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

to read the tenor of the room. “It’s true that the ending was somewhat… disorderly, but I’m sure you have ample funds to repair the damage to the ballroom. I imagine Aunt Fanny is beside herself, considering the opportunity she now has—”

“You killed a girl,” Morgan said, throwing the fact like a gauntlet at his feet.

“She was a chorus girl. A common harlot,” Jack told them, brushing away the issue.

“That may be, but Evelyn DeMure was a well-known performer in the city—unfortunately, one the public seems to have a certain amount of sympathy for,” the Princept said. “There are a great many who are outraged by her death and who blame the Order.”

“They’re all fools, then. She was nothing but a maggot, one who would have used her feral powers to destroy the Order,” Jack reminded them. “She was a siren, a threat. Now she is not.”

“Have you no shame?” his uncle demanded.

“Why should I be ashamed when I am guilty of nothing?” Jack asked, his temper flaring. “Have I been charged with anything? No. The girl’s death was deemed an accident.”

“But the question remains—what kind of accident was it?” the Princept wondered.

Jack’s instincts suddenly prickled. “I fail to understand your meaning.”

“When did you learn that the girl had possession of the Delphi’s Tear?” the High Princept asked, his gaze steady. Deadly calm.

Realization suddenly hit. They knew. Which meant that it wasn’t Kelly’s girl, nor Kelly himself, who’d managed to slip away with the ring. These men had it. The Delphi’s Tear was back in the hands of the Order.

“I’m not certain what you mean,” Jack hedged, weighing the moment—and his options—carefully.

“Let’s cut through the bullshit,” Morgan said, his mouth drawn into a flat, uncompromising line. “You’re a constant disappointment, but despite what others have said, you’re not an idiot. I don’t give a fig about what the public thinks about the death of some showgirl, but I do care about loyalty, boy. And you’ve displayed an appalling lack of it. At some point, you knew that DeMure had one of the Order’s most prized possessions, and still you kept that information from us.”

“The question we’ve been asking ourselves is when you knew,” the Princept said, his wizened old face not betraying any emotion.

“You think I hid this from you—that I was trying to take the artifact for my own?” Jack asked, changing tactics by pretending to be shocked.

“Why else keep it a secret?” Morgan blustered. “Why not tell the Inner Circle immediately, so the situation could be dealt with quickly and quietly—and most importantly, out of the public’s view.”

“Think carefully about your answer, boy,” the Princept warned. “Your membership with our hallowed organization depends upon it.”

His membership? Jack wanted to laugh in their faces. He wanted to dare them to revoke his membership, when he alone held the key to their future, but he knew that it would be a mistake. Without access to the Order, without the benefit of their trust, he might never be able to retrieve the ring from them. Certainly, there was no sense in making his task any more difficult.

“I admit that I had heard a rumor Evelyn had a ring resembling one of the lost artifacts,” he started, choosing his words, careful to sound contrite and nervous. “But I didn’t know for sure.”

“You should have told us immediately,” Morgan said.

“You of all people should understand my hesitance, Uncle.” Jack bowed his head and tried to hide his fury behind a mask of remorse and humility. “After the mistakes I made in the past? I knew I couldn’t afford another. I knew that retrieving one of the lost artifacts would be only one step toward atoning, but I was reluctant to give you false hope. I certainly never intended to keep the ring for my own,” he lied. “Had I retrieved it, I would have given it to the Order immediately.”

“How are we to believe you?” Morgan asked.

“Believe whatever you will,” Jack told them, clenching his teeth to keep his anger from showing. “Revealing Evelyn’s duplicity was to be a victory, but not for myself. It was to be a gift to the Inner Circle, to the Order itself, a grand moment when a maggot who had fooled so many would finally be held accountable for her crimes publicly, exposed for all the city—and the world—to see. After all, the gala was not for my benefit alone. Was it not meant to show the entire city that the Order had not been weakened by the fires of Khafre Hall? Apprehending Evelyn DeMure would have helped with that.” Jack drew himself up, squared his shoulders. “But then Paul Kelly ruined everything. By the time I got to Evelyn, she was dead, and there was no sign of the ring.”

“Still you didn’t tell us, even after?” the Princept pressed.

“I didn’t know for sure that she’d ever actually had it,” Jack lied. “I thought that my instincts had proven false, and I was grateful that I hadn’t exposed my mistakes once again.” He glanced up, pretending an epiphany. “But how did you know? Unless—did she have it? Is the artifact back in the Order’s possession once more?”

“It is,” the Princept boasted, unable to hide his satisfaction.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jack said. It wasn’t a complete lie. Now that he knew for sure where the Delphi’s Tear was, he could set his sights on obtaining it. “I’m only happy to have helped, however small a role I might have played.”

Morgan was clearly frustrated. “Your role in this could have ruined everything. Do you know what would have happened if the ring had fallen into the wrong hands?”

“But it didn’t,” Jack pressed, tired of being chastised like some misbehaving schoolboy. “The Order retrieved it, as I’d hoped they would.”

“Enough.” The Princept raised his hand to silence them both. “The Order currently stands at a great precipice,” he said. “However, now that we have one of the lost artifacts back in our possession, our position is not quite so