Chapter One
LOLA
Next time I see Nic, I’m going to spit in his face.
Thanks to him, I’m climbing yet another building without magic because of the starsdamned Unbreakable Lie he forgot to warn me would ruin my life.
Tonight, Enzo and I are breaking into the University of Aethera’s Science and Technology building.
Though it’s nowhere near as brutal as it was to scale the Liar’s Den Casino four months ago, the burn in my arms and legs has me muttering every single curse word I know under my breath as I hoist myself toward the eighth-floor windows.
For the dozenth time, I focus on the voratium bracelet on my wrist, hidden now inside my glove.
I reach through it for Enzo’s magic, begging it to please, please work.
But because Enzo’s here, climbing at my side, it refuses.
Instead, a buzzing unfurls under my skin, and his magic slips through my grasp, untouchable.
“You all right over there, Llama?” Enzo asks, clearly catching on to the irritation surging in our shared heart.
“Spectacular,” I grit out.
He laughs.
I trust you. The Unbreakable Lie I told Enzo echoes in my ears, a taunt, a nightmare, a curse.
Little did I know when I rolled that die and spoke those words that the magic I unleashed would trap me.
Sure, it made him believe I trusted him, but it also has prevented me from doing anything that might jeopardize his belief in that.
And since Enzo does not yet know I discovered my magic, the Unbreakable Lie bars me from wielding any in his presence, as that would undermine the deception.
Which means I’m stuck climbing this lousy building the old-fashioned way.
“Jade is brilliant,” Enzo says, admiring his black gloves before reaching farther up to grasp a ledge.
“She is,” I agree. Thank the gods for Jade, the Tentacle with a penchant for crafting useful gadgets enhanced with voratium for our thieving purposes.
She gave us the gloves and shoes we’re wearing now, and they’re the most stylish black leather accessories I’ve ever seen— stitched with voratium fibers infused with starlight to make them extra adhesive to boot.
“You’re sure breathing hard,” Enzo teases.
I scowl. “I’m going to ask nicely one more time. Can I please have one of your strength rings?”
“We have to save them; you know this.”
“I would only use a tiny bit of power.” I point above us. “The lab is just three more floors up.”
“You can manage three more floors.”
Shooting him a dirty look, I shove past, throwing a rude gesture over my shoulder.
“Remind me not to get on your bad side.” Enzo tsks.
“I still say we should be using the tattoos,” I mutter, reaching for another handhold. My sleeve rides up my arm, baring a sliver of the Tentacle tattoo in question. The voratium dust in the ink glitters in the moonlight.
Perhaps one of my favorite things I learned when I was finally admitted into Enzo’s band of thieves was that the tattoos aren’t just a mark of belonging—they’re a vessel.
Much like Nic’s dice could be filled with the soullight of secrets, Enzo created these tattoos with voratium so they could be filled with the soullight of our corporeality.
Which means all his Tentacles can go noncorporeal at will as long as there’s enough space in the tattoo.
Enzo chuckles. “You never know when everything is going to go to shit.”
“Well, I feel like shit now; doesn’t that count?” I stick out my tongue, but he’s right. Since the tattoo’s capacity for making us non-corporeal is limited to the tiny voratium flakes, we’re only meant to use it as a last resort.
“Boss?” Soren’s voice crackles across the radio clipped to Enzo’s belt. “What’s your status?”
“We’ve made it,” Enzo says as we finally hoist ourselves onto our target windowsill.
I cup my hands to peer through the pane. The laboratory is dark. The door to the main hall is closed and locked, as it should be.
“The explosives are set,” Jade adds, her higher-pitched voice fuzzy. “The first should detonate in twenty seconds.”
“I’ve got eyes on the guards,” Soren affirms.
Enzo and I squint to see the burly Tentacle crouched on the building opposite us, binoculars trained on the windows a few yards to our right.
“Perfect.” Enzo turns his attention to the courtyard below. “What about you, Arden?”
“Ready to go,” comes Arden’s cheery reply.
Dressed in a constable’s uniform, he lounges on a stone bench under a tree, stretching his long legs so the pants ride up, flashing his bright orange socks.
He gives us a lazy salute, and though he’s too far away to see clearly even with my glasses, I can almost make out his toothy grin.
“I just pulled up to the north curb,” Isla adds over the radio. “I’m in a pink Rifton 450.”
“Pink?” Enzo’s brows rise. “Aren’t getaway vehicles supposed to be less . . . conspicuous?”
“It was the only Rifton they had, and I’ve never driven one!”
Enzo sighs, then shrugs. “Fine. As long as it’s fast.”
“Oh, it’s fast.”
“Detonation in three . . . ,” Jade pipes up. “Two . . .”
BOOM!
I cling to the lip of the windowsill as the building quakes.
“The guards are on the move,” Soren says. “Ninety seconds until they reach you, Arden.”
“Let’s have some fun,” comes Arden’s chuckling reply.
An instant later, another BOOM! shakes from a lower floor.
“Are you ready?” I whisper to Enzo, breathless.
Enzo meets my eyes as the third explosion detonates right outside the door below, lighting up the night.
“Always.” Enzo winks and ripples into noncorporeality, bleeding through the windowpane. He appears on the other side, unlatching the lock and pushing the pane open for me to leap through.
Now that the guards who typically stand watch outside this laboratory are out investigating Jade’s explosions, Enzo and I are free to ransack the place without fear of being caught.
But their search of the grounds and the planned distraction with Arden as a constable in the courtyard will only give us so long. We’ll need to be quick.
“Here.” Enzo pulls a piece of parchment from his pocket and shoves it into my hands. “Tell me if you see anything that looks like this.”
I unfold the paper and pretend to inspect it, but I don’t really need to. I’ve studied this diagram a hundred times over the past few weeks. Not that Enzo knows that.
It’s some sort of lumenoring device—a contraption used by the scientists who work with voratium and starlight.
Enzo has told me he wants it to help him track down the moonshard.
Since all our previous leads turned out to be false, thanks to Nic’s machinations to keep us chasing our tails, Enzo claims it’s time to turn to something that will never lie to us: science.
But every time he tells that story, a frisson of something trickles through our heart. Something I would never have noticed before the tournament, but that I now recognize as the slight stroke of shame he feels when he’s not being entirely truthful.
What do you really intend to use this contraption for?
I try to say, but the words get caught behind my teeth, exactly as every question I’ve attempted to ask him about anything remotely important has since I spoke that Unbreakable Lie.
What is your plan now? I want to scream as he scuttles to the other side of the laboratory and starts riffling through cabinets.
Why did you pretend to save me? What am I?
But my tongue won’t move, and that unbearable buzzing under my skin intensifies, the whispers of my Unbreakable Lie ricocheting like wind in my ears.
I trust you. I trust you. I trust you.
Except I don’t trust him. I never will again.
So, as has become my approach since the tournament, I ball my fists and look for answers on my own.
Which, tonight, means scouring the laboratory for this mysterious device and seeing if there’s any other information I can glean from the scientists’ notes without Enzo realizing what I’m up to.
“Soren, how are our security guard friends doing?” Enzo murmurs into the radio as I cross to a set of shelves full of odd devices.
“Arden’s leading them on a chase across the street. You’re still good,” comes Soren’s gruff response.
Enzo’s heart rate hammers in my throat. Whatever we’re looking for is a lot more important than he’s let on.
My own hands shake as I move boxes of loose bits of voratium and metal contraptions out of my way.
Then I yank down several crates, only to find folders marked with odd combinations of numbers and letters.
Sighing, I set those aside and turn toward another set of shelves.
I riffle among the instruments on each one, heart sinking.
If Enzo locates the mysterious device first, I won’t get a chance to uncover any other hints about what it might be.
And if we don’t find it at all, then where else am I supposed to look for answers?
I pause, breath stilling as my eyes land on a complicated brass device on the top shelf.
A massive disk larger than my head protrudes from a metal stand featuring a series of strategically placed wires and mirrors—exactly like the diagram in my pocket.
“There you are,” I breathe.
I glance over my shoulder at Enzo as I lift the contraption and set it silently on the nearest counter.
He’s still preoccupied with his own cabinet, thank the stars, but I’m sure he’ll finish up soon, at which point he’ll likely look my way to see how I’m faring.
I only have a minute or two to find out what I can about this thing.
Stretching up on my tiptoes, I pull off my glove and feel around, but there’s nothing there. Frowning, I turn back to the device, scouring it for hints, and catch sight of a tag attached to the base with a number scrawled on it.
B8392.
Yes. I pull out the crates I saw earlier and shuffle through the folders until I find one marked with the same inscription.
Adrenaline sparking in my fingertips, I draw the folder out and spread it open on the counter. A single notebook lies nestled inside. Tattered and worn, it’s less a scientist’s log and more like a journal, with a leather cover and a frayed ribbon sticking out of the bottom.
I flip through its pages of tidy cursive and pause on yet another drawing of the device.
Written above it are the words ASTRAL SPECTRAL DIFFUSER, and its parts are marked with arrows indicating paragraphs crammed in the space on the page beneath.
The handwriting matches what’s in the rest of Enzo’s stash of secret information, which, I realize with a thrill, means this journal must have belonged to the same scientist: Nell Lightsworn, the priestess who created the moonshard that cursed Nic and Enzo.
I grit my teeth, scanning through the text. Just like Nell’s other notes, these are written in some sort of cipher, composed like poetry in a way that makes it nearly impossible to understand.
My eyes catch on one phrase that makes me pause: . . . for the birth of a stone of immeasurable power . . .
My lungs tighten, and my head swims.
Enzo’s not trying to find the moonshard. He wants to make a new one.
As that thought hits, my heart surges, and Enzo whips around. “Everything all right, Loofah?” His eyes drop to the device on the counter, and a smile cuts across his face. “You found it!”
“I—I did.” I lower the notebook below the table with quaking hands as he darts over.
I’ve known he’s kept things from me, so why does realizing what he’s planning feel like such a slap in the face?
As he inspects the contraption, I tear the page from the journal, slow and steady so it won’t make a noise, and shove it into my pocket before holding the notebook up like I just discovered it. “What do you think this is?”
He crosses to me, taking it and flipping it open. Unease flickers in our heart, and he snaps it shut quickly, turning away. “Yes, let’s keep that just in case.” He stows it in his inner jacket pocket before pulling out his radio.
But before he can signal to the others that we’re on our way out, Soren’s voice crackles across the line.
“Boss! Get out of there!”
“What’s going on?” Enzo rushes to the window. “Are the guards heading back?”
“No,” Soren says. “Someone else entered the building from the east side. Two men. They appeared to be armed.”
Enzo’s jaw tightens. “Jade!” he says. “You have any more of those explosives?”
“On it!” she cries.
Enzo and I pull ourselves onto the windowsill. “Tattoo okay now?” I ask, raising my brows. “I’d rather jump down than have to climb.”
He opens his mouth to respond, but a deafening BOOM! rattles the whole building from the other side of the hall door.
And then Jade’s scream pierces the air.
Enzo brings the radio to his mouth. “Jade! What’s going on?”
There is no response.
I yank my own radio off my belt. “Jade!” I shout into it as blood roars in my ears and electricity bolts through my veins. “Jade!”
“The explosion was on the eighth floor with you,” Soren’s voice crackles through.
Enzo meets my eyes, then sets the diffuser on the windowsill.
He doesn’t even need to speak. I’m already bolting across the room.
Together, Enzo and I fade into noncorporeality and lurch into the hall.
At the other end of the corridor, a broad man in charcoal holds Jade with her arms pinned behind her back, one of his hands fisted in her frizzy red curls, baring her throat to a second man, who’s pointing a pistol straight at her.
She drags on her captor’s arm with her finger-nails, her Tentacle tattoo peeking out of her sleeve, glowing and full of soullight.
She can’t use it—she must have filled it to capacity setting the explosives.
Still invisible, Enzo and I barrel at them, Enzo going for the man behind Jade as I tackle the one with the drawn weapon. I go corporeal in time to yank the pistol out of his hand, slamming him onto his face and pressing the barrel to the back of his head.
Enzo seems to have pulled the second man’s gun out of his belt and shoved it against the back of his head, too, because Jade stumbles forward, gasping.
“It’s her,” Enzo’s captive gasps. “St. James’s daughter.”
“Magnolia?” My hostage cranes his neck to look at me.
“Oh, cute. You work for my father,” I purr as a smile curls my lips. “If you survive this, be sure to tell him I say hello.”