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

felt bigger than the Order or the Brotherhoods and more powerful than the ancient being that waited deep within him.

It didn’t seem to matter that Harte had escaped from death so many times—in chains and in water and in a feverish delirium. This moment felt infinitely more fraught. Like that step from the bridge he’d been willing to take so many months ago, Harte knew that with Esta, there would be no going back. He could retreat. He could take this exit that she was offering.

Except… it was already too late. He’d already jumped, was already falling, without any chance of returning to where he’d once been. Depthless water below, endless sky above, and all that mattered was the gold of Esta’s eyes.

“What if I don’t want to wait?” Harte asked softly, taking her hand again.

She gave him the smallest of shrugs and untangled her fingers from his. “That isn’t your choice to make,” she told him, and then she turned and began to lead him through the crowds to the enormous hall that waited beyond.

AN AWAKENING

1920—Chicago

Esta’s knuckles still burned from where Harte had kissed them, and her cheeks felt like they were on fire. She didn’t know why she’d just lied to Harte. It would be a week or more yet until she had to worry about whether what they’d done on the train—

No. She wasn’t even going to think about that. Especially not there, surrounded by so many people wearing the Brotherhoods’ medallions and a crowd who would happily cheer on their destruction. Not when Jack—the Book and the dagger as well—were so very close. She would figure all that out later, if there was even anything to figure out at all. Until then, Esta would do what she always did. She would pull the hard shell of self-discipline and focus around herself as she plunged onward toward the job ahead of her. And she would not let herself wonder whether Harte would have felt the same about a future together if the threat of complications hadn’t been hanging over them.

The main hall of the Coliseum was an enormous arena with a vaulted ceiling running the length of the room and stadium seating ringing the main floor. Red, white, and blue buntings lined each level of the balconies, and flags were hanging in rows across the ceiling. Large signs with bold block letters demarcated the seating for the various states’ delegates, and in the middle of the arena stood a main stage decorated in the colors of the flag. On it, a small woman had been speaking ever since they’d entered the arena. Her voice boomed out through the cavernous space, and periodically the crowd would erupt into cries and cheers when she made another point they agreed with.

“How is she doing that?” Harte asked Esta.

“It’s a microphone,” she told him.

“Magic?”

“Technology,” she corrected. “It’s electrified.”

Heat swirled in the air, sultry and close, as the woman spoke. Her voice rose and fell, her words carefully crafted to condemn the women who would distract the men gathered there—important men—from the essential work of governing with inauspiciously timed demands for suffrage. Suffrage could wait, she cried, when the nation was whole and safe. When America put America first and took care of its own.

Women still couldn’t vote, Esta realized. Perhaps suffrage would be granted soon—she didn’t know exactly when that would happen or whether something they’d done might have changed that, too—but for now the women in the hall were nothing more than decorations on the arms of their men, without power or voice. And this woman was asking them to remain that way.

“I would remind you of Mr. Harding’s words. Last night, in this very room among this very body of delegates, he accepted our party’s nomination and reminded us all of our duty. In his great words, it is an ‘inspiration to patriotic devotion—to safeguard America first… to stabilize America first… to prosper America first… to think of America first… to exalt America first… to live for and revere America first,’ ” she shouted, pausing so that the crowd could cheer after each beat of the speech. “So I say to my sisters, we must put our country before our own meager desires. The attack on our convention has illustrated that now is not the time to press the question of votes for women. Now is the time to focus only on the sanctity of our greatest institutions. The safety of our children and our very lives depends upon strong men who will enact strong policies to keep our families safe from the threat of those who would try to turn our country against the ideals of its founders.”

The crowd’s cheers grew overwhelming, and as the volume rose in a fevered pitch, the woman stepped back from the podium, clearly pleased with herself. Esta felt only disgust.

“We can change this,” Harte murmured, like he’d read her thoughts. He brushed his hand against the back of hers, and Esta allowed the small intimacy of the contact. “We will change this. The world doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Doesn’t it?” Esta asked, glancing at him.

Maybe they could stop the Reticulum, maybe they could even go back to where they’d started and try to set history back on its intended course. But what would it matter? Esta remembered what Thoth had told her back in Denver: Time and magic could not coexist. If he was telling the truth, it meant that no matter what she and Harte did, no matter how much they changed, the old magic would eventually die. It was also what Seshat had feared and was the reason she’d created the Book in the first place. The only question, it seemed, was how it would happen. And when.

“No,” Harte said, his expression determined. “It doesn’t.”

Then Esta gave herself a shake. Maybe magic would die. Maybe one day it would fade away, but how the old magic met its final end mattered, she reminded