worry, Estelle.”

She rounds on him, eyes blazing. “You shot her!” she snaps. “Don’t you dare tell me not to worry!”

“Her magic will heal the wound.” He crouches to lift Laurel, and her strange blood smears his suit as he turns to face me. His eyes flick past my shoulder, and he nods once. “Looks like your crew is all here, Enz.”

I follow his gaze. Soren, Isla, Arden, and Jade weave past the last fleeing stragglers of Laurel’s army toward me.

Soren meets my eyes. A stone drops in my gut. I almost killed him—well, Laurel did, but she used my magic to do it. And just yesterday I chose Lola over the four of them.

But Soren simply nods once, holding my gaze. “What can we do?”

“We have to get the bullet out before the wound closes,” the woman Nic called Estelle says. “Do any of you have tweezers?”