Chapter Fifteen
LOLA
When I get back to the Brig, Enzo is waiting. He lounges on my bed, arms bent behind his head, staring up at the sky-light in my ceiling that lets in the watery light from above.
“Enzo.” I shut the door behind me.
“Did you know that fish don’t get new scales as they grow bigger?” he muses. “Their existing scales just enlarge over time, forming rings on them like tree trunks. You can count the rings to figure out how old they are.”
I blink. “Uh, no. I did not know that, in fact.”
“Also.” He pushes to sitting with a lazy grin. “Seahorses use their eyes separately. One can point forward while the other points backward so it’ll see two things at once.”
“That’s . . . fascinating?” I let out a little laugh, trying to figure out where he’s going with this.
“Maybe you were a seahorse in another life, Leopard.” His eyes twinkle. “Or maybe you’re secretly seaspawn like me.”
Heat flares in my stomach as I drop into my desk chair and force a laugh. “Maybe.”
He knows I’m not like him, that I have magical properties different from his and Nic’s. How much he knows, though, the Unbreakable Lie has refused to allow me to ask, and he certainly hasn’t given up the information of his own free will.
“You left,” he says, grin fading. Septavia crawls out of his sleeve and slinks down his leg.
I wait for the Unbreakable Lie to buzz under my skin as I reach down so Septavia’s tentacles curl around my fingers, but it doesn’t. The magic is quiet.
Enzo still believes I’m on his side.
“I’m sorry.” I turn my hand as Septavia fits her suckers to my tat-too.
“I know it’s against the rules. I just .
. . after our argument . . .” I trail away as the memory of him refusing my offer last night—the Unbreakable Lie in exchange for my heart—resurfaces hot and sharp.
My gaze drops to the pendant on his chest. It glows faintly purple, beating in time with my pulse.
I’m seized with a sudden, intense desire to snatch it.
“I’m not worried about you betraying us.” He blows out a breath. “But the rest of the Tentacles . . . Well, they aren’t taking kindly to you being the only one allowed to skirt the rules.”
“Understandable,” I say as the resentment twisting through me twinges with guilt. It’s not just Enzo I’m lying to. It’s Soren, Isla, Arden, and Jade, too.
He gets to his feet, holding out his hand for Septavia to crawl back into her spot. “We can’t have animosity among us, or we’ll start making mistakes.”
“Got it.” I force a smile. “Won’t happen again.”
“And . . . to be fair to the others . . .” He grimaces. “You’re on washroom duty next week.”
I sigh. “Fair.”
“Good.” He tugs his sleeve into place over Septavia. “You can’t see out of both your eyes when they’re pointing different ways like a seahorse, can you?”
“Uh . . . no. Sorry.”
“Rats. Let me know if that ever changes. It would be a useful skill to add to our arsenal.”
I laugh, and he presses a thumb to the tattoo on my arm, drawing the soullight I’ve stored there into his ring.
As the light fades from my skin and fills the metal, I search his face for signs the moonshard’s magic might be taking over, tainting him the way Estelle described.
I study his pores for signs of a starlit scar.
I check his eyes for hints of the coldness I glimpsed in Nic’s.
But it’s just Enzo, same as always.
He’s still safe, it seems. For now.
“I’ll break the curse.” He wraps his hand around our pendant. “You’ll have that freedom you asked me for soon. I promise.”
So many words ensnare themselves in my throat. I want to tell him about Estelle, about Laurel, about the eclipse and our plan to save him.
But I don’t. I’m done begging the brothers to save me. Done waiting for others to determine my fate. So all I do is nod. “Okay, Enzo.”
He checks his watch. “I need to be going.”
“You have a job tonight?”
“Just a supply run to stock up for the Opalton job. We need some rope and other things.”
I pretend I’m just remembering he had that supply run tonight, pretend I’m not planning to use that distraction to set the next part of my plan with Estelle into motion.
I bid him farewell as he exits, then shut the door with shaking hands.
Tonight might be the most difficult part of our plan for Nocturne’s game, and Enzo needs to be completely occupied if I’m going to get away with it. Because what I need to do now will have terror roaring through our heart like icefire.
I’m going to speak to Nic.
This time, when I sneak out of the Brig, I make sure to cover my tracks.
I set three pieces of voratium on my bed infused with an illusion of me sleeping.
I haven’t quite finessed the art of creating lasting illusions as well as Nic did in his casino, but I’ve practiced enough that as long as anyone who checks on me doesn’t get too close, they should be fooled.
Then I take a deep breath and trek back to Waterside. Once I’ve reached the street, I grasp at Nic’s magic—not to wield it, but to find him.
The tension in my stomach mounts as I follow its tether through Aethera. I didn’t want to have to interact with Nic—in fact, I still don’t. But I need to make sure both he and Laurel come to my game.
My body buzzes. How will he react? Will he try to shoot me again? Will he apologize?
Which would be worse?
I skirt a corner and freeze, staring at the window across the street.
It’s a church, illuminated from within by flickering candles. I stare through the glass, and the world dissipates until the only thing remaining is the young man on the other side sitting in the back pew.
I recognize him instantly, though I’ve never seen him like this. Bent over with his hands knotted as though in prayer, his fedora low on his brow casting a shadow over his scar that accentuates its glow. His jaw tight, his shoulders rigid.
Something is wrong.
His eyes—especially the one that sparkles like a jewel—glow in exactly the same eerie way as his scar. With a cold, muted light as though fragments of soul gutter within. But it’s not the light that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, nor is it his grim expression.
It’s the ice in his gaze.
Hard like steel, it roves over the other parishioners, then surveys the robed priests as they bustle about. And when they speak to him, his grin is so false my skin prickles. It’s an expression so familiar and yet somehow so foreign.
My stomach turns over, making the back of my tongue burn. Who is this Nic?
I search his magic for signs he’s using illusions to make himself appear as unsettling as he does, but there is nothing. For once in all the time I’ve known Nic, it seems to just be him.
That realization slams into me, and I stagger backward, foot scraping on the edge of the sidewalk so I nearly topple into the street.
You have been glamoured.
Could he have been telling the truth when he said that? Could this be the real Nic? Could the person I thought I knew, the one I touched and kissed, be no more than another disguise he put on, just like the showman one he wore onstage?
Steeling myself, I cross to the door and push it open. He turns toward me, the way he always did before. Like something in him senses me. But when he meets my eye and grins, it is a stranger’s smile.
“Come to pray, little thief ?” he asks when I reach his pew.
The nickname feels like a kick in the stomach, but I stifle the wince, wishing there were some way to bury our past where it cannot hurt me. “Sure.”
I sink into the seat next to him.
“I wondered when I’d see you,” he says.
“That you can say that means you didn’t wonder at all,” I retort before I can help myself.
“Still spitting venom with that vicious tongue, it seems.”
His words ignite an anger far more acidic than any I felt in his casino. My fists clench. “You’d know all about my tongue, wouldn’t you?”
He stiffens, his smile looking suddenly stricken.
“The hour is getting l—” he begins, but then his shoulders bunch, and a wolfish, wholly foreign smile curls his upper lips over his teeth.
He cups my jaw, fingers threading into the curls behind my ear.
He cocks his head, his fedora skimming the hairs above my forehead as his attention darts to my mouth, his lashes fluttering over those strangely glowing eyes.
“You know, it’s possible I’ve forgotten,” he breathes, and the timbre of his voice rumbles through my whole body.
And this is all wrong, not at all like him, but my body responds, shivering with want. Trembling as my mouth waters to taste him all over again.
“Care to remind me, Astra?”
I shiver. “Why are you calling me that?”
“What else would I call you?” He cocks a brow, and for a moment, it’s close enough to the Nic I knew, teasing and torturous, that I can almost convince myself to believe it.
But it’s a lie. All of it was, all of it is.
“Little thief ?” he says softly, like a test.
I pull away, feeling sick.
He does not sit back. Instead, he studies me, as though entire stories are written on my face. “Ah, so you do care for me.”
“I thought I did once,” I admit. “But that wasn’t you. And neither is this.”
“Isn’t it?” His eyes glow colder as he scours my face like I hide a thousand secrets behind it, like he hasn’t already seen so many of them. “The truth is, you don’t know, do you?”
I scowl, crossing my arms.
“The Liar,” he continues. “How many faces has he worn? How many parts has he played? Which, if any, is real? Or are they all a farce?”
“Does he even know who he is?” I retort.
“Does anyone truly know who they are?” He twirls his snake-eye ring around his finger.
“I do.”
“Of course you do.” He says it like he’s placating me, and it strikes a nerve. “You are a liar, just like—”
“You—” I snap, fury biting through me, “are not this, Donnic Sinclair.”
His name on my mouth seems to crack something in him, a split-second break in his veneer. He stares at me, pupils dilating, that cold glow guttering, and for a moment I see him. Not whoever this is. Him.
But before I can grasp onto that, the mask slams back into place so quickly I cannot tell if I imagined it.
“You can believe that,” he says smoothly, “if you like.”
Was what I just saw another illusion? A glamour to trick or tempt me?
Why, though? If this self-obsessed casino lord who doesn’t give a damn about me is truly who he is, why would he pretend there’s something in him that matches the illusion he showed me during the tournament? What benefit would there be in that?
He crosses his arms, and the corner of a piece of white parchment crinkles out of his pocket. Could that be . . . ? Yes, it looks like it’s one of the invitations I put into the newspapers today for Nocturne’s game.
I nod at it. “Are you going?”
He glances down, then seizes it and smooths it on his knee. “Why? Are you going to be there?” I wait for him to give me a look that says he knows exactly who Nocturne is, but he doesn’t.
“Maybe,” I say, fingers knotting as my mind whirs through possibilities. How can I convince him to participate without showing my hand? “Do you care if I’m there?”
“You always make things more fun.” His eyes dance, and my heart lurches.
“What do you know of Nocturne?”
He shrugs. “Seems nobody really knows much about her, do they?”
“The prize,” I say, “for the game. What would you do with it?”
“What would a seaspawn like me need a magical favor for?”
I tip my head in close, as though I’m about to say something I don’t want anyone to overhear. “I’m kind of worried about what someone like St. James would do with it.”
“Why’s that?” he asks lazily, as though this conversation is the least engaging one he’s had in weeks.
“Well, if Nocturne has power over darkness, and our souls are literally made of light . . . don’t you think it could be possible for her to exterminate anyone just by snuffing out the light inside them?”
The corners of his eyes tighten. “That would be terrifying. Luckily for me, seaspawn cannot die.”
But I saw it. Somewhere in there, he latched on to it. I can only pray he shares this with Laurel. That the idea of being able to have Nocturne do her dirty work for her is appealing enough to get her to want to play the game.
“You should enter,” I say brightly as he folds the parchment. “You don’t strike me as the sort of man to bow out of a gamble.”
A grin sparks on his face. “It’s not a gamble if you know you’ll win.”
“I don’t know, she seems rather fearsome to me.”
“She doesn’t stand a chance.”
I imagine facing off against him as Nocturne the way I did last night with Enzo. Instantly, the echo of his gunshot reverberates through my head, and my heart clenches.
I shouldn’t ask about last night. I don’t want to know, not truly, but the question spills out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Why did you shoot at me?”
His eyes lock on mine, cold and foreign and so not like the eyes I’ve dreamed about for months. And yet, somehow, beneath whatever icy layer shrouds him, I swear I almost see a flicker of him yet again.
Wishful thinking.
“You probably have theories,” he says softly. “Why don’t you pick one of them?”
His words hit cold and hard, and the Unbreakable Lie’s magic surges. I’m getting too caught up in this moment, and it seems I’ve drawn Enzo’s attention.
I push to my feet.
I can’t do this. Not when whoever that stranger is looks so much like Nic. Not when it feels like the one person who ever was honest with me is nothing but another deception come to unravel me all over again.
But before I duck out into the night, I glance back.
He stares, his smile faded, his posture too still.
Swallowing the tears threatening to pull me under, I shove out into the street and tighten my jacket as I hurry back toward the beach.
Estelle was right; the magic has taken over.
Nic is gone.