Page 136 of Heart of Thieves

“Yoo-hoo!” I call. “Maggie! It’s me, the Thief !”

St. James swivels as several of his goons aim their pistols at my face. “Where’s Magnolia?” he barks.

“That’s actually what I need to talk to you about,” I say with a grin. “How many guards have you got, pal?”

Magnus scowls. “Twelve.”

I glance at Soren. “Think that’ll be enough?”

He grins. “It just might.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

LOLA

Laurel’s hold on me shatters, and I lurch forward, screaming as Nic hits the tile. Soullight bleeds out of him alongside his blood, that shard of voratium embedded far too deep.

Tears sting hot in my eyes. Magic buzzes in the air. Panic has me numb.

My fingers grasp a collar. A shoulder. Wavy, sweat-slicked hair.

“Nic,” I sob.

He shudders and slumps, eyes going out of focus as tendrils of smoke dusted with stars curl out into the air around the voratium shard in his chest like beckoning fingers.

“Nic?” I repeat as I press my hands to the side of his neck, where Laurel’s handprint is bruised on his skin. “Nic . . .”

His pulse is barely a flutter.

“Please,” I choke as his last gasped words echo in my ears. I’m sorry. The first truth he’s been able to speak of himself in five years. Tears blur my vision until I cannot see anything but the glow of the would-be dagger embedded in his heart. “Stay with me . . .”

The voratium slides out, as though repelled by his flesh, and clatters to the floor. The metal glitters multicolor ebony like his dice once did. I press my hand to the blackened hole on his breast, begging the wound to stitch itself back together. Praying that some trace of magic remains inside that could mend this.

But nothing happens.

Tears bead like fire on my lashes.

This can’t be it. He can’t be dying. There has to be something I can do.

Shouts echo from the hall, and an instant later, explosions fill the air.

Jade’s poppers.

People spill into the room. I blink up at them, but my glasses are missing, and between my poor vision, the tears, the popper smoke, and the dissipating sunlight from the window being slowly shrouded by the moon, I cannot make out faces, just a mass of bodies charging toward Laurel, pistols firing, glinting blades swinging.

“When is it going to stop?” Laurel croaks, her eyes toward the heavens as though asking the gods, but she steels herself and raises her hands to the attackers, causing about half of them to stumble to a stop.

But not all of them.

No, it seems there are too many for her to control, and the ones she cannot manage keep coming. She grits her teeth, barreling toward them, puppeting the newcomers under her power to fire on their comrades.

“Nic?” a familiar voice cries, panicked. “Nic!”

Enzo hurtles toward me and leans over his brother. The purple pendant swings past my face, knocking loose a thought. An idea.

A desperate, painful, terrifying idea.

“The pendant,” I croak, jostling his shoulders. “Enzo . . .”