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

Cordelia said. “What was so important that y’all were willing to die for it?”

“Something that could help the Antistasi,” Maggie offered.

Cordelia’s brows drew together thoughtfully, and then realization seemed to strike. “You’re talking about another artifact.”

“Why would you think that?” Maggie said, unable to hide the anxious tremor in her voice.

But Cordelia only crossed her arms and stared at them. “That settles it. I’m not going anywhere until you show me what it is you took.”

“Go on,” North told Esta. “Open it.”

“And try to be quick about it,” Cordelia said, like she’d already guessed Esta’s plan to delay. “I have another show this evening, and I don’t need people noticing that I’ve gone missing.”

“These things take time,” Esta told them. She made a show of leaning her ear close to the lock and slowly working the tumbler.

A lock like this actually didn’t take that much time—and she already had the combination—but none of the Antistasi watching her knew that. Esta wasn’t in any hurry to box herself into a corner, though. Once the dagger was in play, things would become more complicated. Especially without her affinity to rely on.

“We should just break the damn thing open,” North said, after a long few minutes of silence had ticked by while Esta pretended to listen to the lock.

“And risk damaging what’s inside?” Esta asked.

North grumbled but didn’t press any further. Still, with each turn of the tumbler, Esta could sense the impatience in the room swelling. But there was nothing she could think to do that would help her avoid opening the lock. She’d taken the Quellant, so there was no way to stop time, and even if she could, it wouldn’t do her any good. As long as North had that watch of his, he could bring her right back. If that happened, Esta would have lost whatever trust she’d built with them.

“Almost—” Esta said, trying to stall as her mind continued to race. There had to be a way.…

She twisted the tumbler again, blinking, as she tried to focus on the numbers, but her vision was doing odd things. It looked like there were two of the box, two of the lock. Two of every number. Esta willed her vision to clear. “I’ve almost got it,” she said, annoyed with the tremor in her voice.

Suddenly, the room wouldn’t hold steady. One second everything was fine, and the next second, the room had shifted, transformed, before flickering back, and Esta went still, frozen by the strangeness of what she was seeing.

North and Cordelia and Maggie were all looking at her expectantly, but then her vision flickered again, and they were gone. It felt like all the layers of time that had ever been, all the layers that might ever be, were rising up around her. Even though she’d taken the Quellant, and even though her cuff, the one that held Ishtar’s Key, was hundreds of miles away, Esta felt like she did right before she slipped through to a different time. Except now, time felt like a separate living thing. Time flexed and rose around her, pulsing with a strange energy. Unsteady. Unwieldy. And it felt hungry.

The three Antistasi were there again suddenly, and then, just as quickly, they weren’t. Esta tried to keep herself upright as the room around her shifted and changed. She was standing in an empty room—and then her vision shifted again, and the room was filled with strangers dressed in clothes from her own time—then another shift, and the room changed again as reality faded in and out, like an old TV set blinking through a bad connection. The net of time that held the world in place—the very Aether that ordered reality—seemed to contract around her. It pressed in on her. Like it wanted to devour her.

The scar on Esta’s wrist burned, and the word there felt like it had been freshly sliced into her skin. Then all at once, everything went still. The room stopped flickering, and the present moment seemed as ordinary and stable as ever.

“Well?” North demanded, apparently oblivious to what Esta had just experienced. One glance around the room told her that the others hadn’t sensed anything at all.

“I’m working on it,” Esta told him, her words sounding strangled even to herself. It took real concentration to keep her hands steady enough to move the tumbler into place, lining up the last number in the sequence that would open the lock.

What the hell was that? It had seemed like reality itself had splintered, like the seconds were trying to consume her. It had felt like time was trying to devour her whole, until she was… nothing. Esta rubbed absently at the scar on her arm as she opened the lock. The raised ridges of the Latin command ached beneath her touch.

She’d taken the Quellant. She had relinquished her affinity to protect herself—and everyone else—from Seshat, but Esta had the sense that whatever had happened wasn’t Seshat. There had been no shadows, no darkness. Whatever that was felt more like time itself had tried to pull her under—like time had tried to erase her. Like Professor Lachlan had warned it would.

But why now? What changed? Esta had assumed that as long as the Key could be returned to her younger self, all would be well. Now, with the Quellant, she might even be able to go back to where time had splintered into a new future. She could still send her younger self forward. She should be okay, as long as that was all still a possibility.

Unless something has happened to Ishtar’s Key.

The thought made Esta’s breath catch. Harte knew how important the cuff was to her. He would never willingly let anything happen to it. She knew that. But maybe he hadn’t been willing—

No. She wouldn’t let herself think about that possibility. Harte was too smart and had survived too long to get caught now. The Key couldn’t be lost. Maybe it was taking them too long to return it. Maybe