Page 51 of Heart of Thieves

“What I need,” she says through gritted teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, “is to stop being so damn afraid of gravity.”

As if to punctuate her words, she shrieks as she drops into the pits of her knees, once again losing her grip on her ankles, her legs swinging through the hoop so she lands on her shoulders, feet slapping down an instant later.

She groans, curling her arms over her face. “It’s all in my head,” she grumbles. “If I could just stop being so afraid of falling and lean into the move, trust my knees to catch me instead of panic-flailing when I fall . . .”

“That looks incredibly painful.”

She rolls over, grinning. “Want to see something?”

“Depends . . .” I cross my arms. “I’m about to eat, so if it’s something gross . . .”

She rolls her pant legs up, then turns around. The backs of her knees are mottled in bruises at various stages of healing—some brown, some blue, some dark purple.

I let out a low whistle. “You call this fun?”

“It is fun.”

“Be honest, Lymph node. You’re a bit of a masochist.”

She gives me a facetious look, then snatches up the bag of chalk at her feet and tosses it at my face. I catch it an instant before it smacks my nose, but the dust gets in my eyes anyway.

“I’ll be in the kitchen in a bit,” she says, grasping the hoop and twirling on one foot, second leg extended to a point until she can use the momentum to swing her body upward. “I want to try this a few more times.”

“Don’t die.” I toss the chalk back to its place next to her crash mat and slip into the hallway, easing the door shut behind me before striding to the kitchen.

Fatigue eats at me as I plunk into a chair next to where Arden is reading a newspaper and nursing a steaming mug of tea.

“You look like shit,” he says with barely a glance my way.

“Why, thank you.” I open my mouth to spout off some funny quip, but my eyes catch on something odd in the corner. It looks like one of Septavia’s tentacles crawling straight out of the wall.

That can’t be right . . . I left her out in the ocean, the way I do most times when I come to the Brig—she’s made her home in the coral growing inside the hull of the ship that serves as the Brig’s entrance.

But the tentacle curls toward me, lengthening as it creeps across the floor, suckerless and undulating.

“Um . . . Arden? Do you know what that is?” I ask.

He sets down the paper, then catches sight of it and leaps onto his chair. “What the depths?”

“Good morning,” Isla says, flipping a long black braid over her shoulder as she enters, then freezing as her eyes land on a second tentacle of shadow twisting out from another wall.

Alarm bells clang in my ears. “Don’t move.” I pull a pistol from my belt and slide a bullet into the chamber.

A ribbon of smoke coils down from the ceiling. I point the pistol and pull the trigger, but the bullet passes through and lodges in the stone.

“What’s going on?” Jade runs in, Soren hot on her heels. Several dozen more undulating coils of shadow writhe into sight from every direction, knotting into a mass as tall as I am in the center of the room.

We all back away slowly until our spines hit the wall, none of us blinking as the tentacles mist together, ebbing and flowing as though they’re breathing.

I aim at it uselessly with my pistol as fear slicks cold under my skin.

The smoke braids itself into a head, shoulders, arms . . . The instant before her face materializes, I know who she is. I lower my weapon as the darkness evaporates, leaving her in its wake.

“Nocturne,” I breathe, my voice cracking because of course it does. Cheeks burning, I clear my throat. “I mean . . . ,” I try again, pitching my voice lower. “Nocturne.”

“Hello, Lorenzo.” Her ghostly lilt raises goose bumps on my flesh.

“I’m so sorry about the other night. I shouldn’t have—”