Page 142 of Thief of Hearts

My heart beat so hard in my chest that for a moment I couldn’t speak. “What just happened to Dagger?”

Zain didn’t answer.

I looked up at him and he stared back at me. I glanced to his right, and my stomach dropped when I saw the altar was empty.

The words he’d once said to me echoed in my head.

Sleight of hand. I get everyone to look one way while I’m doing something else.

Dagger had been his sleight of hand, taking all my focus while he stole the caduceus.

Before I could say anything, Zain took off one of his rings, sticking it into his pocket.

Black lines began to form all over his skin, twisting and turning, climbing like vines as they settled in.

My mouth dropped open and I nearly fell to my knees.

“You’re . . . you’re Epirian!” I said in shock, unable to believe what I was seeing.

Zain was an Epirian. How was that even possible? My mind raced, unable to comprehend what I was witnessing.

He pulled the god-weapon from the back of his belt, confirming that he had stolen it.

“This doesn’t belong to Actos. There is someone else who wants it more and is willing to pay,” he said.

All the air left my lungs. It had all been a job for him. He had spent so much time telling me how often people hired him to steal things and I had disregarded it. How long had he been planning this?

My nerves frayed, my stomach turned over. People were going to die if he took the god-weapon and gave it to someone who had hired him.

“I can’t save the concubines without that.” The only thing I could think of was to try and appeal to his conscience.

“They’ll be fine.”

It was as if he’d slapped me across the face. I didn’t know who this person was. It was not the man I had spent the last two weeks with.

He touched another ring, and there was a swirling motion behind him that settled into what looked like a window. I saw buildings behind him.

I realized he was about to leave.

I had given him another chance when I was not in the habit of giving people second chances. I’d allowed him the opportunity to redeem himself, and it had all been one massive lie. He had meant to betray me from the beginning.

I had been open and honest with him, vulnerable, and this was how he repaid my trust?

By betraying me?

Again?

I felt like such a fool. A deadly anger rumbled in my gut and continued to build and build until all my limbs were shaking.

“I am going to find you, Epirian. Even if it takes the rest of my life, I will find you and I will take back the caduceus, and then I am going to make you regret this.”

He grinned at me. “Good luck.”

Then he touched his topaz ring and it turned him invisible. Dagger jumped through the portal and a moment later it closed.

They were gone.

For a moment I just stood there, my body numb, not able to move or think.