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Harte felt the skin of the man’s palms against his tender neck. Everything ached. Every particle in his being hurt, but he didn’t care. He focused everything he was on gathering his affinity… only to feel it slip away. Water between his fingers. Again.
Seshat remained silent. Distant.
Harte felt as though he were drowning and Seshat was standing on the shore, close enough to help but refusing to touch even a toe to the water. His vision was already starting to go dark at the edges, and his lungs were burning, and he knew—knew—that he had failed.
Harte knew that when Jack arrived, there would be no way to stop him from finally claiming Seshat. Thoth would have everything he’d ever wanted—all of the power he’d schemed and lied and betrayed for. Thoth would win, and the world would be remade under his control.
Suddenly Harte felt the goddess lurch, rousing herself unexpectedly. Her power rose alongside the familiar warmth of his own magic, and before his vision went completely dark, he used what was left of his strength to shove his affinity toward the man holding his neck. Commanding him.
The man holding him screamed. He released Harte and grabbed at his own head like he was trying to hold himself together. It was enough to let Harte drag in a deep breath, enough for the darkness in his vision to start to lift. He took a moment to get his legs steady beneath him. The man was still screaming and writhing, and the whites of his eyes had been all but obliterated by a swirling darkness. Harte backed away, horrified at what Seshat had done—what his own affinity had done. The man let out one more manic scream before turning to attack the others.
Harte swayed a little, gripping the railing for balance. He wasn’t sure whether he could make it down the ladder, not with the way he currently felt, but he knew implicitly that if he didn’t try now, he wouldn’t get another chance. He wiped the blood that was still dribbling from his nose with the back of his sleeve and moved toward the fire escape again.
The world was still swimming, his limbs were trembling, and his balance was unstable, but somehow Harte managed to shimmy down the rickety ladder to the sidewalk below. When he was nearly there, his foot missed a rail and he stumbled, gripping the rungs so hard to keep from falling that he knew he’d have to pry splinters from his palms later. It didn’t matter. Not when he was so close to being free.
Harte’s feet hit the pavement, and he pulled himself upright, steadying himself on the side of the building for a moment. He’d barely started to move again, though, when the front door of the building opened, bringing with it the noisy clang of an alarm bell and a group of men. Behind him, another group had come out of the building next door, and Harte found himself surrounded. He turned in a slow circle, the horizon tilting and pitching as he tried to stay on his feet. His body shook from the exertion and from the fever, but he managed to keep himself upright.
There were twelve, maybe fifteen, people surrounding him now, but they were mostly soft-looking men dressed in rumpled, ill-fitting suits. Bank clerks and merchants, from the looks of them. If his vision hadn’t still been blurry and his stomach hadn’t been threatening to turn itself out onto the sidewalk, Harte might have considered fighting his way out. But that wasn’t an option, not even with Seshat prowling within his skin, her power buoying him up and urging him on. He’d have to try running.
Then Harte heard the whimper.
It was such an insignificant noise, but he knew immediately what the sound was. He turned back to the entrance of the bank to find a man holding the boy—his brother—by the child’s hair. The blade of a dagger was poised at the boy’s throat, but Harte’s father—their father—was standing off to the side with his arms crossed, doing nothing to free his son.
“You have something that belongs to us,” the man said, pushing the boy forward. The knife never left the boy’s throat.
“You’d let them kill your own son?” Harte asked Samuel Lowe, fear making him shudder more than even the fever could.
He already knew the answer. Of course his father would sacrifice the boy, especially if it meant saving his own reputation and the comfortable life he’d built.
Samuel Lowe only glared at him.
“He’s a child,” Harte said, his head still swimming from the blows. “He’s your child.”
“My wife is still young enough to bear me more sons,” his father replied, with a cold sureness to his voice. “This one is a disappointment anyway—he proved that when he allowed you to escape.” Sam Lowe’s expression was deadly in its sincerity.
“The Dragon’s Eye,” the other man ordered as he pressed the knife against the pale skin of the boy’s throat. “You will give us back the crown, or the boy will die.”
Sammie whimpered again. A line of blood trickled from the knife’s blade, and the boy began to cry in earnest. His eyes were locked with Harte’s, and they shone with fear and the too-mature understanding of this betrayal.
Run, Seshat commanded, her whispering urging him on. Why do you stand here like a lamb at the slaughter? Go while you can!
His father stepped forward. “Why put the boy through this? You won’t allow him to die. You’re too weak. You always have been.”
Harte had the crown secured in his jacket. With Seshat’s help, he knew he could likely make it far enough to disappear into the city. He knew where his father lived; he might even be able to find the other artifacts before the fever took him completely. He could send them to Esta. He could keep his promises.
He should leave now, while he could. Even if it meant letting the boy die. After all, what was a single life measured against the many lives that could be helped by the artifacts?
Everything.
But the voice that came to Harte with such startling clarity was not Seshat’s. It was the voice he’d stopped listening to years before. His own.
Go! Seshat commanded. You cannot allow your weakness to destroy us both.
She was right. If Harte stayed, if he gave up the Dragon’s Eye, he might not escape again. Esta would never know what happened to him, and her cuff would be lost. If he left now, the boy might die but Harte could avoid Jack finding him. He could keep Thoth from claiming Seshat. The world would have a chance. Esta would have a chance. It would be so easy to add this boy’s life to the scrap heap of his past. He only had to walk away.
But he couldn’t. He never should have left the boy behind with their father. He’d convinced himself that there was nothing he could do for the kid—for his own brother—because he was no better than his father. After all, everything he’d accomplished in his life had been built from scheming and lies, grift and larceny—all qualities he’d believed he’d inherited from the man who had refused to claim him. He was his father’s son, wasn’t he? Whatever success he might have found had always felt tainted with that truth. It was why Harte pushed everyone away, including Esta.
But the boy was also his father’s son, and the child was an innocent. As Harte had once been. Suddenly he saw the truth that he’d been denying for too long. The blood in his veins meant nothing. The rot at the center of his life had always been his father, but the choices Harte had made through the years, those were his own. They always had been.
