Page 143 of Heart of Thieves

Only Nic’s.

My eyes fly wide.

“Enzo,” I choke out, flailing my arms, trying to get my bearings.

The pale glint of sunlight filters from the other side of the moon. The eclipse has ended, and the morning light is slowly growing, limning the roof of Nic’s casino in gold. My glasses are still missing, and my vision is blurrier than ever, but I push upright, squinting.

Nothing moves. The bodies of Soren, Arden, Jade, Isla, and the people I now recognize as my father’s guards lie in haphazard clumps.

My eyes are drawn immediately to the massive glowing shard of voratium. Otherworldly, multicolor light shimmers, bathing everything around it in an icy glow. Estelle lies next to it, flopped like a doll someone cast aside. Her chest rises steadily, and I wish that were enough to assuage the panic in me.

But nothing soothes it. Not right now. Not when I can’t feel Enzo’s heartbeat. Not when I can’t see him.

“Enzo,” I croak, crawling on all fours to the spot where he stood.

There is nothing there. Only outward scorch marks, an indication of the epicenter of the soullight’s detonation.

I wrap a trembling hand around our pendant hanging from my neck. Somehow, impossibly, it’s as warm as he was, and I wish desperately that I could wrap myself in that warmth the way he would when he’d embrace me in that big bear hug that always made everything all right.

“No,” I whisper as tears sting at the corners of my eyes, leak down my cheeks, drip onto that empty necklace.

But the warmth in the pendant is fading already.

Enzo is gone.

I clench that necklace between both my fists and bring it to my mouth, squeezing my eyes shut, trying to breathe as everything inside me breaks, but it’s like I’ve been plunged to the bottom of Nic’s bioluminescent pond. All that comes out are wrenching shrieks. My body crumples, and I curl in around the pendant, begging it not to go cold.

Begging Enzo to come back.

“Lola?” a voice croaks nearby, but I am hurting too much to raise my head. “Lola, what’s going on?”

Someone scrabbles over to me, and a hand settles on my shoulder, smooths away the moisture on my cheeks. “What is it, little thief ?”

“Nic,” I gasp, seizing his hands with the gold chain still tangled in my fingers. “He’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?” He peers at me, his face a smear in my blurry, tearstained vision.

“Enzo,” I choke out.

He goes utterly still. “What did you say?”

“Enzo,” I weep. “He’s gone.”

“No.” He pulls away, whirling, searching as frantically as I did a moment ago. And then, when he inevitably sees no head of black curls and no bejeweled, sparkling ears, he scrabbles to his feet, pulling people aside, shoving the lumenoring devices out of the way, his limbs weak, his legs quaking, but his jaw hard with desperation. “Enzo!” he shouts. “Enzo!”

I sob as the lumenoscopes crash sideways, as mirrors shatter. As he shifts bodies, checking every face.

“Nic, wait!” I shout.

But he doesn’t hear me. He stumbles along the edge of the roof, peering over the side, shouting Enzo’s name, clumsy and so close to pitching off into oblivion as he searches the streets for signs of the brother I already know isn’t there.

I trip after him, begging him not to fall. I cannot lose him, too.

Finally, when he pauses at the corner, I grasp his arm and drag him away from the ledge.

“He might be down there,” he coughs, wheezing.

“He isn’t,” I say.