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Esta’s breath shuddered, and Harte felt the energy in the room waver. He understood that she wouldn’t last much longer.
“If she dies before the ritual is completed, you’ll never leave that circle alive,” the old man said. “When the Guard comes and they drag you across that line, the ritual will take your power and your life as surely as the Brink.”
Desperately, Harte tried to remember the vision Seshat had shown him of that original ritual. What had she done? What had she been trying to do? He remembered how Thoth had shattered the stones, how that had doomed Seshat, causing her to flee into the Book. But what would Seshat have done to complete the ritual if Thoth hadn’t arrived? Harte couldn’t be sure. Seshat had never shared that piece of the puzzle with him. He didn’t know what she’d intended to do.
“Help her do what must be done,” Nibsy coaxed, looking suddenly more like the fifteen-year-old boy Harte remembered. “Save yourself, Darrigan. The Guard will be here soon. It’s the girl’s power or both your lives. And you and I both know that you are no martyr.”
Beneath him, Esta’s breathing was growing shallow. The energy in the room felt increasingly unstable. Harte looked down at her, at the face he knew every soft curve and sharp angle of. His heart twisted at the mess of silvery scars on her arm, awareness prickling at the nape of his neck.
Carefully, he cupped her cheek, considering his options, but she didn’t respond. Her skin felt too cool to the touch.
Closing his eyes, Harte opened his affinity and broke the promise he’d made to Esta weeks before. It felt like a betrayal to cross the boundary between them, but he needed to be sure. But instead of Esta, he found nothing but darkness and pain. She was so consumed by the Book and its power, he couldn’t sense anything of what she had been. He couldn’t sense her.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “If there were any other way…” He kissed her then, brushing his lips against her forehead, and as his lips touched her skin, he sent out a single command.
Her eyes flew open as the power in the room went electric, but Harte didn’t let go.
Nibsy was screaming. The cane he’d been holding clattered to the ground, and the old man fell to his knees beside it, writhing in pain.
“No!” Nibsy’s face contorted in rage. But there was confusion in his expression as well. “How—”
Harte sent another command through their connection and watched as Seshat’s power—the Book’s power—ripped the affinity from Nibsy Lorcan. Or, most of it. Not enough to kill him, but enough to break him. The old man fell over, unconscious and without the magic that had guided him for so long.
By then the energy in the room felt erratic, and the air was suddenly charged, hot and dangerous. The energy coursing through her felt like fire against his skin, and Harte felt as though he would be burned alive if he kept holding on. He looked down at their joined hands, and he knew what had to be done. There wasn’t a choice. Not any longer.
He sent another command through their connection, and the air around him came alive with magic. The artifacts glowed hot and bright before they flickered and then suddenly went dark. Slowly, the circle faded, until it was no more than a dark line on the station floor.
The platform was painfully silent, like the sound of the world had drained away. Esta’s body had collapsed back onto the ground, but she wasn’t moving. Carefully, Harte edged closer to her. He hesitated—knowing already but not wanting to accept the truth—before he finally reached out and touched her. She didn’t respond, didn’t move.
She wasn’t breathing.
He tried to tell himself that he’d done what he had to do. That it was the only choice he’d had—for both of them. Otherwise, they would have both been trapped here for the Guard to find. Along with the Book. And the artifacts. They would have been sitting ducks, an offering of untold power for whoever found them.
There had been no other way, but he’d hoped…
Harte’s throat was tight as he looked at the still and lifeless body. The reality of what just happened crashed through him, and panic clawed at his skin. But there was already a numbness settling over him, as absolute as the silence in the cavernous station. He should have felt bowled over. He should have felt destroyed. Instead, he felt… nothing. An endless emptiness had hollowed him out.
She was gone. There was no going back, no reversing the choices he’d made. He could only hope he’d chosen right.
A few yards away, the old man wasn’t moving either, but he wasn’t dead. Harte had made sure of it. He’d left Nibsy Lorcan just enough magic to survive, because he wanted the bastard to live long enough to know life without his affinity. The Guard could deal with him.
Nearby, the Book lay open and inert on the ground. It looked so unimpressive, a tattered old journal, just as it had appeared the first time he’d seen it deep in the bowels of Khafre Hall. But now he knew what waited inside those pages. And he knew what he had to do.
Slowly, Harte pulled himself to his feet. He felt severed from himself, as though he were walking through a terrible dream. The world around him hung unreal, unsteady. His head felt as though it were filled with cotton, but his hearing was slowly returning. Distantly, he heard the squealing of a train. If Nibsy was right, Thoth was still loose in the world. The Book and the artifacts needed his protection now more than ever.
He had to go. For Esta.
Harte felt like he was watching himself from a distance as he scooped up the artifacts and then, using the sleeve of his shirt so his skin didn’t make contact, took the Book from where it rested on the floor. He put them all into the satchel and slung the canvas bag across his body.
A train was screaming into the station now. It was time.
He took one more look at the bodies, Nibsy and Esta, both lying still on the station platform. Seeing her like that, he felt something crack inside him. But he couldn’t stay. If there was any chance for a future, any chance that the girl on the platform hadn’t given her life for nothing, he had to go—to stop the Brotherhoods, to stop Thoth—and he had to go now.
The train slid into the station, and as it slowed through the curve, he leapt onto the platform of the back car. As it sped away into the darkness of the tunnel, Harte didn’t look away from the carnage he was leaving behind. He kept his eyes on the body of the girl he loved until he couldn’t see her any longer and hoped he hadn’t made a terrible mistake.
LIKE LIGHTNING
1902—Little Africa
