Chapter Forty-Five
ENZO
I trust you.
Those three words echo as though Lola’s speaking them now. But she’s not. They’re from the night I found her on the beach after the tournament. The night I thought I’d lost everything and she reassured me I hadn’t.
Except . . . it wasn’t true, was it?
A cacophony of bells clangs in my ears.
I trust you. I trust you. I trust you.
She didn’t. She found out about her magic and didn’t tell me.
Other moments over the past several months hit me like blows one after the other.
Lola sneaking out of the Brig.
Defying me during the University of Aethera heist.
Offering to gather intel on her father when she’d been avoiding him for weeks.
The missing lumenoring equipment.
My Tentacles begging me to see her duplicity.
Lola knowing about Laurel, about Nic, about how to craft a moon-shard. Things that should have tipped me off that she was up to something, that she was not confiding in me the way someone who trusted me would.
I trust you.
A yawning, swallowing ache blooms in my chest right where Lola’s heart beats.
She lied.
A gunshot blasts in my ears, slamming me back into the present, and I blink, suddenly blissfully in control of my body again. I look up.
Smoke rises from Nic’s pistol. I swivel to see what he shot. The crowd has erupted into chaos—clearly the magic that was holding me captive has released everyone else as well. But there, in the back, I glimpse someone I haven’t seen in years.
Laurel.
She sways as strangely iridescent blood spurts from her chest. “Nic,” she gasps.
“No!” comes a scream from the right, and a woman I vaguely recognize pelts toward Laurel as she topples.
“That’s it?” I say, my voice weaker than I wish it were. “Laurel’s dead?”
Nic shakes his head, shoving the pistol into his belt. “She’s like us. She’ll heal soon. Though if her healing has slowed down as much as ours, it may take a couple hours.”
“We’re going to run, right?”
“She’d come after me.” He shoves past me, elbowing through the crowd not toward Laurel but toward . . .
“Lola!” I shout, diving after him as the memory of light detonating from her chest hits home. Thankfully, her heart still beats steady and sure inside of me, so I know she’s alive, but in what state?
“She’s unconscious,” Nic says, lifting her into his arms.
“I can carry her.” I reach for her.
He scowls at me. “No.”
“You’ve got to carry Laurel.” I jab a thumb back at where the familiar woman is kneeling over the bleeding one on the ground. “You’re the only one somehow impervious to her control. If she wakes up, she won’t be able to take over your body. Least risk.” I hold out my arms. “Hand Lola over.”
He glowers, chewing on his lip, then finally concedes, settling Lola carefully into my grasp. Once he’s released her, he cuffs me on the back of the head. “Don’t drop her.”
“I would never.”
He stalks over to the weeping woman. “Don’t worry, Estelle.”
She rounds on him, eyes blazing. “You shot her!” she snaps. “Don’t you dare tell me not to worry!”
“Her magic will heal the wound.” He crouches to lift Laurel, and her strange blood smears his suit as he turns to face me. His eyes flick past my shoulder, and he nods once. “Looks like your crew is all here, Enz.”
I follow his gaze. Soren, Isla, Arden, and Jade weave past the last fleeing stragglers of Laurel’s army toward me.
Soren meets my eyes. A stone drops in my gut. I almost killed him—well, Laurel did, but she used my magic to do it. And just yesterday I chose Lola over the four of them.
But Soren simply nods once, holding my gaze. “What can we do?”
“We have to get the bullet out before the wound closes,” the woman Nic called Estelle says. “Do any of you have tweezers?”
“There are some in the casino’s medical station,” Nic says. “She’ll be more secure inside, too.”
“Wait, we’re saving her?” Jade splutters. “I might have misread the situation, but it seemed to me she turned us all into puppets! She just killed that man with the black hair, she was about to kill Soren, and”— she points at Lola in my arms—“she tried to kill Lola, too!”
“That was . . . actually Lola’s own doing, I think,” I say, “but your other points stand, and I am in complete agreement. Why are we saving her?”
“If we leave her out here,” Nic explains, “she’ll just find another way to attack us once she wakes up.”
“So the Liar’s Den?” Estelle asks.
“The Liar’s Den,” Nic affirms, carrying Laurel across the street and shouldering through the front entrance, the rest of us following in his wake.
Nic leads us to a medical office and settles Laurel onto a bed.
I set Lola on a stretcher Jade finds in the closet, propping her head up with pillows as I try not to notice the gentle way Nic is treating Laurel.
Despite everything that woman just did to all of us, he still cares. It makes me want to punch him.
“Now what do we do?” I ask as Nic gathers a medical kit to treat Laurel’s wound, which is still weeping iridescent blood. “She’s going to wake up any second.”
“Tie her up,” Soren says. “Gag her.”
Nic shakes his head. “She can control people’s bodies. Binding her won’t do a damn thing.”
“Bury her,” I suggest, and Estelle rounds on me.
“You will not!” she snaps.
“I’d like to see her try to control anybody with six feet of dirt over her head.”
“I’d like to see you try to be a smart-ass with six feet of dirt over your head,” Estelle retorts.
“You’d be surprised at how talented I am in smart-assery.” I cross my arms, glaring.
“Doubtful.”
“Is there a distance factor to her magic?” Isla asks Nic. “If we separate her far enough from people, is there a point at which she would not be able to control anybody?”
He frowns, pulling on a pair of gloves. “Seems to be, yes. Though that distance lengthens the better she knows your soullight. It’s likely she could control Estelle from a great distance, since they’re friends. Enzo, too, though maybe not quite as far, since they grew up together.”
“What about you?” I ask, shuffling through a nearby drawer for medical supplies I can use to check Lola. “Why didn’t she rummage around in your body?”
Nic opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Gritting his teeth, he extracts a set of tweezers from the medical kit and leans over Laurel’s wound.
A realization prickles through me. Lola tried to tell me a thousand times that Nic was cursed just like I was. She said he wasn’t able to tell the truth about himself. I always thought his riddling manner of speech was an act, but now that I know Lola was right, the pieces slot into place.
He can’t answer my question because his magic is holding his truth captive.
“Just . . . ,” Nic tries again, pulling bullet fragments from Laurel’s body and dropping them into the nearby sink, “. . . try not to focus on the bad things you’ve done. Anything you feel guilty about. The less shame you feel, the less she’ll be able to access you.”
“All right,” Jade interrupts. “Isla, Soren, Arden, and . . .” She gestures at Estelle, who supplies her name. “. . . Estelle, why don’t we head to the kitchens? I imagine there’s some food we could scrounge up while Nic finishes with the wound.”
“But Laurel—” Estelle begins.
“We’re not doing Laurel any favors standing here watching him work.”
“What about Enzo?”
I load up my arms with the supplies I’ve found. “I’m going to see if I can wake Lola.”
“Come on.” Jade presses a hand to Estelle’s arm. “You’ll feel better if you eat.”
Estelle studies Laurel’s wound for several long moments.
Nic gives her a reassuring nod. “Laurel will be all right, Estelle.”
“She’d better be.” She sniffs and turns on her heel, following the Tentacles out of the room.