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

loyalty is to Dolph—and to what he stood for,” she told Mooch, lowering her voice. “I’m not your enemy, Mooch. I never was.”

“Yeah, well… that remains to be seen.” Mooch frowned, as though he was suddenly unsure about what he’d promised to do. But he relented a second later, stepping aside to let her in.

Viola hadn’t been inside the private quarters in the back of the Bella Strega since the day when everything had fallen apart on the bridge. She’d assumed then that nothing could be worse than what had happened after Khafre Hall, when they’d realized all had been lost—the Book, the artifacts, and their leader. But a few days later, she’d lost even more. She’d lost her home. Her purpose.

Stepping into the back rooms of the building was like stepping back into a different part of her life. The Elizabeth Street entrance opened into a small vestibule, where the aromas of the kitchen had seeped into the wood. The air from outside brought with it the sharpness of the trash that littered the alley, and the mixture of the two was a scent as familiar to Viola as her mother’s rose water. There was something missing, though. Something was off. Then she realized—she hadn’t been greeted by the warm smell of bread baking, as she had been when Dolph sat in the barroom, holding court, and Tilly stood at the great iron stove making the food that knitted them together.

“You’d better get on with it,” Mooch said. “The place is crawling with the boys, and I can’t keep them occupied all by myself.”

With a sure nod, Viola took the narrow staircase up two floors to the hallway she’d once called home. She didn’t bother to enter the room that had been hers. There was no time, and she had no desire to feel more loss than that which already creased her heart. Instead, she went to the end of the hall, where Dolph and Leena—and then later, Dolph alone—had made a home.

The door was locked, a marked change from when the rooms had belonged to Dolph. He had never feared intrusion, not when his gang wore a mark that could unmake them. Viola doubted that anyone would have dared cross his sanctuary without an invitation, even without the marks. It simply wasn’t done. The Devil’s Own was a gang, yes. A rowdy, dangerous bunch. But Dolph Saunders had given them a place to build a home for themselves, and there was a certain honor among thieves.

A pin from her hair made short work of the lock, and Viola let herself into the quiet of the flat. Once inside the apartment, she paused, allowing the past to wash over her. She’d been Leena’s friend before Dolph’s, and together they’d spent hours in these rooms. How many times had she sat in that chair by the window, learning her letters or talking strategy? How often had the rooms been a haven, free of judgment and shame, filled with something that had felt like hope?

Dolph should still be here. Dolph, who had lied to her… or at least, who had hidden the truth about too many things. About his cane and how it came by the awful power it held. About Libitina.

Why had he not explained how the blade worked and let Viola make her choice?

She knew already the answer. It had been a trick, yes. One that perhaps a true friend should not have played, but then, Viola had not really wanted to know. She’d accepted the knife without question, used its deadly blade without considering, because she’d wanted to believe that an acquired skill was somehow different from the heart of a thing. Viola had wanted to imagine that she could refuse that essential part of what she was—and what she felt drawn to do with her affinity. Healing and death, two sides of life itself. One impossible without the other.

The truth was that her friend had deceived her. The truth was also that he had done her a kindness. Dolph had allowed her to be, without judgment, what she was made to be. If Libitina was only so deadly because Viola was actually channeling her own magic through the knife, then it meant that Dolph had given her a way to use her affinity without wrestling with the shame of it. He had given her a way out of the torture that would have come from holding herself back, from denying her magic.

How many Mageus had Viola watched suffer as they tried to hide what they were? How many turned to Nitewein or worse to dull the ache of unused affinities? Too many. She’d seen them in the Strega and in the streets, desperate and aching. She’d thought she was different somehow—stronger—and she’d pitied them, not knowing how close she’d come to being in their shoes.

Viola looked around the apartment and realized that nothing had changed—not really—but even so, the rooms were different now. The feel of the space was colder, despite the warm breeze that came in through the lace curtains. The oil painting they’d stolen from Morgan’s collection still hung on the wall over the bookshelf, and Viola took a moment to trace the strange design on the book Newton held, remembering the night Dolph had told her why the Ars Arcana was so important. Something about that painting sparked another memory.…

There had been something carved into the cover of the Ars Arcana, hadn’t there? But Viola couldn’t remember whether it had been this design or some other, not with whatever Harte Darrigan had done to her that night.

She would never know for sure. The Book was gone now, along with Esta and the Magician.

Viola turned away from the painting and the questions she had no answers to and focused on what she could find instead. Running her finger across the spines of the books on the shelf, she dismissed some immediately. Voltaire and Kierkegaard wouldn’t have the answers she needed. There was the book they