Chapter Thirty-Six
LOLA
My stomach bottoms out as the door snicks shut behind Jade. “You need to leave,” Nic says softly. “Laurel will be here any minute.”
“Enzo?” I ask, approaching the Thief.
He stares blankly after the Tentacles. Septavia unwinds curiously from his wrist, crawling out of his sleeve and up his arm to his shoulder, popping one of her suckers against his jaw like a gentle prod.
He doesn’t react.
“Lola,” Nic warns.
The emptiness unfurling from Enzo’s heart yawns wide, and it is my fault this time. My Unbreakable Lie made him impervious to his Tentacles’ valid points, made him loyal to me when I did not deserve it.
I cost him the only family he has.
“I can’t leave him,” I croak, the words raw and serrated. As they should be.
But when Nic meets my gaze, I see those words struck him as well. His mouth thins as though bracing against the impact. “Of course you can’t. He did mark you his, after all.”
“Nic,” I say, but he’s already gathering his things.
“No. It’s fine,” he says coldly. “Everyone in the world can put their necks on the line for you, and you can keep choosing the one person who won’t.”
He shoves past me, and I grasp his elbow. “Where are you going?”
“Laurel will come for me.” His nostrils flare. “So unless you feel like being turned into a puppet, you’d better stand aside.”
“You’re not being fair.”
“Liars aren’t known for fairness,” he says, pulling out of my grasp.
“Nic, wait.”
He pushes through the door and lets it slam behind him.
My mind whirs. My heart aches. Anger and hurt battle in my chest.
“You all right?” I ask Enzo, choking on tears I refuse to let fall.
He doesn’t reply until I step in front of him. Then he swallows. “Delightful.”
“I wasn’t trying to—” I begin, but he holds up a hand to silence me.
“Not now.”
My stomach twists at the dejection in his tone.
I try to remind myself this mess is only temporary.
I just have to keep Enzo here long enough to fill up the voratium on the roof.
Once that is finished, the Unbreakable Lie will be undone, and I’ll be able to tell him and the Tentacles everything.
I’ll explain all my reasons to Nic, too.
I will fix this.
We just have to make it to the eclipse.
I glance at my watch. “Do you . . . ,” I ask gently, “. . . still want to play Nocturne’s game?”
He shrugs. “Might as well.” But gone is his enthusiasm, swallowed whole by the numbness in our heart.
“It’s nearly six in the morning,” I say, “which means we have two hours. Did you find any clues?”
“I didn’t see anything, and then your emotions . . . Well, then we came running to find you. I thought you were in trouble.”
Ostena and Forsyth flash across my memory, and panic jolts through me. Ostena recognized me. Which means it’s only a matter of time before my father shows up.
“Why don’t we keep looking?” I ask quietly. “See if we can’t find anything?”
“Sure, Lola,” he says before shuffling out of the room.
I follow, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach at the fact that he called me Lola and not an absurd nickname this time.
What have I done?
I spend the next several hours strategically planting illusionary clues to keep Enzo occupied until closer to dawn, but as sunrise ticks closer, the pain in our heart only sharpens. I’d better cut this short so he can get some rest.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I say, “I think the exit might be in the cellar. I saw one of the other players go down and never come out.”
Enzo nods stiffly. “Perfect. Let’s get out of here.” We make our way below, through the illusionary set piece and the door it hides, and into the crisp, country air.
It doesn’t take long for Enzo to spot an odd, glassy tree blending in on the edge of the theater’s grounds. As soon as we step into its shadow, the illusion in the voratium I buried in the ground beneath our feet ripples into view, another set of smoky ribbons twining into letters in the air.
Once lit up alive,
Where deceits thrive.
Your secrets deprived
And morality dives.
Enzo frowns, and my cheeks instantly heat. Certainly not my best poetry, but in my defense, I have a lot going on at the moment.
“What do you think it means?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I have no idea.”
“The most direct bit is probably the ‘where deceits thrive’ piece,” I muse.
Enzo looks up. “You’re thinking my brother’s casino?”
I inwardly thank the stars he caught on so quickly. I’m desperate to sink into my bed and be unconscious for a few hours.
“‘Your secrets deprived,’” Enzo goes on. “That’s pretty obvious, too.”
“Don’t act so excited,” I try to tease, but he doesn’t even grimace in response. Sighing, I steer him toward the street. “Why don’t we head home?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Not the Brig.”
“But we need to sleep before round three.”
He turns away, wooden. “Anywhere else.”
He’s afraid if we return to the Brig, he’ll have to face Soren, Arden, Jade, and Isla again. Or, perhaps worse, maybe they won’t be there.
“Why don’t we get a room at the motel across the street from the Liar’s Den?” I suggest, forcing a cheery tone in spite of my own grief. “Maybe we’ll be able to scope out whatever Nocturne’s up to from the window, see if any players show up early, that sort of thing.”
He sags. “Sounds great.”
I hail a cab, trying not to think about the way the man who has spent so long running from being a ghost now seems uncannily like one.
As soon as we get to our room, he sinks into the pillows, flickering into noncorporeality as he drops off into slumber.
As much as I’d like to join him, I still have to make sure round three is set to go.
I wait until I’m sure he’s asleep before slipping carefully back out into the city, praying he won’t wake until I return.
I draw in his magic. It resists, and when it finally fills my veins, it’s slow. A trickle.
This is to be expected, I reassure myself. We’ve drawn a lot of magic out by now. Of course there will be less of it.
Our plan is working.
When I reach the Liar’s Den roof, Estelle is already maneuvering the lumenoring equipment into place. As soon as she sees me, she rushes over, eyes gleaming. “The voratium,” she whispers. “It’s starting to glow!”
“Yeah, and their magic is lessening,” I tell her. “Do you think they’ll notice?”
“As long as they don’t figure out why before it’s all over, I don’t think it matters.”
“You’re probably right.” I manage a smile, moving the voratium into its place at the center of the setup.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, scrutinizing me.
I sigh. Estelle has always been far too sharp to miss anything. “The Tentacles left.”
“Left? As in . . . gone?”
“Yes. They think I’m up to something.” I flick dirt off the voratium. “And some of my father’s minions recognized me, so there’s a good chance he’ll do something stupid like show up with an army of bouncers to beat everyone to a pulp tonight.”
“Just what we needed. More bouncers.” Estelle angles a mirror up to the sky. “What are you going to do?”
“There’s nothing I can do, really,” I say. With Enzo asleep, the chasm of his grief is subdued, but it’s still there, dragging at me like fatigue alongside my own pain.
I hope Jade will forgive me. I hope they all will, once this is over.
“What about the Liar?” Estelle asks after a moment.
Nic’s face, so raw and unguarded before Ostena and Forsyth attacked, flashes across my memory.
“That’s complicated,” I say. “Can someone sedate me until this ends? I want a nap.”
“Unfortunately, you’re Nocturne, so . . . no, actually. No sedation allowed.” Estelle winks.
“Ugh, you’re such a killjoy, Estelle.”
She grins. “I know.”
Once everything is where it needs to be, I unravel Nic’s wards so people will be able to enter the casino for round three. Then, with fatigue and guilt and desperate hope eating at me, I trudge back to the motel room where Enzo is still sleeping soundly and collapse into the bed next to his.
As I drift into slumber, I try not to think of thieves or liars or shadow goddesses, but all three haunt my dreams, splitting my heart into smaller and smaller pieces until it stops beating.
And then they die.