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

“I don’t know, but something,” she told him. “Three carloads of men in suits just arrived. I saw them pull up while the doctor was in here, and I don’t think they’re coming for visiting hours.” She pulled back the covers for him and helped him sit up. “Do you think you can walk?”

“Honestly? I’m not certain.” His weakness galled him, but Esta was gone before Harte could so much as complain, and before he could blink, she was back with a wheelchair. He tried to stand, but instead swayed on unsteady legs and ended up back where he started on the bed.

“Let me help you,” she said, even as he tried to bat her away. She didn’t leave him much choice, though. Before Harte could argue, Esta secured him under his arm like he was some sort of invalid, which he supposed he was. But the truth of the matter didn’t make that fact any easier to swallow as she helped him into the chair.

Within him, he felt Seshat starting to rouse, stretching like a cat that had woken from a long nap. She felt like a shadow of herself, but Harte flinched away from Esta all the same.

“She’s still there?” Esta asked.

Harte nodded as he pulled the needle from his arm. To his relief, it didn’t bleed much, but it wasn’t enough of a distraction. Within his skin, he felt Seshat growing ever more aware of Esta’s presence, and Harte understood that nothing had changed. She might be weakened, as he was, but she wasn’t gone. And she wouldn’t stay weak for long.

“You should go,” Harte told her, knowing that there was no way he could get out of the hospital under his own power and no way he could allow Esta to help him now that Seshat was waking.

Esta ignored him. She’d already taken a leather pouch from her handbag and was busy looking through it for something. Finally, she seemed to find it, and she withdrew a small white tablet that reminded him of the quinine he’d taken as a boy to ward off fever. She offered it to him. “This should help.”

“What is that?” he asked, eyeing the tablet.

“You’re not going to like it if I tell you, so maybe it’s better if I don’t,” she said.

Harte narrowed his eyes at her—or he tried to. He suspected that he was currently too pathetic-looking to intimidate anyone, not that he’d ever managed to intimidate Esta anyway. “Why would I take something I’m not going to like?”

“Because you trust me.”

He couldn’t help but wonder if her earlier quip about waiting until he was well before she killed him had any merit to it.

She let out an impatient breath, clearly frustrated at his hesitation. “It’s a type of Quellant.”

That was a surprise. “Isn’t that what the Antistasi used in St. Louis?”

“Yes,” she told him. “But Maggie improved the formulation. This version won’t knock you unconscious, but it will still block your affinity—and it should block Seshat’s power as well.”

Harte didn’t like the idea of willingly giving up his affinity—however much a bother it had been for him—but the idea that the Quellant might mute Seshat’s power? He tried to remember back to St. Louis.… He couldn’t be sure, but it did seem like Seshat had gone silent when the Antistasi had doused him with the Quellant. If Esta was right, taking the tablet might protect her from Seshat. That alone would be worth the risk.

His instincts screamed against taking the tablet, but he ignored them and swallowed it down before he could allow himself to second-guess the idea. The effect was immediate and awful. It wasn’t only the bitterness that filled his mouth but the cold numbness that flooded through him, drawing his affinity away until he felt hollowed out. But in that emptiness, he sensed… nothing. No stirring of power. No rasping, ancient laughter. It was almost a relief.

“Well?” Esta asked.

“It might have worked,” Harte told her, afraid to be too sure in case he was wrong.

“There’s one way to find out.” Esta offered him her hand.

Harte hesitated. Every time he touched Esta, he was giving Seshat another opportunity to make good on her threat.

“Harte?” Esta asked, frowning.

“If we’re wrong, I won’t be able to hold her back,” he admitted, hating himself for his weakness. “She wants you, Esta. She’s not going to stop trying, and I can’t—”

“It will be okay,” Esta said, offering her hand again. “Trust me, Harte.”

He wanted nothing more than to do just that—to reach for her, to take her hand. It seemed such a small thing, such a normal, inconsequential action, but for Harte Darrigan, touching someone had always been complicated. The goddess living within his skin made everything even more dangerous. Especially for Esta. He couldn’t risk her life. He couldn’t chance losing her—not now.

“You should go on without me,” he said, still staring at her offered hand. Her fingers were long and graceful, the fingers of a pickpocket who’d never been caught. “It isn’t worth the risk.”

“You’ve already taken the Quellant,” she said. “If it’s not going to work, better to know now.”

Before he could stop her, Esta grabbed his hand. Her skin felt warm and soft as her fingers closed around his, and then the sound of the room drained away, leaving the world silent, and then… nothing. Seshat didn’t so much as shift inside of him. The emptiness grated against his already weak body, but for the first time in ages, he felt only himself.

“It worked,” Harte whispered, barely able to believe it could be possible. It had been so long since he had touched anyone without holding back, but it had been especially too long since he’d touched Esta. He tightened his fingers around hers, afraid to let himself wonder what this new development meant for him. Maybe, just maybe, this was actually an answer. Maybe it could buy him a little more time, because now that he wasn’t dead and gone, Harte Darrigan