Chapter Eighteen
LOLA
I’ve barely made it back to my bedroom before Arden is pounding on my door.
“Lola!” he shouts.
“What?” I pull open the door, pretending to be irritated at having my hoop practice interrupted.
“Enzo needs you,” he says breathlessly. “You should have seen it.” His face is still as pale as it was when I glamoured myself rising out of smoke in the other room.
“Seen what?”
“Enzo wants to tell you himself, I imagine.” He motions for me to follow him to the kitchen area, where Enzo and the rest of the Tentacles are all huddled around my invitation on the table.
“Look at this.” Enzo holds out his hand. In his palm is the pile of rings I removed soullight from as Nocturne, still black as midnight.
I fake confusion as shame burns inside me. The Unbreakable Lie curse faintly thrums, more of a crackle in the periphery of my awareness. A warning. Now that we’re both here, I need to be careful.
The memory of pulling his soullight into me is still sharp as ice on my skin.
It’s something I realized I could do a few weeks back when I was practicing at the Liar’s Den .
. . not only pull soullight out of a piece of voratium, but do so while also simultaneously channeling it into a second piece of voratium like a funnel.
“A bunch of empty rings?” I ask as though I have no idea what he’s going on about.
“They weren’t empty a few minutes ago. Nocturne came.”
“And . . . used your magic?”
“That’s the thing,” he says, eyes dancing. “She didn’t use the magic. She extinguished it.”
Isla hands me the invitation. “And she personally requested we enter this game.”
I pretend to read. “Did she say why?”
Enzo shakes his head. “But she took the magic out of my rings without using it, Lola. Snuffed out the soullight like it was a candle.”
I widen my eyes. “Do you think . . . ?”
“She could be the answer.” Our heart gallops like a death knell. It’s a hope I’ve never felt in him before, one that feels within his grasp. My stomach sinks.
I shouldn’t give a damn what my lies do to him. He deceived me for four years, and he’s still doing it. Still holding me prisoner and claiming to love me at the same time.
The Unbreakable Lie prickles as my heart rate rachets up.
Pretending I’m just overwhelmed with what he’s told me, I sink into one of the chairs, imagining the stars, imagining nights on my roof at home, imagining the smell of orange blossoms, soothing my emotions until they calm and the curse’s magic fades.
“Are you going to do it?” I ask him. “I mean . . . you have to, right?”
His eyes meet mine, and an understanding deeper than our shared heart passes between us, one borne of thousands of hours chasing the same desperate goal.
“We all are.” He gestures to the rest of the Tentacles. “As a team.”
I blink at him. “I don’t think it’s a team game—wouldn’t the invitation have said so?”
“The invitation didn’t say anything about what kind of game it is,” Jade points out. “And Nocturne didn’t specify, either.”
How on earth am I supposed to run the game while also pretending to play it? The idea of casting illusions, perhaps even sneaking off to be Nocturne when needed, while also working through the challenges with them is enough to make my head spin.
“I don’t know, Enzo,” I hedge. I should say no, but the Unbreakable Lie thrums to life once more, clamping the refusal behind my teeth. Clearly, a Lola who is not hiding anything would agree to help him. Pressure builds at the back of my neck as the magic tries to force me to nod.
I grit my teeth. “It’s just that . . . the last magical game I competed in kind of wrecked me.”
“It won’t be like the last one. I’ll be there.” He searches my face. “Please?”
Pain blooms at the base of my skull as the Unbreakable Lie’s influence mounts. Every nerve pulls taut.
“You know I’m not above groveling.” Enzo kneels, pressing his face to the floor at my feet like I’m royalty. “Please, please, please, Lola. I’ll steal you ten bags of snazzatazzles.”
“Enzo—”
“Fine. Twenty!” He looks up at me, interlocking his fingers in supplication.
“Offer her that silk robe you stole from the prince of Destar,” Jade pipes up, grinning.
“The prince of Destar?” I think back to when we took a train to Destar to steal several items from the palace there. “Wait, which one was the prince? The blond man with all the muscles?”
She nods, eyebrows wriggling. “I saw the way you looked at him.”
“How did I look at him?”
“Like you wanted to get your hands on his—”
“Jade!” My cheeks burn as I shake my head. “I do not need his robe.”
“Oh, but I think you do,” Enzo says, eyes glinting. “It smells just like him.”
“Fine!” I cry, throwing my hands up in defeat. “I will help you win Nocturne’s dumb game. Just please stop talking about the prince. And keep his robe.”
“But you want it.”
“No, I really, really don’t.” I laugh, the sudden release of pressure from the Unbreakable Lie making me lightheaded.
“Gods. Thank you, Luncheon.” He rises and pulls me into one of his signature bear hugs. “I think this is finally our way out. We win this game, we’ll be free. You’ll be free.”
Sadness twinges in our heart, and when he pulls back, he avoids my eyes.
“It’ll be fun,” Jade says, linking arms with me. “We can steal gowns from Kestal’s Dress Shop downtown.”
“We’ll have to rearrange the schedule to free up the game days,” Arden points out, nodding at the calendar on the wall. “Move up the Opalton job.”
“Lola, why don’t you come with me, and we’ll tackle that tonight? We’ll be back in time for this”—Enzo waves the invitation—“but probably not too much before.”
I certainly can’t leave, not when Estelle and I need to pull this game together in such a short amount of time. I need him far away—and preferably with as many of the Tentacles as possible so no one notices how often I’ll be sneaking out.
“Why don’t you take Arden and Soren instead?” I ask, mind whirring.
“What?” He furrows his brow. “Why?”
“I should probably investigate my father some . . .” The excuse solidifies as I speak. “He’s probably going to have plants in the game. I, out of all of us, am best suited to get the most information about who he might enter . . . Salazar, too.”
As the words tumble out of my mouth, my stomach churns. I hadn’t thought about the fact that my father would want to compete— but of course he will. He wouldn’t let a magical favor from Nocturne go to any of his enemies, and neither would Salazar.
Perhaps this game wasn’t as great of an idea as it seemed when it was just Estelle and me, alone and excited in the Liar’s Den. But I can’t back out now. I force a smile. “We want to be prepared, right?”
Enzo ponders. “It’s not a terrible idea.”
“What if St. James recognizes you?” Jade asks.
“I’ll use my tattoo and go noncorporeal,” I say, perhaps a bit too brightly. “Right, Enzo?”
“Uh . . . I guess so.”
Arden nods. “I think it’s brilliant.”
“You do?” Isla asks, wheeling around. “Because it sounds like a huge risk to me.”
“Not if she’s noncorporeal the whole time,” he points out. “He’s her father. She’s going to catch things we wouldn’t.”
“I trust you,” Enzo says, offering me a proud smile.
My gut lurches at the sound of my Unbreakable Lie repeated back to me. He shouldn’t trust me. Not anymore. None of them should.
“You and Arden,” Enzo continues, “get us all the intel you can on St. James. I’ll take Soren and Jade with me to Opalton tonight. Isla, you’re in charge of keeping watch at the Brig while we’re gone.”
“Fine, but I’d like the prince’s robe.” Isla plants her hands on her hips.
“You’ll have to fight Lola for it,” Enzo says, heading for the door, Jade and Soren scrambling after him. He tosses a wave back at me. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do while we’re gone.”
“So . . . I’m limited to making reckless decisions and eating my weight in sugar?”
He sticks his tongue out at me before disappearing into the hall.