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

He’d wasted enough time, and he needed to remember what was truly important—and what he still had to accomplish. It was time to go talk to his father.

REVELATIONS

1904—Denver

When Esta finally came back to herself, it wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy. She had to fight to regain her body, wrestling it away from the pull of time, until she emerged from the Aether—through the Aether—wrung out and feeling completely untethered to the world around her.

At first she felt as if she were viewing the world through a fog. She could see Maggie and Cordelia and North in the room, but she didn’t know them. They were nothing to her, and she, herself, was also nothing. But eventually the fog began to lift. Esta started to feel her body again—the ache of her muscles, the burning of her scar—and soon everything else came back to her as well. She remembered then who she was and what she was meant to do. Even then, fear vibrated through her body, and the scar on her wrist burned.

The aching scar seemed the surest sign that whatever had just happened was connected to her link with her younger self. The way time itself seemed to have devoured her—along with the fact that her affinity was still deadened by the Quellant—made Esta think, once again, that it hadn’t been Seshat’s doing. It felt more like a sign that her time to return her cuff might be running out.

Or maybe something happened to Harte.

She dismissed that thought immediately. Harte was too smart and too experienced to get himself into trouble he couldn’t get out of. He was fine—so was her cuff. He had to be.

Maggie helped her to sit up, but Esta was only tangentially aware that it was trembling and not the world itself. It took a while for the quivering to die down enough to accept the cup of water Cordelia brought over. Maggie helped, but when Esta tried to drink, the water tasted bitter and her mouth felt like it was filled with sand. She could barely choke the liquid down.

“What happened?” Maggie asked.

“I don’t know,” Esta told them. “I was here, and then I… I wasn’t.” She explained what it had felt like, the way the room had shifted and reality had flickered and how time itself felt like it would swallow her whole. “How long was I gone?”

“Nearly an hour,” Maggie told her. “We thought you’d left for good.”

“We assumed you ran,” North said, glaring at her.

“No.” Esta was shaking her head. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything to make that happen.”

“But you will run,” Cordelia said, the flatness of her voice sending a shiver of unease up Esta’s spine. “The minute you have the dagger, you’ll leave. You’ll take it, like your partner took the necklace. Won’t you?”

Esta meant to say no. But that wasn’t what came out when she opened her mouth. “Of course,” she blurted, the words tumbling out like they’d been pulled from her. Shocked, she clasped her hand over her mouth to stop herself from saying anything else.

North looked every bit as taken aback by her outburst as Esta felt, but his surprise quickly turned to irritation. “I knew it,” he huffed, turning to Maggie. “Didn’t I tell you? She’s not even trying to hide it now.”

Maggie’s eyes had gone wide. “Esta? You said you’d give us the dagger. You promised.”

“I lied.” Esta was shaking her head to deny the words even as she spoke them, but there was a warmth flooding through her, a strange compulsion that made her want to tell them whatever they asked. “You gave me something,” she realized, and then she turned on Maggie. “You used the truth tablets on me?”

“No,” Maggie told her, frowning.

Cordelia took the glass that Esta had just drunk from and dumped the contents onto the floor. “We don’t have time for any more games.”

“Cordelia?” Maggie still looked like she was having trouble catching up. “What have you done?”

“What you should have done the second you lost the necklace,” she told Maggie. “Clearly, she’s bamboozled you into thinking she’s on your side, but it’s past time we have some answers.”

North shifted a little, like he was suddenly uneasy, but he didn’t say a word against what Cordelia had done.

So much for his lofty principles. Apparently they only applied when he was the one being drugged.

Esta was trying to school her features, but she was failing. No amount of training or self-possession was helping her to fight the effects of the drug she’d been given. How many tablets had Cordelia given her? How long had Maggie said the truth serum lasted? Esta couldn’t be sure, but she knew her best chance was to delay. Maybe if she could hold out long enough, she’d be able to fight it.

“Does Pickett really have the Pharaoh’s Heart?” Cordelia asked. “Or is this all nothing but a ruse to waste our time?”

“He has it,” Esta said through gritted teeth. The more she tried to withhold, the more she felt compelled to speak. “Or he did.”

“How do you know?” Cordelia demanded.

Again Esta tried to keep back the words, but Maggie’s formulation was too strong. “Harte told me. He sent the dagger to Pickett himself.”

Cordelia’s eyes widened. “Does he know where the other artifacts are as well?”

Esta closed her eyes against the pain that was building in her head, the ache in her throat. She could handle a little pain, but she couldn’t fight Maggie’s formulation. “Yes.” She looked up to Maggie, silently pleading with her to understand—to stop this—but Maggie only turned away from her.

“Do you know where the other artifacts are?” Cordelia asked.

Esta shook her head, but the word yes slipped from her lips, and when Cordelia pressed her for more information, she could not stop herself from answering. In the end, Esta told them everything she’d been trying so hard to hide: where Harte was going, what he was doing, and where they planned