Page 35 of Heart of Thieves

“She didn’t tell me right away. In fact, she was terrified at first. Sprinted away from me like she was afraid I’d hurt her. So the next night, I gathered up some rolls and fruit from our supply and wandered the streets again until I found her.”

I try to imagine the ethereal village as she describes the nights that followed, how she would bring out food for Laurel every evening, and how, as time passed, they became friends.

“It wasn’t long before the troupe was ready to move on. But I wasn’t,” she goes on. “I knew once I left, Laurel would go back to scrounging for scraps.”

“So you stayed in Moraille when the troupe left?”

“I got a job in town working for a seamstress. It was something Laurel couldn’t do because of the voratium on her hands. People asked too many questions.”

“Why did she have that voratium on her hands?”

Estelle’s eyes dart up to mine in the dark. “It was the moonshard.”

“The moonshard?” I gape. “Like . . . the moonshard?”

“The very one. She was there the night the Liar and the Thief tried to steal it.”

“No,” I say, my voice distant and wobbly. “It was just Enzo and Nic . . .” But I don’t say more. Because I already know the story Enzo told me wasn’t entirely true, though he seemed to believe it. Something happened that I don’t know. Something Enzo doesn’t know, either.

Estelle shakes her head. “Laurel tried to stop them. Nic dropped the shard, and it broke on her hands.”

It broke.

It broke.

My mind whirs. Is that why the brothers are cursed? Why their magic comes at such a steep cost?

“What did that do to Laurel?” I ask, my voice a squeak.

“Gave her powers, just like the Devious.” Estelle licks her lips. “She can control people’s bodies.”

I stare at her, suddenly faint. “Oh, that’s all?”

She gives a feeble laugh. “In the beginning, it was this cool trick she could use to get people to do things for us. But then she started to . . . change.” Estelle takes a deep breath, shuddering. “She struggled for a long time with the fact that the moonshard existed and that magic was real. She tried to dig the power out of her, convinced it was something from the Deep, that the Gods Below were trying to drag her away. But the more shame she felt, the more her magic seemed to . . . feed on her emotions. Her pride. Her anger.” Estelle pauses, dropping her voice to a whisper. “One day, when I was out getting food, she tried coming back here to Aethera. To look for her father.”

“What happened?”

Estelle shakes her head. “All she told me when she returned was that he’d died. She wouldn’t say how.”

“Stars,” I curse under my breath.

Estelle’s eyes gleam with tears as she stares somewhere past me. “No matter how many times I reassured her that whatever happened to him wasn’t her fault, she was never the same after that. Soon, she started talking about how the gods must have sent her this magic for a purpose. And perhaps what happened with her father had been the gods channeling their will through her.”

“That . . . almost makes sense.”

Estelle nods. “It was the only way she could live with her guilt, I think. But the more she dwelled on it, the more she became convinced the gods had called her to cleanse the world of wickedness in their name. That’s why I decided to compete in the tournament last year. I wanted to use the Unbreakable Lie to make her believe whatever happened with her father hadn’t been her fault. My idea was that if she no longer carried the guilt, she wouldn’t be so trapped trying to absolve herself of it.”

“But . . . ?”

“In taking away the guilt, she stopped feeling remorse. She became even more adamant that she needed to exterminate people. So the next year, when the Liar’s Dice Tournament started up again, I returned to observe the Liar.”

“Why?”

She holds my gaze. “To see if it was happening to him, too.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

ENZO