Page 86 of Heart of Thieves

“You know what? Yes, I am defensive,” Lola snaps, shoving the paper into her belt. “I do have secrets. I’d be happy to share them with you if you, for two bleeding seconds, behaved like you deserved my trust. But you tricked me into doing so during your tournament, then disappeared for months. Now you’ve pranced back into my life exhibiting all kinds of confusing behavior and expect me to answer your questions? Sorry. Not happening.” She shoves past me toward the door. “I’ve spent far too long trusting people who don’t deserve it. I’m done.”

“Astra, wait,” Laurel says, diving after her.

“Stupid, sparkly bastard,” Lola spits, slamming the door in my face.

Good. Laurel deserved that.

CHAPTER THIRTY

ENZO

Desperation ties my stomach in knots as the hours tick closer to the end of round one. I was so sure I’d be able to figure out Nocturne’s clues easily—I am, after all, devious, as they say. However, it’s closing in on five o’clock in the morning—the time when I’m supposed to meet up with the Tentacles—and I haven’t found a single thing.

I thought I was onto something at first. I noticed a pile of books at the return desk covered in a small dusting of ash. Thinking it might be significant, I spent three hours rearranging the books, then the words in the titles, then the letters themselves, trying to see if they were some kind of code. When that didn’t reveal anything, I searched out where each one was supposed to be shelved to check for anything. It was only after two hours of this that I realized I should have done a sniff test. It was cigarette ash. Probably some librarian tapped her cigarette on the pile and forgot to clean it up.

Mentally kicking myself, I returned to scouring every inch of the library, but it seems Nocturne is as expertly skilled at obfuscation as her magic suggests.

Finally, I come around the final corner of the fourth floor and pause, frowning. I’ve been here dozens of times over the years to steal various texts and items, and I’m fairly familiar with the layout of the whole building. But there appears to be something new in this wing. A freshly erected wall closing off part of the hall with a newly painted door featuring the label CITY HISTORY.

I enter and flip on the lights. Dozens of cabinets stand ahead of me in careful lines. I open the drawer of the nearest one and find rows of newspaper clippings going back forty years.

Is this room a clue? Some kind of trick Nocturne has placed? A red herring?

Or could it just be a new wing dedicated by the university to preserving documents important to Aethera’s history?

Curiosity bubbling through me, I scour through several cabinets. Perhaps there’s something in one of these drawers about the moon-shard that cursed me—or . . . what if there’s something about Lenora? What if the proof of Nocturne’s identity is here?

What if Nocturne’s identity is the clue to get out of the first enclosure?

I tear out the drawers, riffle through boxes of telegraphs, and shuffle among magazine articles.

And then I come to a cabinet labeled ZENITHIC TEMPLE—AETHERA RECORDS.

“Yes,” I whisper as I slide out the drawer. Copies of birth records and citizenship documents on every priest and priestess who has ever worked at the temple unfurl before me.

I flip through and pause when I find her name.

Lenora “Nell” Lightsworn, the top of the document reads over a photograph of the very priestess who visited my home so many times when I was young.

My ears ring. My hands quake, fingers crinkling the paper as they clench. My whole body goes numb as I stumble back into a chair.

“Lenora the priestess . . . ,” I say out loud, staring in disbelief at the page in my hands. “. . . is Nell Lightsworn.”

The woman who crafted the moonshard that cursed my brother and me. Whose lab notes I’ve been poring over for months. Who disappeared without a trace . . . might be Nocturne herself.

“Well, shit,” I say.

Something ripples in my peripheral vision, and I whirl, catching sight of Lola.

“Everything all right?” she asks. “It felt like we were about to have a cardiac episode there for a moment.”

“Yes, totally fine,” I reply, stuffing the documents back into their place and shutting the drawer before she can see what I’m looking at. The last thing I need her to do is learn more about Nell Lightsworn. If she finds out she has the potential for the same kind of magic Nocturne has and I didn’t tell her? I swallow the sudden dryness in my throat. “Have you found anything?”

“Not yet.” She sighs. “You?”

“No, but it’s about time to meet downstairs. Maybe one of the others will have something for us.”

She nods, linking arms with me. I try to ignore the way my stomach twists at the contact. I should have told her long ago about Nell Lightsworn being a conduit, about Lola likely being one, too. I should have come clean about my plan to forge a new moonshard and get Nocturne’s help to do it.