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

You could have escaped, and instead you let them take you. It was an accusation, but there was a question in Seshat’s voice as well. It felt like she was trying to understand the puzzle before her. You had the crown. You had everything you needed, and you let it all go. For a child.

For my brother, Harte agreed.

He will grow to hate you and all that you are, she told him. They always do. Even the ones we trust.

Maybe he will. His heart broke a little at the thought. He would deserve at least part of Sammie’s hate for how he’d used the boy. But Harte hoped it would be otherwise. He’d done what he could to try to make it right.

Now they will take everything you have and destroy everything you love. For a meaningless child. Confusion and frustration colored her words.

Not meaningless. Sammie was innocent, as Harte had once been. He would have the chance at a life that Harte had never had. I didn’t have a choice, he said, a truth that could not be denied. It had been the right thing to do. He knew that still. The only thing I could do.

It was the last thing he thought before sleep pulled him under once more.

The seconds ticked by like hours. Hours passed like seconds. The cuffs that bound his wrists and the locked chain that attached his ankles to a bolt in the wall would have been easy enough to break out of, but the room wouldn’t stop spinning, and the pain throbbing through his body felt like too much. He was so incredibly weak. All he could do was allow his eyes to close, allow the darkness to pull him down.…

Wake up. Seshat’s voice was louder now. Urgent.

Harte stirred a little, wondering how long he’d been out, when an unexpected brightness seared his eyes. The blinding light pulled him from the depths, making his head swirl again.

People were close by. With him in the cell. Unseen hands touching him. If only he could remember where he was… or why he was there, pinned to a rough blanket and secured hand and foot.

Harte lay perfectly still, feigning sleep or unconsciousness as he tried to remember. It was easy enough, since it hurt too much to move. Body and soul, everything hurt too much.

The hands went away, but the voices did not, and a moment later Harte felt himself being hoisted upright, propped against a hard surface. Someone grasped his face, shaking him, smacking his cheeks until he couldn’t stand the pain of it any longer and opened his eyes.

A man stood there. Dark hair. Dark eyes set into a blur of a face. Harte couldn’t tell who it was. His eyes wouldn’t focus. Even propped against the wall, his body felt heavy, dense. Weak.

“You will eat,” the face said.

A gloved hand pulled down Harte’s jaw. A spoon was placed at his lips. The salt of beef broth flooded his dry mouth.

Harte choked and sputtered. His throat was so raw it had forgotten how to swallow. He turned his head, closing his eyes to refuse more, but his captors were insistent. Again the hand, the spoon. Again the wash of salt and blandness of the beef. Over and over, until Harte stopped fighting it and simply closed his useless eyes and allowed it to happen.

In the end, the front of his shirt was soaked with broth, and they left him damp, smelling of old meat. The thin broth felt heavy in his stomach, and Harte felt nauseous again, but he knew that if he was sick, there was a good chance he would have to sit in his own filth. So he forced himself to take steady breaths and managed to keep the food down. He felt exhausted and aching, and oddly… better. But when he felt Seshat curling inside of him, when he remembered that Jack Grew might already be on his way to California, he wondered if better was really what he wanted to be.

Sometime later, the door of his cell opened and a group of people entered. Two men held him down, even though he didn’t have the strength to move, as an older man entered.

“See what you can do to keep him alive,” a voice said. “Secretary Grew arrives in two days. He only has to last until then.”

The older man took the order in silence. Moving forward, he pressed at the underside of Harte’s wrists, moving his fingers and varying the pressure as though palpitating to sense something beneath his skin. The man’s hands were gloved, like the hands of those who had fed him, but Harte was too weak to reach for his affinity anyway. And after what had happened on the fire escape, he didn’t trust Seshat to help.

A moment later the others were cutting away Harte’s shirt. It was stiff from the broth, and as they pulled it off, it felt like they were peeling away his skin as well.

Harte barely cared about the pain. Jack Grew was coming—soon—and with him Thoth. At that thought, Seshat lurched inside of Harte. He could feel her anger and panic and, again, her fear. It reminded him, suddenly, of a desert night beneath a star-swept sky that Seshat had shown him once. He’d felt the fear that had coursed through her when she’d realized what Thoth’s intentions were. He felt that same fear, that same desperation now.

The man began to mark Harte’s body with a brush dipped in dark ink. He drew strange figures at various points: his wrists, his breastbone, down the center of his abdomen. The man’s expression was serious as he worked, and Seshat remained quiet, almost thoughtful, as Harte tried to struggle away from the hold the two younger men had on him, but he was too weak.

The doctor ignored Harte’s protests and concentrated instead on positioning small clear crystals over the various inked figures. When the last was in