The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (read an ebook week .TXT) 📕

was nothing he could do for the kid—for his own brother—because he was no better than his father. After all, everything he’d accomplished in his life had been built from scheming and lies, grift and larceny—all qualities he’d believed he’d inherited from the man who had refused to claim him. He was his father’s son, wasn’t he? Whatever success he might have found had always felt tainted with that truth. It was why Harte pushed everyone away, including Esta.

But the boy was also his father’s son, and the child was an innocent. As Harte had once been. Suddenly he saw the truth that he’d been denying for too long. The blood in his veins meant nothing. The rot at the center of his life had always been his father, but the choices Harte had made through the years, those were his own. They always had been.

With a flourish of his hands that had the men tensing to attack, Harte produced the crown, seemingly out of thin air. He saw Sammie’s wonder—and his relief. The small body seemed to shudder at the sight of the Dragon’s Eye, as though he understood that he’d somehow been given a reprieve.

Harte ignored the swirling spots in his vision and the way his muscles quaked with exhaustion as he held the crown over his head, making sure that everyone who had surrounded him could see it. Even in the overcast day, the gold seemed to glow, and the stone in the center of the headpiece shone with a peculiar light.

Seshat rattled the bars of her cage as she understood what he meant to do.

His father smiled cruelly, elbowing the man next to him. “I told you he would give in, with the right pressure.”

Harte didn’t pay any attention to the man who’d fathered him. Not his father, just a man, and a meager excuse for one at that. His attention was on the boy. On his brother. Blood dampened the collar of the boy’s shirt, and fear was stark in his expression, but Harte would not allow the child to be harmed. He would give his brother a chance at a different life.

“It will be okay,” he told Sammie, who had started crying. “I won’t let them hurt you.” It was a promise he would go to any length to keep.

“Put the crown on the ground in front of you and step back,” the man holding Sammie said. “Carefully now.”

Harte lowered the crown, struggling against the fury of Seshat’s rage and his own weakened body to keep himself from toppling over. Before he placed it on the ground, he spoke directly to the boy. “I’m sorry,” he told Sammie. “You didn’t deserve any of this. You don’t deserve his fists or his anger. They come from his failings. Not yours. Remember that. Whatever happens, I want you to remember that you’re a thousand times better than he’ll ever be.”

Harte had barely gotten the final word out when he was tackled from behind. The crown fell from his hands, and before he could fight his way free, he was pinned to the ground, his face pressed into the dirty street with a boot to the back. He looked up to see his brother staring at him, his eyes wide. Sammie was still being held in place, but the man had lowered the knife from his throat.

“I think I can manage one more trick,” Harte said, barely able to get out the words. “Would you like to see it?”

The boy’s chin trembled, but he nodded ever so slightly.

“Remember what I told you,” Harte said, and he managed to hold on to consciousness long enough to gather the strength he needed to grab tight to his affinity and push it into the hands that held him down.

FATED

1904—Denver

Esta took one more look before she eased the canvas back over the tent’s entrance. All around the tent, people had gathered, Guard and Syndicate alike. Among the crowd Esta spotted the glint of the marshal’s stars and silvery medallions that glowed an eerie blue in the twilight.

“It was Cordelia’s shot,” she realized. “It must have triggered the Guard’s medallions.”

“We have to get her to a doctor.” North adjusted Maggie in his arms.

“There’s no way out,” Esta said. “It’s as bad as when we were trapped on the train.”

“You got us out of that mess,” North said, his voice rising with his desperation.

“I had my affinity then,” she reminded him. “With the Quellant—”

Maggie was trying to say something, but the pain was twisting her words.

“Shhh, sweetheart,” North crooned. “We’re going to figure this out.”

But Maggie was shaking her head. “She can do it.…” She met Esta’s eyes. “There’s an antidote. In my pouch.”

North dug into Maggie’s pouch and came up with a red tablet that looked similar in size and shape to the Quellant that Esta had been taking ever since Texas and offered it to her. She felt the warmth of its energy wash over her palm, but she didn’t raise it to her lips.

“Go on,” North said, frowning. “Maggie’s running out of time. We all are.”

George was eyeing them with an uneasy curiosity, but Esta couldn’t be concerned with him.

“What about Seshat?” she asked.

“What about her?” North growled.

“You know what happened before, in Corsicana and with the train. You still might not believe I’m telling the truth about her, but I know I am.”

“Wasn’t Seshat,” Maggie said, coughing the words with some effort.

“You don’t know that—”

“I do.” Maggie gasped, like a bolt of pain had shot through her, but then she recovered herself. Her eyes were serious as she looked at Esta. “My fault,” Maggie whispered. “Not Seshat. Tell her,” she directed North.

“She gave you something when we left St. Louis,” North explained. “Some new concoction she was working on. To disrupt affinities.”

“More in Texas,” Maggie said, grimacing. “Before the explosion…”

“I don’t understand,” Esta said.

“Leaving St. Louis, we didn’t know exactly what side you were on, and we didn’t know what you could