The Serpent's Curse by Lisa Maxwell (literature books to read txt) 📗

She turned to him with a question in her eyes, her expression serious and guarded. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he wanted from her—with her—but he settled for the only thing he could do for her.

“If anything goes wrong tonight and you have a chance to escape, even if it’s without me, I want you to promise that you will,” he told her.

“We’ve been over this, Harte.” Her eyes flashed with impatience, and she started to pull her hand away from him, but he caught it before she could pull away completely.

“Too many times,” he admitted. Her fingers felt delicate entwined with his, but he knew they were strong and capable—just like Esta herself. “I still want your promise. If something happens, and it becomes too dangerous for you to take me with you, I need to know you won’t hesitate. I need you to go on without me.”

“And what about stopping Seshat?” Esta asked.

“I’ll take care of her.” He couldn’t meet her eyes. “I’ve told you where you can find the ring—”

“No. Absolutely not,” Esta told him with a determined tightness in her jaw.

“Think about what happened at the Nitemarket, Esta.”

“I can fight off Seshat. I have before,” she argued.

Harte hated everything about the conversation. “Maybe… But at what cost? The earthquakes we caused were all Jack needed to build the first tower. We can’t risk something like that happening again, especially not here, where everyone is already scared and angry. Even if we are able to get away, the mess we leave behind could be devastating.”

She shook her head, stubborn as she’d ever been. “I’m not going through all of this again with you, Harte. We will find Jack. We will get the Book. We will leave. Together. That’s the plan, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Harte could feel himself clenching his teeth. He’d thought long and hard about this through the small hours of the night as they’d plotted and planned. If push came to shove, he’d do whatever he had to in order to give her a chance to go on—to survive.

“And what if there’s no way to leave together?” Harte asked. “What if the choice is you going or both of us dying?”

Esta only stared at him. “It won’t be.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, wishing it were otherwise. “And it might not be only your life at risk.… What if what happened on the train—”

“Nothing happened on the train,” Esta said, her words clipped and her cheeks an angry pink.

“You mean—”

“There were no consequences,” Esta hissed. Her jaw was tight and her golden eyes flashed with anger. And with hurt. “Don’t worry. There’s no need for you to make an honest woman of me.”

“That’s not what I…” He paused, not knowing what he was supposed to say. Not knowing why he felt a twinge of disappointment mixed in with the relief. There was nothing to stop him now from doing whatever he had to in order to keep Esta safe.

“Promise me, Darrigan,” she told him, eyes narrowing as though she’d sensed the direction of his thoughts. “We leave together. Promise me that you won’t do something stupid.”

Harte didn’t want to make any promises that he couldn’t keep. He certainly didn’t want to waste any more time arguing with her when he knew already what he was willing to do.

“You know, you look lovely tonight,” he said instead.

Esta frowned at him, and it looked like she wanted to continue their argument, but then she seemed to sense that it was pointless. “I look like a boring old lady,” she told him with a droll twist of her lips. They weren’t painted the dark crimson of the night before, but that didn’t make them any less distracting. “Just like every other boring old lady here.”

She was right about the crowd—there were quite a few women in attendance, and they were definitely older for the most part—but Esta was utterly wrong about her appearance. True, her dress might have been a bit more sedate than the shimmering column of gold she’d worn to the Green Mill. Made from a dark olive linen, the color might have looked dowdy or utterly forgettable on anyone else. But not on Esta. The otherwise drab green somehow warmed the deep golds in her skin and made her whiskey-colored eyes look even brighter than usual.

The boxy frock had a low-set waist that obscured Esta’s shape, but it didn’t matter. With her height, the fit of the dress made her look willowy and graceful, and somehow its straight lines only drew more attention by hinting at the body hiding beneath it.

“Lovely,” Harte repeated, lifting their joined hands and placing a soft kiss on the back of hers. He paused, their eyes locked, before he allowed his lips to brush across her knuckles again.

Esta’s cheeks pinkened a little more, but this time it wasn’t anger that colored them. “We need to focus on finding Jack,” she whispered, gently pulling her hand away.

“I can focus on multiple things at once,” he said, drawing his mouth into a wry grin, glad that however mad at him she might be, there was still something undeniable there between them. But the sadness in her eyes made Harte’s smile falter. He wanted to know what had put that emotion there. “Esta—”

“We don’t have to talk about this, Harte. We need to focus on the one thing that’s important right now,” she told him, brushing off the moment. “The rest can wait.”

Harte wanted to argue. He wished they had a little more time and that he was a little less of a coward. There was so much he wanted to say—there were things he needed to tell her. He felt as though they were on the precipice of something he did not fully understand. It was somehow even more dangerous than the threat of the machine or the possibility of an unthinkable future. Whatever was between them