Page 80 of Heart of Thieves

As I hold his gaze steady, his lips purse, and then finally he nods. “Fine.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Now. Go look for clues. We’ve got a game to win. We’ll worry about finding the missing equipment later.”

They nod, Soren still avoiding my gaze as he stalks sullenly past me. Jade and Isla disappear down the hall, leaving me alone in the now-abandoned lobby with nothing but my guilt to keep me company.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

LOLA

I find Estelle on the library roof fiddling with one of the mirrors on the diffuser.

“Everything all right?” I ask, surveying the area.

She looks up, clearly agitated. “It seems to be working as far as I can tell.”

“Good.” I gesture in the direction of the city square. “Thanks for your help earlier. I’m still new enough at illusions that I would have struggled to cast Nocturne on an empty stage. Grounding the visual on top of another person’s form is more what I’ve practiced.”

“I did okay?” She drops onto the chimney and mops a quaking hand over her face.

“Absolutely,” I say, crossing to her and resting a palm on her shoulder. “I’m sorry to have sprung that on you.”

She shakes her head. “No, that was fine.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

She looks up at me. “I saw her.”

I don’t have to ask who she means. Laurel’s heart-shaped face and soft, angelic features are still fresh in my own memories. “I did, too.”

“She looked at me like . . .” She swallows.

“Like she didn’t know you?”

“No . . . Like I was her enemy.” She shudders. “It was awful.”

“We’re going to fix this. It’s going to work.”

“Gods, I hope so.”

A creaking noise wafts up from the side of the building, and Estelle and I freeze, staring at each other. We creep to the edge of the roof and peer over the lip.

A pair of shadows climbs out of a window on the second story, swinging down onto the street. I frown. The illusion I cast—the dome of shadows that marks the boundary of the enclosure—was infused with sensory glamours modeled after the ones Nic put on the Liar’s Den. Anyone who tries to cross it will experience such intense repulsion their body will jolt backward on instinct. While people could theoretically bypass the wall, the human brain is typically so inclined toward self-preservation that it refuses.

So how are these two people—whoever they are—passing through so easily?

I squint, tapping into my magic to scrutinize the faint, shimmering threads of my illusions. They pour from the chunks of voratium I placed at regular intervals in the soil around the library.

Except . . .

“There’s a break in the boundary,” I whisper to Estelle. “Someone must have removed one of the voratium pieces, creating a small opening right where that window is.”

“Who are they?” Estelle whispers.

“I’m not sure . . .” I try to make out the figures in the shadows. One is larger, while the other is a lot slighter. As they reach the corner, they pass under a streetlamp. Its light reflects off a familiar head of long, sleek, ice-blond hair. My stomach drops.

“Ostena,” I gasp.

“Vesnes?” Estelle’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline. “What’s she doing here?”