Page 129 of Heart of Thieves

Enzo throws up his hands. “What good would it have done you to know?”

“I guess we’ll never find out,” I snarl, “since you never gave me that chance.”

His eyes narrow. “Don’t put this all on me. You lied, too.”

“Come on, Enzo,” Nic says, grasping his arm. “Stop.”

“When were you going to tell me you had magic?” Enzo asks me, anger flaring to match mine.

I bark out a laugh. “Oh, don’t you dare pretend you weren’t keeping that exact secret from me, too.”

“I beg your finest pardon?” His eyebrows rise sardonically.

“You knew I was a conduit,” I spit through my teeth. “Just like Nell. It’s why you sought me out—because you’d learned my heart could act as a conduit to the damn stars for you.”

His jaw tightens.

“And,” I go on, “when I learned you planned my ‘rescue’ on purpose to trap me, you still didn’t tell me. Even when I promised you I’d trust you. Even”—I yank up my sleeve, baring my Tentacles tattoo— “when you marked me as one of your own.”

He crosses his arms, chewing on the inside of his cheek, eyes hot as flint and hard as stone.

“You kept me from my life. You kept me from my father and my mother,” I breathe, an inferno blazing inside me. “How long were you going to keep me from my magic, too?”

“It wasn’t like that,” he says.

“Oh, I’m sure you had your reasons. But don’t act like I’m the villain here. It’s always been you.” My words are venom, and he flinches as each one strikes home.

“This magic,” he says quietly, “is not healthy or safe. So excuse me if I wanted to rescue someone I cared about from ever getting as mixed up in it as Nic and I are. You deserved better than that.”

“If that’s true,” Nic interrupts, “then why did you mix her up in it at all? If not for your meddling, she’d still be down in south Celestia, surrounded by orange trees. Oblivious and trapped, sure, but far away from the shard.”

“I already apologized,” Enzo says through gritted teeth. “I’ll spend the rest of my life being sorry for that.”

“Good.” Nic scowls.

“But I’m not sorry for all of it.” Enzo turns to me. “Sure, things may have started out wrong. But then you became my best friend, and once you found out I’d set you up, I figured the last thing you needed was to get dragged deeper into any of this shit.”

Tears sting the corners of my eyes. “The moonshard is part of me, too, Enzo,” I say, the anger in me deflating into something deeper and far more painful. “Whether you want me to be mixed up in it or not.”

“Then why haven’t you left?” he asks, avoiding his brother’s glare. “I may have your heart in my pendant, but you could have deserted me. Taken a train to somewhere far away. But you didn’t. You lied, joined my Tentacles, and pretended to love me. Tell me why.”

“I wasn’t pretending,” I say, voice thick. “I do love you.”

“Even if I lie to you? Even if I destroyed your life?”

“Yes.” I hold his gaze. “I wanted answers, but I wanted you to be the one to give them to me. I wanted to fix this, fix us. Because I may have been simply a heart to keep you alive, but you have always only been one thing to me.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

I press a palm to his cheek. “My closest and dearest friend in the world.” Tears swim across my vision, but I hold my jaw steady, refuse to let them fall. “And I wasn’t about to give that up, even if you deserved it.”

“I wanted to protect you—protect the us that we created—from disaster.” His voice cracks. “I was trying to love you.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and whisper, “You didn’t do this because you love me. You did it because you want me to love you. That’s not the same thing.”

He blinks, pursing his lips as my words roar between us. Our heart wrenches, but I do not take them back.

He glances at Nic, who opens his mouth.