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Now that he was beginning to wake, Harte realized he wasn’t dreaming. And he certainly wasn’t dead—he was in too much pain for that. It felt like he’d been beaten and bruised from head to toe, pummeled over and over until the agony had turned to monotony. But the pain seemed far too pedestrian for damnation, so Harte figured that he’d survived. He had the vague recollection that Esta had something to do with it.
Esta.
He remembered more then—she’d come for him, as Seshat had predicted. She’d done something.… Harte couldn’t remember what had happened next. If he was still alive, he knew that it must have been Esta who’d saved him, like she had too many times before. But the memory of Seshat’s promise was clear in his mind.
She will come for you, and when she does… she will be mine.
Harte lurched upright in a panic—or he tried to. His muscles screamed as he lifted his head from the pillow, and he found himself too weak to actually move. There was something covering his face, but he managed to tear it away, and then he saw her.
Close to his bed, Esta was sleeping in a straight-backed chair, alive and whole and seemingly untouched by Seshat’s power. Harte was almost afraid to move. If he did, the moment might shatter and reveal itself as a dream. She looked impossibly perfect with her dark lashes resting on her cheeks. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm, and Harte couldn’t remember having ever seen her so still or relaxed. She looked almost peaceful.
No, he realized. She looked exhausted. Maybe it was the shadows that the garish light was casting over the planes of her face, but her skin looked too pale, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.
She was no longer dressed in the men’s clothing she’d taken to wearing in St. Louis. Her hair now curled about her face in a way that looked unbearably feminine, even with its short length, and her wide mouth had been painted a soft coral pink that made her lips look like petals against her tawny skin. If she weren’t so far away from him, Harte would have taken her hand in his, just to feel the warmth of her. Just to be sure that this wasn’t another hallucination.
At that thought, Harte sensed Seshat rumble within him, and he knew that whatever had happened, the ancient power hadn’t given up. He knew, too, that Esta saving him had been a mistake, but somehow he couldn’t quite bring himself to be sorry about it.
Harte shifted a little, trying to sit up, and the movement was enough to alert Esta. Her eyes flew open as she woke with a start, but it took a second for her to realize where she was. The emotions that crashed through her expression made him blurt out a laugh.
Damn. It hurt to laugh.
“I can’t imagine what you could possibly find funny,” she said, trying hard to scowl at him as she moved closer to his bedside.
Esta didn’t sound angry, though. She sounded like she was about to cry, which was impossible, because his girl was tough as nails.
He tried to casually shrug off her question, but it hurt too damn much to move even a little. Instead, Harte allowed his head to loll back against the pillow. He took his time memorizing every inch of her face, as Esta brushed a lock of sweat-damp hair away from his forehead. Then he remembered the rest of what had happened—ever single one of his failures—with a terrible rush of certainty.
“I lost your cuff,” he told her.
She was adjusting his covers, even though they were perfectly fine. “Yes, you did.”
“You should have let me die for that fact alone,” Harte told her, unable to meet her eyes.
Esta tilted her head to the side and considered him. “Probably…”
But she didn’t sound even a fraction as furious as he’d imagined she would be. “You aren’t angry?”
“Oh no,” she told him with a tired sigh. “I’m absolutely livid. Furious, even.”
She didn’t sound furious. Harte wasn’t sure what emotion was coloring her voice, but he didn’t think he’d ever heard it there before.
“I should never have taken it,” he told her.
“No, you absolutely should not have.” Her mouth turned down a little, but she looked more sad than angry. “You definitely shouldn’t have left without discussing it with me first. I thought we’d moved past all that. I thought we were partners.”
“I know.” He sighed. Then he swallowed what little pride a man could have while wearing a gown without any drawers beneath and completely at the mercy of a woman he’d wronged so badly. A woman he loved. “I was scared.”
“I can handle Seshat,” she told him.
He didn’t know that she was right about that. Harte had the feeling that the ancient goddess hadn’t even begun to show them what she was capable of, but he wasn’t talking about Seshat. “I didn’t leave because of Seshat,” he admitted. “She was an excuse.”
Esta was silent, her steady gaze urging him on.
“It was what I had to do here—what I had to face. About my past. About myself.?” The rush of words must have taken more oxygen than he’d expected, because suddenly Harte felt dizzy. He closed his eyes and tried to draw in a steadying breath, but that hurt as well.
“Did you face it?” she asked.
Harte considered that. “Maybe,” he told her, feeling incredibly tired.
