You can also use iconHTML instead of manually added the icon.
Something like this should work:
import { apiInitializer } from "discourse/lib/api";
import { iconHTML } from "discourse/lib/icon-library";
export default apiInitializer((api) => {
api.onPageChange(() => {
const btnIcon = document.querySelector("#create-topic .d-icon");
if (btnIcon) {
btnIcon.outerHTML = iconHTML("plus");
}
});
});