Chapter Eight
LOLA
The rest of the Tentacles drop off to sleep soon after Enzo leaves, and the Brig goes quiet, but even as I pore over the pages I tore from Nell Lightsworn’s journal, I cannot seem to focus.
Each time I close my eyes, Nic lurks like a specter in the recesses of my mind.
One I try to loathe but still somehow, desperately, want.
Stashing the notes inside the briefcase, I force myself into bed for some sleep, but Nic haunts my dreams as I toss and turn.
As my wristwatch nears eight in the morning, I give up trying to rest and clamber out of my blankets, hoisting the briefcase out from underneath the mattress. If I can’t sleep, I might as well go stow this where Enzo won’t come across it.
Blinking into noncorporeality, I skirt past a dozing Isla, who is supposed to be standing sentry, and forge into the sea.
Golden sunlight dapples the waves as I trudge to the beach.
The Liar’s Den sulks ahead, haggard despite the cloudless morning.
I angle toward the bushes growing wild around the eastern corner of the building and run my fingers over the wall until I find the place I’m looking for.
Four months ago, the Liar vanished, leaving behind his casino barred with dozens of illusions to keep people out just as he once did to repel Enzo.
But I’ve come back nearly every day, pulling apart the illusionary strands of his magic to slip inside, search his office for information about my powers, practice without risk of discovery, and store my contraband voratium in his vault where Enzo and the other Tentacles won’t stumble upon it.
I let my vision go hazy, and the glimmering strands of Nic’s illusions sprout inside the marble. Chewing on my lip, I unravel a braid of light and shove my way through.
Somehow, despite the dankness in the air and the moths eating holes through the curtains, the scent of Nic curls like a whisper around me. Whiskey and cinnamon and sometimes a hint of cigar smoke.
My footsteps echo as I make my way into the dark. Dust has gathered on the floor, but the prints from all my other visits have worn a steady trail toward the elevator.
Usually, I rush past the main gambling hall; glancing inside feels like disturbing a grave. But today, with the memory of Nic and his gun tying my stomach in knots, I pause at the doorway for a breath.
The room is a tomb. Tables and chairs slouch like gravestones. Shadows hang like spiderwebs. The chandeliers that once reminded me of waterfalls droop like the limbs of a rotting willow.
I step inside, and darkness swallows me whole. My footsteps hiss like a warning as I shuffle to the stage.
It is empty, yet in my mind’s eye, I see him again.
And though I know it will only hurt, though I know it will fix nothing, I draw in an icy sliver of Nic’s magic, and I cast him there on that stage.
Dressed in his signature purple tuxedo and black shirt, wearing his purple fedora tipped low over a sparkling scarred eye.
Not the unfeeling man I saw in the street last night, but the one I knew during the tournament.
The one I was growing to care for.
We stare at each other for several heartbeats, the illusion and I, and everything the Unbreakable Lie has forced me to hide from, every hurt and pain and fear blazes through me alongside the anger I already pounded into my pillow back in the Brig.
My body vibrates with it, molten and freezing at once, electric and all-consuming.
You do not want my trust, and you do not want my help. You only think you do. You have been glamoured.
I’ve puzzled over the last words he spoke to me constantly over the past months, trying to decipher whether our relationship was a lie or if those words were.
But I don’t allow myself to trip into that hungry abyss this time.
It doesn’t matter whether the relationship was real or glamour.
He made it clear he didn’t want me. He left.
And now he’s back. With Laurel.
I’ve kept the hurt at bay, but this morning, with Enzo asleep and far away and the Unbreakable Lie mercifully quiet, I let it roll through me like a tide. Ebb and flow. Because it’s mine, as so few things are anymore.
A sharp ding shatters the silence, and a motor hums to life, jolting me out of my reverie. Illusion-Nic dissolves as the distinctive sound of the elevator doors opening and closing echoes from the hall.
Stomach dropping, I disintegrate and dart to the doorway, peering down the hall to where the elevator dial slowly ticks toward the upper levels.
Someone is here. Could it be Nic?
Desperate hope slams through me sharp enough to sting, and I shake my head, trying to force it out. If Nic is here, he’s not going to want to see me. And even if he did, it would likely only be to take another shot at me from closer range so he doesn’t miss.
Trembling, I reach out tentatively with his magic, pulling it in like I did a moment ago, this time paying attention to which direction it’s coming from.
Not above. Somewhere east.
He is not the one in the elevator.
Could it be Laurel? Why would she come without Nic? How did she get past his wards?
The elevator stops at the top floor.
“This is a foolish idea,” I mutter, stowing my briefcase in the corner where it won’t be seen and darting to the stairs, channeling the rest of the strength I stole from the man last night to rush up all twenty-six flights.
The combination of the boosted energy alongside my noncor-poreality means I’m barely winded by the time I reach the top floor and emerge into the hallway.
My smudged trail of footprints leads from the elevator to Nic’s suite. Judging by the lack of any deviations in the path, that must be where the stranger has gone, too. Slipping my dagger from my belt, I melt through the door.
The bed is still rumpled, the way it was when I last saw it, the orchids nodding in the golden sunlight, and Nic’s old hoop leaning against the wall next to a pile of aerial silks.
Movement draws my gaze to a shape on the other side of Nic’s bed.
A cloaked stranger crouches next to the mattress.
They shove their hand beneath to feel around between springs before sighing and turning to riffle through the nightstand drawers.
I slip closer, trying to peek around their hood, when they gasp, pulling out the leather bag full of old, worn playing dice I myself once found in the same drawer.
A slick of ice clamps around my heart.
Last time I entered this room and stole a tawdry, unassuming die, it turned out to be one of Nic’s secrets disguised to look unremarkable. Could this bag be another set he might have left behind on accident?
The intruder raises their hand to toss the dice onto the bed.
I react before I can even think, relinquishing my grasp on noncorporeality and wresting them from their hand. My heart roars in my ears, but I don’t allow myself to consider why it matters to me if this person invades Nic’s privacy.
The intruder grunts, swinging a fist into my jaw. I hook a leg behind their knees, slamming them onto the bed, pinning them beneath me.
Their hood falls away, and I blink, taking in the familiar features.
“Lola?” The stranger’s eyes widen. “What the depths are you doing here?”
Her face registers, and a laugh bubbles out of me. I scramble off, yanking her upright so I can throw both arms around her shoulders. “Estelle!”