Page 96 of Heart of Thieves

What would it do to Laurel then, if she were the cause of my demise, too? What horrors would she wreak to numb the pain? What excuses would she invent to absolve herself of the blame?

All that agony—hers and everyone else’s that would come after—would be my doing.

Shame floods me, white and hot and fast as wildfire.

She seizes control, shoving me to my feet like a puppet, launching me away from Lola.

The door slams open behind us, and Laurel whirls me around.

Forsyth and Ostena pelt toward us. Forsyth launches into me before Laurel is able to react, ramming me into the floor as Ostena lunges for Lola.

I try to move my limbs, but Laurel has full control, and she does not have the combat experience I do. She fumbles a weak punch, and Forsyth jams a pistol into my throat.

Lola screams, and panic jolts through me.

But I am powerless.

“Magnolia St. James,” Ostena grinds out. “How kind of you to come out of hiding.”

The glasses at my throat . . . the crowning piece to Lola’s disguise . . . I took them off, and now they’ve recognized her. I buck against Laurel’s control again to no avail.

Ostena drags Lola by the hair toward the door, a knife against her throat.

“Just kill her and be done with it,” Forsyth snaps. “St. James wants her to be his right hand. We bring her back; we lose our jobs.”

“If we don’t bring her back, we’ll lose our lives,” Ostena retorts.

“Not if we say it was the Liar,” Forsyth says, jerking the pistol harder against my neck.

Ostena frowns, considering me. Then her mouth curls. “I do think he’d believe that.”

Her arm tenses, but Lola screams, and my magic shards through me to her, exploding around Ostena. The blond woman shrieks, spine arching, fingers twisting as the dagger clatters out of her hands.

Lola snatches it.

“Let go of him,” she snaps at Forsyth, slashing the knife toward him as Ostena mewls on the floor behind her.

“You stop whatever you’re doing to Ostena,” he growls back, “or I’ll shoot.”

“The Liar can’t die.”

“Should we test that theory, love?” Forsyth cocks the trigger.

Laurel slams down hard on the stream of magic coming from me, cutting off Lola’s source. Startled, Lola swings her dagger toward Ostena, but she’s an instant too late. Ostena rockets against her, prying the knife out of her hands.

Once again, I’m not enough.

Once again, it is my fault.

Shame whips through me, harder and faster with every pulse of adrenaline through my system, and with it come a thousand memories.

I am seven years old, and my brother is being whipped, and I am lying to stop his torture.

I am fourteen years old, and I’m pleading with him not to steal a tiara.

I am seventeen years old, and I’m claiming I stole the moonshard, and the magic is screaming through me, capturing that lie, trapping everything I am and everything I ever thought I was inside a block of ice in my chest.

I am twenty-one years old, and a thief has stolen a pocket watch from my casino. Has challenged me on a roof. Has danced with me on my own dance floor. And suddenly, that frigid block of ice is less a cocoon of safety and more a cage.