Page 28 of Heart of Thieves

“I didn’t know where you were. I can sense her. It’s different.”

“Then what is she doing right now?” Arden asks, raising a brow. “If you can sense her so well?”

I sigh, draining the last of my coffee. “I’ve explained how this works at least thirty-seven times. I don’t have the faintest idea what she’s doing, but I know she’s fine.”

“But of all of us,” Isla says, adding her gears and pistons to the pile on the counter, “Lola’s got the most recognizable face.”

“She knows how to stay hidden.” I push to my feet. “But don’t mistake me—she’s going to be hearing about this.”

Arden slouches back into his seat as he and Soren share a look that has my teeth on edge.

This conversation needs to end. “Why don’t we go over the Opalton job coming up?” I say briskly.

Jade and Isla glance at each other.

“I guess . . . I’ll fetch the file,” Arden says, hopping up and darting into the hallway toward the records room.

Our target for this upcoming job is Aurelia Levenne, the head priestess at the zenithic temple in Opalton. According to my research, to make a new moonshard, I’ll need a large, unblemished piece of voratium, and the supply logs in the Aetheran temple mentioned one was shipped there last week.

“The priestess,” Jade begins, but her words dislodge something in my head.

A memory.

Another priestess who would come to visit my father’s parish in Warthington, the small town on the outskirts of Aethera where Nic and I grew up. She often dined with us before services. She was funny, and she peppered her sermons with entertaining anecdotes that made the midnight service much less dull.

A flash of Nocturne from last night strikes through those memories. The curve of her jaw, her sharp cheekbones . . . even the indistinct shape of her eyes match what I remember of that priestess.

Could it be that the reason Nocturne felt so vividly familiar to me was because I’d met her before she’d become seaspawn?

I bolt out of my chair. “I have to go.”

Soren cuts off midsentence, blinking. “Now?”

“It’s something for the Opalton job. I’ll explain when I get back.” I gesture at Arden, who has just returned with a stack of Opalton maps and blueprints for its temple. “Proceed without me.”

“Sure,” Jade says faintly, glancing at Soren and Arden. “Good luck with . . . whatever you’re doing.”

I rush through the corridor, heart pounding as I plunge into the wall, dashing through tunnel, ship, coral, and deep.

When I get to the first street near the beach, I leap in front of a taxi, letting my body glimmer into view as I shout, “I need a ride.”

“Where to?” the cabby asks as I slide into the back seat.

“Warthington,” I say with a hope-drunken grin. “The church.”

CHAPTER TEN

NIC

Laurel’s arm is stiff in mine as we stride out of the subway into golden midmorning light. She’s barely spoken a word since we woke, and it’s all I can do to keep up as she tugs me down the sidewalk, the clack of her heels driving stakes of trepidation into my skull.

After the incident with Lola last night, she puppeted me to an apartment in north Aethera, the place she apparently acquired for us. As soon as she jolted me inside and locked the door, she curled up in one of the two beds, ignoring my questions and pretending to be asleep.

I agonized all night, trying to avoid the glimmer of her eyes watching me from across the room in the dark. What was she thinking? Had I destroyed my hard-won progress with my slipup?

This morning she rose, barely ate half a banana for breakfast, and told me to get dressed. Now here we are, thirty minutes later, surrounded by the East Side’s apartments adorned with iron trellises and flower boxes spilling chrysanthemums.

“Where are we going?” I ask.