Chapter Forty
LOLA
By the time the taxi turns onto the street where my father’s house stands proudly on the side of the hill, I’m shaking.
Enzo is still holding my hand, and he squeezes it every few moments, but whether it’s to calm my nerves or out of frustration for how much I clearly care about Nic, I cannot tell.
The emotions from his heart are still muted enough that they’re difficult to decipher.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers before handing the driver a small pile of plats and helping me out of the cab.
I stare at the iron gate with its gold finials, the gargoyles on pedestals on either side of the drive, the carefully trimmed hedges that line the fifteen-foot-high marble wall that stretches acres in either direction.
The cab rolls away, leaving us alone and quiet on the polished drive.
“Have you been here before?” Enzo asks.
I cannot breathe. My heart gargles in the back of my throat. All I manage is a small shake of the head.
A thousand times I imagined coming here, but it was supposed to be with my father by my side, the two of us riding in the back of one of his sleek motorcars with a tuxedoed driver in the front seat.
It was supposed to be during broad daylight, when I could take in the vibrant colors of the foliage that lined the drive.
It was supposed to be the beginning of a new chapter in my life where I no longer had to be kept hidden away, where I got to be a daughter, where I got to exist.
But tonight, it is cold and dark, and, if we’re lucky, we’ll get in and out without running into my father at all.
I move forward, but Enzo’s grip tightens, and he nods at a small security booth near the front gate.
Wordlessly, he presses some voratium between our palms once more, pulling my corporeality away so we disappear in unison.
Again, it feels weaker than usual, so I add my own flow of magic to accomplish it, praying he doesn’t notice.
Together, we approach the gate and forge through, toppling into the grass on the other side. Enzo lands on top of me, and our hands break apart at the impact, bodies returning to physicality at once.
“You need,” I groan, shoving him off of me, “to go easier on the pastries, Enz.”
He scoffs, offended. “I am pure muscle.”
We scramble to our feet to face the mansion in the distance.
It’s a bright white monstrosity with peaked black roofs and windows glimmering in spotlights.
The expansive lawn stretches before it, lush and expertly trimmed, adorned with periodic weeping willows whose limbs rustle in the nighttime breeze.
The breath catches in my throat. It’s like a palace, exactly as Father described.
I imagine kicking a ball on this lawn, climbing the limbs on these branches, learning to operate a motorcar on this drive—maybe even the motorcar that’s parked near the entrance.
I can almost see Father laughing in the passenger seat, warning me to brake before I crash into the house.
“You all right?” Enzo whispers.
I don’t answer. He knows I’m not. Our heart is full of pain—pain he knows he had a part in causing. Because this life might have been mine, this world might one day have belonged to me, if not for him.
But I cannot be upset with him anymore. Not truly. Part of me knows, deep down, that I never would have kicked a ball on this lawn or climbed that tree or learned to drive here. Father showed me who he was the other day. Who he’s always been.
That man would have kept me locked up forever.
I should be grateful to Enzo. He freed me. Opened my eyes, in a roundabout way.
But he didn’t mean to, and that’s the part that stings like a shard of glass embedded far too deep.
I don’t meet his gaze—I don’t know if I could. The regret and the shame simmering alongside my hurt is too intense. I don’t want to pity him, and I certainly don’t want to comfort him. Instead, I clear my throat and say, “Let’s go.”
He pauses as though he means to speak, but I shake my head before he can.
“Please, don’t.”
Enzo nods. “Okay.”
“Where do you think Nic is?”
“I suppose we can split up and search for clues.”
I finally look at him, raising a brow. “You’d let me out of your sight—here, of all places?”
He offers me a sad smile. “You can take care of yourself. Plus . . .” He pauses, chewing on his lip. “I trust you.”
Those words cleave through me yet again, echoes of the Unbreakable Lie I spoke just four months ago, words that have turned to shackles around my wrists, my heart, my mouth. I wish he would stop saying that.
I swallow the bile rising in the back of my throat and offer him a small smile. “All right, Enz. Let’s do it.”
The mansion is even more dazzling inside.
Chandeliers hang in every room and hallway.
Glossy floors stretch through the entirety of the home, cloaked in expensive, plush rugs.
Massive paintings hang from the walls, interspersed with statues in alcoves and decorative vases.
Staircases spill like rippling silk framed by iron-and-gold bannisters.
We part ways as soon as we cross through the main entry.
To his credit, Enzo doesn’t even warn me to be careful. He simply gives me a meaningful look—one that communicates he’ll be paying attention to the sensations in our heart in case I need him—before vanishing through the wall into the nearest dining room.
The house does not creak in the night, and the silence raises the hairs on my arms. Opulent furniture hulks like strangers in the dark, lit only by the watching moon in the windows.
Cabinets stocked with crystal wineglasses glitter, champagne bottles stacked in diagonal rows on the walls watch me like dozens of eyes, and cold, expansive fire-places yawn wide as though to swallow me whole.
Room after room I scour, only pausing when a butler scurries past, holding my breath even though Enzo’s magic has me noncorporeal.
Nic’s magic pulls me downward, but I can’t find stairs. As I slink along one hall, my attention catches on a deep mahogany door. Its handle glints, the carvings on it worn smooth by use. Frowning, I duck through it.
The room on the other side brings up a memory so sharp it stops me short.
Wall-to-wall shelving on every side. A white tiger-skin rug with a stuffed head baring sharp teeth. A massive fireplace with an intricate mantel.
This was the room in Tomas Hildebard’s secret that was revealed at the Liar’s Den. A corpse wrapped in burlap was dragged through this very door, and my father punched its broken face, holding back an agonized rage that was the first glimpse I ever got that he might have mourned my death.
Is he happy I didn’t die? Or angry I haven’t come back? Does he think I’ve forsaken him?
I do not have time to look through his things. I need to find Nic and get out of here—back to Nocturne’s game, back to Estelle and Laurel, who are surely on their way to the casino now.
I give the office one last, aching look, breathing in deep the scent, so familiar tears film over my vision.
As I turn away, my gaze catches on a frame on his desk.
I pause. The photo is old, taken with what must have been an ancient camera.
A much younger image of my father—with darker hair and fewer lines around his mouth—smiles up at me.
A woman with pale blond hair nestles against his side wearing a simple cardigan and a dress cinched around her narrow waist with a belt.
His arm rests around her shoulders, and she looks up at him with an adoring smile on her rosebud mouth and a sparkle in her eyes.
I frown, picking up the frame to inspect the image closer.
Could this be my mother, perhaps? I’ve never seen a photo of her before— Father rarely spoke of her.
All I know is that their relationship had been short and forbidden, a secret from the public, and that she’d died giving birth to me.
That was all he would say before promptly changing the subject.
I run my thumb along the image. She certainly has my hair color— my natural color, that is. And the line of her jaw is exactly like mine. Her nose even turns upward slightly the way mine did before it was broken.
Scrawled at the bottom of the photo are the words Love you forever. Nell.
Chewing on my lip, I set the frame down, dazed.
Nell Lightsworn? As in . . . the woman whose notes Enzo and I have been studying for weeks? The one who created the moonshard that cursed him and his brother?
What had Enzo’s book—the one I found in the hidden compartment— called her?
A conduit? I frown, trying to recall what the definition had said .
. . Hadn’t it been that while starblesseds were altered by unstable soullight, conduits were altered by it in its pure form?
That’s right; they essentially become like voratium, able to channel magic from the skies.
I wheeze.
Enzo hid that book, likely to keep me from ever seeing it. Does he know Nell is my mother?
Puzzle pieces rain into place. Perhaps this is how he found out about me—through my father. He might have scoured this office much like I am doing now, come across this photograph, and learned of my mother’s involvement with the moonshard that cursed him. Discovered Nell had a daughter.
And if Nell was a conduit because of her exposure to starlight during the crafting of the moonshard—her very genetic code being rewritten to be able to channel magic—then wouldn’t it make sense for her offspring to carry that same genetic code?
I’m a conduit, like my mother before me. That is why I can channel Enzo’s magic. And Nic’s. And perhaps others’, too.
As though on cue, the Unbreakable Lie rattles under my skin. Enzo is looking for me, and I’ve been too distracted to notice. I immediately zero in on his emotions—a ball of trepidation growing stronger by the second.
He’s on his way.