Chapter Three
NIC
I’ve been a puppet for a week.
“Please, Nic,” Laurel whispers, sweat breaking out on her brow as she forces me down an Aethera sidewalk toward a taxi-cab. “Stop fighting it.”
My movements are jerky, each step a stomp.
I’m no more than a doll. Or perhaps a corpse.
Laurel hasn’t let go of her magical control over my body since she found me at the sheriff of Opalton’s home.
For seven days, my mouth has spoken words I don’t want to say and my feet have carted me along streets I don’t want to walk.
Her magic is too strong, her hold too sound. I’m a prisoner in my own body.
It is worse than any story of the Deep I’ve ever heard.
Once she maneuvers me into the passenger seat, the cab driver jolts out of the vehicle on magical marionette strings of his own. His eyes widen as Laurel takes the wheel in his place and slams on the gas pedal. The tires spatter him in sodden city muck as we peel away.
Pulling into traffic, she peers at me with a grimace. “Please, let me help you.”
She’s just as exhausted as I am. Neither of us has slept in days, and the deep circles under her eyes mark the hours we’ve spent battling for control of my body. She releases her magical hold on my mouth so I can speak.
“It isn’t real, Laurel,” I rasp for what feels like the millionth time.
Her jaw hardens as her grip tightens on the steering wheel and her magic slams my mouth shut once more. “Stop saying that.”
I try to pry open my jaw, but it is made of stone.
Tears shine in her eyes. She releases one hand from the wheel to grasp mine. “Nic,” she whispers.
It’s the first time she’s touched me—actually touched me—since that sheriff ’s house, and the instant the chips of moonshard in her skin brush my knuckles, something vibrates through me.
Familiar as my own breath, it dances between us like sparks of electricity.
I inhale sharply, tasting the scent of . . .
My own magic?
I let my senses go hazy so I can see the threads of my power. Sure enough, it shimmers through her, twined along her limbs, a faint trace of me woven all through her. Where did it come from? What, exactly, is it?
“I can’t watch you end up in the Deep,” she whispers. “It will break me.”
The fear in her words strikes something deep and primal inside me.
A memory from my childhood thrashes forward.
A younger Enzo wading into the ocean searching for shells, drawn to the Deep by curiosity, heedless of the danger we’d been taught lurked within.
The thousand nights afterward I spent lighting candles and pleading with the gods on his behalf.
The bone-deep desperation that kept me returning to the temple, my determination to keep Enzo from becoming seaspawn bordering on madness.
That same madness burns in Laurel now. She sees me not just standing in sea-foam the way I caught Enzo, but plunged in over my head, swimming out to Ivian, the god of lies, himself.
And no matter how many times I might try to explain that Ivian does not exist, that the ocean is just water, that she doesn’t need to be afraid, she won’t hear me, just like I never heard Enzo.
Laurel sucks in a slow, trembling breath. “I’m only trying to help you.”
I blink, but she still holds my mouth captive, and I cannot ask her any of the questions rising like a tide in my throat.
She squeezes my hand, and I sense, once again, that thread of magic in her. Not the golden fabric of illusions, nor the stench of secrets . . . a multicolor vibration, powerful and dangerous.
All at once, it hits me.
It’s an Unbreakable Lie.
Adrenaline cracks through me like lightning. Did Lola use her Unbreakable Lie on Laurel somehow? But when? Why?
I focus on the lie braided through Laurel’s soul. Now that I know what to look for, I can see the evidence of that lie woven through every strand of her tendons, every fiber of her muscles. A deception written in her bones.
A lie that says her sins are not her fault.
Somehow, one of my Unbreakable Lies is what turned Laurel from the girl I once knew and loved into this self-righteous villain.
So desperate with hope it’s making me quiver, I pull on that lie through the voratium in her skin, trying to dismantle the magic the way I do any other illusion I’ve cast. But it won’t give; the threads are bound through the very beat of her heart.
I cannot pull the lie away.
My heart sinks, and blood roars in my ears.
Laurel has become what she has because of me. The moonshard may have cursed her, but my magic tipped her into ruin. Shed her of the shame that kept her from acting upon her most militant, self-righteous desires.
I have to fix this. Have to figure out how to stop her.
“The gods show me people’s sins,” Laurel says softly. “They gave me power to stop those who would corrupt their world.”
A lump rises in my throat as she cautiously loosens her magical hold on my mouth once again.
“Am I a corruptor or the corrupted?” I ask softly. “That’s entirely up to you,” she whispers.
I know as sure as I’ve known anything that she will never believe me no matter how many times I try to tell her the stars did not give her this power for any kind of purpose. Because I know how unbreakable that lie is under her skin. How orthodox she always was about the gods.
And I know how desperately she wants to save me, in her twisted way. As desperately as I wanted to save Enzo that night on the beach.
Which means that resisting her will only keep me imprisoned.
So, though it feels like tearing myself apart, I lie.
“Okay, Laurel,” I say.
She pulls back, eyes searching mine. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
A smile cuts across her face, glimmering through her tears.
“What have the stars asked you to do?” I pause, amending my question. “What do they need from . . .” I swallow the metallic taste of my own deception. “. . . from me?”
“Aethera is crawling with seaspawn. Criminals and thieves and gang lords.”
I wait for her to go on. “And?”
“We need to get rid of them. All of them. Before they destroy more innocents.” She scrubs tears from her cheeks. “And you’re going to help me do it.”
Her words hit me in the gut, repeating over and over with every twist and turn of the cab.
She seems to sense my turmoil, because she does not speak again, only keeps her hold on my body as she drives.
If I keep her trusting me like this long enough, she’s sure to loosen her grip on my body, right?
I could run. Get out of range of her powers.
But then . . . what would I do? Keep running?
Do I want to spend the rest of my life hiding from her?
Would I be able to live with myself knowing what she has planned for the people of Aethera?
Who will she include in her list of targets? People who came to my casino? My old employees? My brother’s Tentacles?
A pair of mismatched blue eyes magnified by butterfly-frame spectacles unfurls in my mind.
Lola is the daughter of the most wanted crime boss in Aethera—perhaps all of Celestia. And a thief to boot. Would she be on Laurel’s list?
Dread slicks through me like oil, turning my stomach.
I cannot let that happen. Will not let that happen.
If I want to stop Laurel, I have to do as Enzo did with me when we were younger—behave as though I trust her tales, as though I’m trying, as though I want to supplicate to her stars.
Just long enough for her to trust me. To let me see the edges of her magic, the price it exacts from her, its limits and setbacks.
To loosen her grip on my body long enough for me to stop her before she hurts anyone.
Before she hurts Lola.
As we hurtle through Waterside, gravity tips sideways, just like that first night I glimpsed a dancer across my main gambling room at the Liar’s Den. My eyes follow where the world seems to be tilting, and I glimpse a nightclub called Luxuria through the window.
Lola is in there.
A stream of magic wheels away from me. What might Lola be using it for? What face might she be wearing? Who might she be speaking to?
Thinking about her brings back echoes of the words she shouted at me the last time we spoke. I don’t want the starsdamned prize! I want you, you ridiculous, sparkly, lying, cocky bastard.
Does she still?
Would she, if she knew the things I might do for Laurel?
Probably not.
That night, I told her, You do not want my trust, and you do not want my help.
You only think you do. I thought I was lying, pre-tending I’d tricked her into caring for me.
But, in truth, I glamoured her without realizing it the whole tournament, without magic and without illusion, to think I was someone who might be safe to love.
As long as that moonshard’s magic flows through my veins, through Enzo’s body, through Laurel’s heart, none of us are safe.
So I shove away thoughts of Lola. Shove away the longing and the curiosity until I cannot feel them anymore. Until there’s nothing but Laurel and the evidence she bears of my sins.
“What do you propose?” I ask.
She hides a small smile. “What do you know of St. James?”
I let out a slow exhale, thoughts whirring.
There are a few criminals worth investigating—people the world might be better off without.
While personally I would prefer to have them locked up, sending Laurel their way could buy me time to assess the extent of her powers and uncover any possible weaknesses.
St. James is an obvious target. His whole operation is full of liars and cheaters, criminals and sinners.
“Did you hear about Tomas Hildebard and Ignalus Price?” I ask.
She frowns. “No.”
“Hildebard was in my tournament,” I tell her. “He lost, and the secret he’d bartered was that he told St. James he’d killed my brother when, in fact, he had not.”
“And Ignalus Price?”
“Price was St. James’s second-in-command. He knew the corpse Hildebard supplied wasn’t really Enzo and kept it to himself,” I explain. “Their bodies were found in a warehouse last week.”
“So St. James punished them for their disloyalty,” she concludes. “What does that mean for us?”
“Price was his top dog, so someone new has likely taken his place.”
“Any idea who?”
“Well, there was another secret revealed during my tournament,” I say. “Ostena Vesnes.”
I think back to the player who faced off against Lola that last day.
“She made it to the final round. Her secret was that she and her lover, Forsyth Lott, had conspired together to enter the tournament to foil Hildebard. It is likely they knew Hildebard’s secret and hoped that if St. James found out about it, he would kill him and promote Forsyth to second-in-command. ”
“Forsyth Lott,” Laurel repeats, sloshing the name around in her mouth to test its taste. “How do we get our hands on him?”
“He plays Solstice at the Oyster Lounge most nights of the week.”
“Tell me where,” she says, nodding at the road ahead. “Let’s track him down.”
We find Forsyth at the bar. He’s a younger man, perhaps only a year or two older than I am.
Laurel’s donned gloves to hide her encrusted hands, but when she grasps my fingers, she presses a chip of voratium between our palms. I glance down at her, brows raised. She’s giving me access to my magic?
Instinct tells me to take it, to wield it, to run.
As though sensing that, her presence flickers through me, an awareness raising goose bumps on my skin. A warning. She can take hold of my body anytime she wants.
I steel myself. “Follow my lead,” I murmur.
Swallowing the trepidation in my gut, I approach Forsyth with her at my side.
A scent filters into my nose through the voratium.
Now that I’ve got it in my hand, I can sense secrets again, and Forsyth’s are rancid.
The sort I might have bargained out of him once.
I take the chair next to him, nodding at a deck of cards on the counter. “You up for a round of Solstice, sir?”
Forsyth tips the last of his drink down his throat before slamming his cup onto the counter. “You’re the Liar.”
“Hmmmm.” I cock my head. “You’ve been to my casino.”
“Only a handful of times. But I’ve heard stories.”
I release Laurel’s hand, pocketing the voratium, and begin to deal the cards. “Do tell.”
He leans in so close I could count the freckles on his sunburned nose.
“You know when someone is bluffing. Not because of tells or tics, like the rest of us, but because of your . . . magic.” He says the last word on a whisper, as though afraid someone might overhear.
His eyes flick warily to Laurel, who gives him a knowing smile.
I chuckle. “You’re not very religious, it seems.”
“I’m not a zenithic,” he retorts, nose wrinkling. Laurel stiffens next to me, and I press my knee to hers to reassure her.
“But you believe in the gods?” I set the deck between us and flip over a two of stars.
Forsyth runs a hand through his straw-colored hair. “I do.”
“So you’re one of the reformists,” I conclude with a grin.
“You don’t agree with what the zenithic priests claim about my brother and me being charlatans.
You think I’ve been bestowed with real power.
That I’m starblessed. Here to cleanse the earth and guide it back to belief or some such nonsense. ”
Laurel’s hand wraps around my elbow tight. A warning. I may play the Liar for her purposes, but insulting the gods? That might be too far. I give her a careful nod to let her know I understand.
A muscle twitches in Forsyth’s jaw. “Where else could your power have come from if not the gods?”
“Where, indeed?” I repeat. “You make the first bid.”
As if noticing the deck for the first time, he blinks, then shakes his head. “I’m no fool. We’ll play Riptide.”
“A game of strategy, not bluffing,” I say, lounging back in my stool. “You want an even playing ground.”
Forsyth tips his head. “Aye.”
“How would you feel about making things a bit more . . . fun? A wager of secrets. Whichever of us loses must reveal one to the other.”
Laurel’s grip on my arm relaxes. She sees where I’m going with this. Rather than finding a way to get rid of Forsyth, I’m looking for intel on other people to track down. A way into St. James’s network.
She’s pleased.
Forsyth swallows, considering.
“What could you do with a secret from a star made flesh, eh?” I ask softly. “What sort of life could you buy with such a treasure?”
He licks his lips and nods. “Very well. A secret it is.”
My mouth curls. A smile Forsyth will read as cunning and Laurel will read as confidence.
But it’s a lie, just like the rest of me.