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

ship that would carry him across the seas, who would be there to protect Ruby from Jack Grew? Certainly not Viola herself. She couldn’t even leave the city, and Jack Grew could go anywhere.

And then there were Cela and Abel.…

Viola had treated them so poorly, and still they had risked so much. They had risked everything—all for a cause that was not even theirs. Logan was likely correct—she couldn’t hope to reach Cela and Abel in time if she walked away now, but another question worried her.

“What happens if Theo is right and we do get trapped up there?” Viola asked Logan. “Yes, we can dispense with Jack Grew easily enough. He’s a fly to be swatted. But if that door closes, if it locks us on the other side, what happens then?”

Logan eyed the opening in the ceiling, but he didn’t answer.

“I’ll tell you what happens,” she told him, hating the truth of it. “No one will stop Johnny the Fox from hurting my friends. At least if I go now, I have a chance to save them, however slim it may be.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to give up on the Delphi’s Tear when it’s right there,” Logan said with clear disbelief. “If you walk away now, the Order will win. They will finish consecrating this chamber, and they will begin building their power, and they will never stop working to destroy magic. Someday, years from now, the old magic will be hardly anything but a myth, and it will be your fault.”

Logan was not wrong. The ring was one of the artifacts Dolph Saunders had been willing to die for. Could Viola really walk away, knowing she was so close?

But she understood that Theo had not been lying, and she trusted him—perhaps as well as she trusted anyone. If Theo Barclay, who had risked his reputation and his life, said that there was no way out of the room above if that seal closed, she believed him.

“If we’re trapped up there, the Order still wins,” she told Logan.

“The halls are dark,” Theo said. “It means the members are still secured in their sanctuary below. We can go now, before they’ve realized what happened here. We can leave now, and we can all live long enough to try again some other day.”

Viola turned to Logan, not quite believing that everything had come to this, about to tell him that she had to go—that they all must go—when a familiar voice spoke close to her ear.

“We cannot leave the ring.”

Viola turned to find Jianyu standing there. He’d appeared suddenly in the room, like an apparition.

Logan cursed from the surprise of Jianyu’s appearance, and even the others jumped.

“What are you doing here?” Viola asked, her voice rising.

Jianyu gave her a bemused look at her spark of temper. “I saw you go into the building, and so I followed when I could,” he said simply. “You would prefer I left you to accomplish this on your own?”

It wasn’t that, but Viola understood that if Jianyu was there, then he had not heard Nibsy’s threats as she’d hoped. If he was standing there, high above the city in the Order’s most guarded rooms, no one was protecting Cela and Abel.

She shook her head. This wasn’t the plan, but then, the plan had gone wrong nearly from the start. “Where were you before?” she demanded, even though it no longer mattered. Not when so much else had gone wrong.

“Delayed,” Jianyu told her, and from the frustration in his expression, she suspected that something had happened—something they had not planned for. “That does not change what must happen next.”

“If we’re trapped up there, Cela and Abel will die,” she told him. “Once Nibsy realizes we aren’t coming out, he’ll let Torrio kill them.”

“Then go,” Jianyu said. His expression was determined. “There will be some time before Nibsy knows for sure what has happened here. I will retrieve the artifact, as we planned, and you will go to protect our friends.”

Viola hesitated. “But if Theo is correct and you’re trapped when the door closes…”

“I will not be seen when it is opened again,” Jianyu reassured her.

It was possible, she supposed, for Jianyu to make himself undetectable if he were locked into the room above. It was maybe possible that he could do what she could not. Perhaps they could still manage to succeed despite everything that had gone wrong during this terrible mess of a night.

“Go. Get to Cela and Abel,” Jianyu told her again. “You are far better suited to handle that particular problem.”

Jianyu was right. With her knife and with her affinity, she could neutralize Torrio’s threat—as long as she arrived in time.

Viola gave Jianyu a nod. It was, it seemed, the only way. Then she turned to the others. “I’m going with Theo. Come with us?”

“You have your orders,” Logan reminded Mooch and Werner. “We all do.” He was glaring at Viola.

“He’s right,” Werner said. “Nibsy won’t be happy if we come back without the ring.”

“Will he be happier if you don’t come back at all?” Viola asked him. “Will he even care?” When Werner didn’t respond at first, she threw up her hands. “Nibsy can’t expect so much of you if death is certain. Dolph never would have asked such a thing of you. He would not have asked it of any of us,” she told them.

The invocation of Dolph’s name sent an uneasiness through the group. It was Mooch who finally broke the momentary silence.

“Viola’s right,” Mooch agreed, stepping away from Logan. “I’ve already been to the Tombs once this month, and I don’t have any plans to go back. I ain’t interested in dying here either. Not for Nibsy Lorcan.”

Viola gave him a nod of thanks.

Werner looked between Logan and Mooch. “I dunno, Mooch. Nibs gave us a job.…”

“It can’t be done,” Mooch argued. “Besides, you know what happened the last time he gave me a job to do.”

Werner considered the issue.

“You can’t walk away from this,” Logan argued,