Elizabeth whimpered, but still said nothing.
“You said it didn’t belong to me,” Sera said. “In Parramatta, you said it was yours. Why would you think that? What did Mr. Moore tell you?”
Elizabeth’s jaw clamped hard. Ugly amusement danced in her wide, bulbous eyes as she scowled at Sera.
“I will leave this fort, Elizabeth.” William again crouched before her, his voice like iced-over steel. “I will leave this fort right now, toss the ring into the deep water, and then march back to the Rocks and tell the constables about how you killed your husband.”
“She did?” Sera gasped. “How do you know that?”
“Because she bragged to me about it when I found her. Said she’d killed him with a single blow to the head and she could kill me the same way.”
“Don’t throw it in the water. I beg you.”
So Elizabeth didn’t care about being charged with murder or having to face punishment for it. It was all about the ring for her.
“Clearly we’re safer without it,” Sera said to William, her voice dripping with faux innocence. “Why would we keep it around if it’s a danger to us?”
“Please. Please don’t.” Elizabeth wriggled on the ground. “Mr. Moore gave it to me because he trusted me. Because he loved me.”
The god Seth wouldn’t have done that. Love was not in his capabilities. Sera lifted her arm that bore the cuff. “That’s not enough reason. It has something to do with this. You begged your husband for the ring when you saw me wearing this. Why?”
More tears bubbled up in Elizabeth’s eyes as she stared at the ring in William’s hand. Sera jerked her chin toward the doorway and he started to leave again.
“Because if I wear the gold bracelet and his ring I will be his forever!” Elizabeth blurted. They turned back to her, waiting. “When I have them both he’ll marry me like he promised when he took me off the streets as a girl. I’ll be his. Forever.”
Elizabeth had been used. Lied to. And she’d learned to lie in turn.
A feel of dread curled like smoke through Sera’s mind. “Where is Mr. Moore? Is he here in New South Wales?”
“No, no.” Elizabeth sniffled. “He…left me back in England. He thought I failed him, but he’s wrong. He’s wrong! I’m here with his ring and the bracelet, and this will prove we’re meant to be together!”
Her tone had shifted greatly over the past few moments, from that of a hardened, vindictive, manipulative woman to that of a scared, desperate, lovesick child.
And if Sera was hearing things right, that was exactly what had happened. Mr. Moore—Seth—had stolen a child from the London streets and poisoned her mind with promises of love and marriage, as long as she helped him find Isis’s cuff.
As long as Elizabeth wore it herself.
“Did he tell you why he wanted this gold?” Sera asked softly.
“I don’t care why,” Elizabeth snapped. “It’s his and it was meant to bring us together. You two already have each other. You would deny me that love?”
The manipulative woman was peeking through the cracks again, devotion glimmering in her trickster eyes. The indignation came across as forced.
William saw it, too, and his voice dropped low. “Yes. We would deny you that. I’m taking the ring now.”
He pushed the hand holding the ring into his pocket, making it look like he was depositing the piece inside. Only Sera tracked his movements like she had back in the Waldgraves’ flat. And just like that night with the coins, the ring surreptitiously slid over the top of his pants and down the leg to land in his boot.
Elizabeth stared at the pocket in which she thought held the ring. “I told you. I told you everything. Just like you wanted. Give it back.”
“And give you Sera?” William said incredulously. “Not a chance.”
Sera took his arm and pulled him outside. Elizabeth shrieked in their wake.
When they were well out of Elizabeth’s earshot, she said to him, “That Mr. Moore was going to use her as a vessel. Remember how Amonteh forbade Ramsesh’s ka and the powers inside the cuff to ever inhabit a male body? Seth must’ve figured that out sometime over the past two thousand years. And when he tracked the retrieval of the cuff from the cave to Samuel Oliver in London, he took over a body there, stole Elizabeth from the streets, and brainwashed the poor girl into thinking she was doing things for him because he loved her.”
He studied her face for several long moments. “You feel sorry for her.”
She shook her head at the ground. “I can’t help it. Maybe a small part of me does. She was a child when he started twisting her mind. A child, William. And I’ve felt Seth’s disgusting magic. I know what it’s like to be used. Malik was Seth too once, and he used me like that outside the cave. The death of that innocent man is still on my hands, still in my head.” She shuddered, and William ran his hands down her arms. Calm shimmered in the wake of his touch.
“Malik had Seth’s ka,” he said, and Sera nodded. “But if Seth was Malik and the cuff was in that museum, under Malik’s control all that time, why didn’t he just use it?”
“Because he needed a woman. More specifically, he needed me. Remember Amonteh’s final prayers, forbidding any man from using the cuff? When I came out of the cave, Malik told me he’d tried to give it to other women, but it hadn’t closed around their arms the way it did mine. He said he suspected that it knew when it was being manipulated. Somehow it knew it was being forced into service and that Seth was pulling the strings.”
“But with you—”
“I went to him ignorant. I knew nothing about this”—she drew a finger down the cuff—“or him. He stood on the other side of the room when I put it on. He didn’t even go into the cave with me. But he knew what would happen inside. He tricked Isis into giving me what the cuff had promised. He tricked me. It’s what he wanted from Elizabeth two hundred years ago—or today, rather. That’s why he never told her anything about what she was really meant for or what the cuff could do.”
“What about the ring?” he asked.
She exhaled and swept a long look across the stars. “Did you get the feeling like Moore has the other ring? Tuthotsut had two, remember. Maybe they’re somehow connected?”
He was nodding as she spoke. “Yes. And if Elizabeth somehow got the cuff off you and put on this ring, it would create some sort of…corridor…back to him?”
She let out a short, humorless laugh. “I suppose it isn’t the weirdest thing we’ve heard lately.”
His expression changed, softened. The fingers of one hand grazed lightly down her cheek. “You surprise me every time you open your mouth. Did you know that?”
“No.” She turned her face to kiss his palm. “But so do you.”
A strange sadness twinged the corners of his eyes.
“We can get rid of the ring,” she said, “now that we know what it does. Throw the ring into the ocean and close up that corridor forever. And then stay the hell away from England and Seth Moore.”
But what did that mean then, about the possibility of her going home?
William threw a shadowed look over her shoulder at Elizabeth, then stalked back into the fort. She followed, because she couldn’t read his emotions and that scared her.
He took Elizabeth by the shoulders and sat her up, propping her against the wall. He just stood there, staring down at her, until she barked, “Out wi’ it!”
He slid his hands into his pockets. “Why did you do that to Jem?”
Elizabeth sneered. “Do what? He said he knew where you were and then he failed me. It wasn’t my fault the constables came running.”
“Do you know what they do to bolters?” William’s voice was eerily even. “Jem will hang. His death is on your head now. Along with your husband’s and anyone else you’ve hurt in the name of Seth. Do you feel satisfied with that?”
She snorted. “Eh. Stumpy’s somehow managed to survive for nineteen years when death should’ve taken him when we were six.”<
br />
Sera’s whole body went cold. Was she saying—?
William frowned. “Stumpy?”
“That’s what I called him when we were children. When he was fat and short. When Father used to beat us—”
Sera surged forward. Almost too close. The stain of Seth’s influence came off Elizabeth like noxious fumes.
“Your brother.” Sera’s voice sounded awfully hollow to her own ears. “Jem is your brother.”
“He is. What’s it to you? Said he hated you, he did. Said I could have you as long as I took you away from him.” She glanced at William. “Fat lot of good that did me.”
Dark spots invaded Sera’s peripheral vision, seeping closer and closer to the center, threatening to end her sight. But no, it only narrowed, circling and spinning down into the tunnel vision she’d experienced on the streets of Parramatta. All she saw was Elizabeth, and the sight of the woman, unrepentant over having sent her own brother to his death, fed the brewing chaos.
The magic wanted death. It didn’t seem to discriminate; it didn’t seem to matter that Elizabeth had once been Seth’s pawn. The bloodlust was being stoked by Sera’s anger, and it wanted her to use the evil Ramsesh had stolen from Tuthotsut all those years ago.
No.
She scrambled backward, her shoulders striking the stone wall.
“Sera, are you—?” William reached for her.
“No,” she mumbled. “I won’t. I won’t do that again.”
She drunkenly spun out of the fort and back into the night air, putting space between her and Elizabeth. Footsteps crunched behind her and then William’s strong arm draped around her, pulling her close.
“The death inside me,” she breathed into his neck. “It wants Elizabeth. She needs to pay but…not like that. I can’t do that.”
“I know.” He stroked her back. “I know.”
With a gasp she pulled away. “You said she confessed to killing her husband?”
He gave a little shake of his head at her sudden subject change. “She did. Name was Thomas, I believe.”
“Then leave her here tied up. I’ll go back to the Rocks and find a constable. Maybe word of Thomas’s death has reached here. Maybe they’re looking for her. Those two earlier didn’t ask her name, didn’t ask her any questions. But if I tell them about her and where she is, they’ll take her in, won’t they? We can get rid of the ring and she’ll be in the hands of the Crown. We have our justice.”
But no future…Stop it, Sera.
He frowned. “No. You’re not going back into town alone.”
She put a hand on her hip and gave him a twenty-first century look of incredulity, complete with an eye-roll. “Well, you’re not going back there. Not with your name and face. Not with your crimes.”
“Ah!” He grabbed at his hair in frustration, walked two steps away, then came back.
“You know I’m right. I have to go. I can’t be here with her any longer. I’m scared of what will happen…what I’ll do.”
“Just stay out here. I’ll go.”
“No. I’ll be fine. I know the Rocks now, where to hide, what to avoid—”
He grabbed the front of her blouse and pulled her into him, sending her stumbling off balance. But their mouths still met, a shock of a kiss, wonderful and brief and too full of emotion.
“What am I supposed to do then?” he whispered against her mouth.
“You make sure Elizabeth is secure, throw the ring into the water and meet me somewhere. Say, on the other side of Sydney. Near the Governor’s house. They won’t think to look for us in the good part of town.”
“And then what?” He glanced to the east, where the first tinges of dawn appeared over the ocean. She understood. They were still on an island. Still in New South Wales. Still in 1819.
She leaned closer and stroked a thumb over his lush bottom lip. Those lips, the kind that no man should have and use with such perfection.
“And then”—she kissed him again—“we find a new life.”
#
Elizabeth listened as Sera—the deceitful one, the unworthy one—said something to William and then hurried off. Elizabeth couldn’t hear what was said between them, but it didn’t matter. She knew what was coming.
She’d come this far, had been within spitting distance of Mr. Moore’s gold cuff, and she wasn’t about to let a little rope and the threat of punishment stop her now. This was an island. They could try to run, but they wouldn’t get far.
She could find herself back in Mr. Moore’s arms very, very soon.
They’d forgotten to replace her gag, and she bent her head and started gnawing on the ropes like a mouse. Nibble, nibble. Tug, tug. She worked frantically, swiftly.
Outside, William began to pace, his toes scraping at the dirt. He walked all around the fort, and Elizabeth kept a keen ear trained on his pattern as she squirmed and loosened the rope around her wrists.
Sometimes his footsteps faded into nothing. She didn’t know if he was sleeping or standing staring into the dawn like a madman…or if he’d walked to the cliff’s edge and thrown the ring down below.
That last thought made her work even faster, her heart slamming inside her chest.
At last the rope dropped free from her arms and sensation tingled back into her fingertips. She bit back a hiss of pain and started to work on her ankles, which were freed much quicker. She rose to her feet, silent as a mouse, and crept to the doorway.
William was sitting on a low wall, facing the Rocks. His hands rested on his thighs, his head hung low in thought. Then, as if a decision had been made or a great idea realized, he suddenly looked up and pushed himself off the wall.
The ring was in his pocket. She’d seen him put it there. And now was the time for her to take it back.
He took one step, but that’s as far as he got.
The rock in her hand—a loose chunk she’d taken from the fort wall—was about the same size and weight as the iron she’d used to silence Thomas. It didn’t have a point on it like the iron had, but as her arm swung down toward William’s head and she felt the supreme, righteous power of what she had to do, she knew the rock would do exactly what she needed.
She struck him in the temple. His body spun around. His eyes, wide and full of disbelief and surprise, met hers right before he crumpled to the ground. The sound of his collapse was satisfying. The stutter and struggle of his breath begged her forward.
She shoved a hand in the pocket where she’d seen him deposit the ring and…nothing. Perhaps she’d been wrong. She checked the other pocket. Also empty.
William’s chest pulsed erratically. His eyes were closed. He didn’t have long to live. She didn’t care.
Aha! Perhaps he’d slipped the ring into his boot, thinking he was being sneaky. She moved to his feet and yanked off both boots, turned them upside down. Only dust came out.
No. It couldn’t be.
She patted down his entire body, unfolded hemlines.
No.
She whirled to the south, to the cliffs. Maybe he’d thrown it over when his footsteps had gone quiet earlier, when she’d lost track of his movements around the fort. Maybe he’d carried out his threat after all.
Now it was her turn not to breathe. Rage swept in and replaced the air.
She sneered down at William, whom she could no longer see breathing at all. His face was slack, his body completely still. Deathly still.
She looked toward Sydney in the distance, coming alive in the brightening dawn, and a new sense of purpose came to her.
If William had tossed her ring, and Sera was still running around the colony wearing Mr. Moore’s cuff, there was only one thing left for Elizabeth to do.
The thieving harlot had to die.
CHAPTER 26
Sera stumbled through the maze of the Rocks, hurrying toward the Hyde Park Barracks. The morning had just barely dawned and people were starting to trickle into the lanes, but no constables wandered the streets at this hour. That was why she aimed
for the barracks, because if there was one place where the colony’s version of cops would be, it was the jail.
She’d find the first soldier or constable she saw, tell them about Elizabeth and get her contained, meet up with William, and then get the hell out of Sydney.
By the time she reached the barracks, the sun had fully risen above the horizon. The complex stood within a high wall. Three stories of clean tawny brick with an angled roof and rows of rectangular windows. Two uniformed men yawned where they stood at the gate.
This was it. All she had to do was walk up to them, tell them about the murder Elizabeth had committed and where to find her, hope they didn’t ask too many questions, and then disappear.
She flattened herself against a corner of a granary and peered out. The area surrounding the barracks was wide and open. A group of smaller buildings stood across the way, one of which was still under construction. A pile of newly mined pale stone sat to one side, ready to be carved into bricks, and wooden scaffolding scaled up the side with already chiseled stone piled on top. A few people began to fill in the spaces between the scant buildings, and it made her wary. She had no idea what news, if anything, had been circulating around the Rocks about Jem or William or the woman the two men had shared a room with below the Waldgraves’. Caution stilled her feet. The beat of her heart began to pick up pace.
Movement to her left caught her eye. Not the careful, easy movements of a colonist starting the day’s work, but a flash of something quick. A billow of a long dress, floating out behind as the wearer dashed from one hiding place to another. A brief glimpse of an all-too-familiar yellow color as it disappeared behind a bakery.
Elizabeth. Whom she’d left tied up and gagged back at Fort Philip with William. Or had she been gagged when Sera had left? Sera had taken off so quickly, so desperate to get away, that she hadn’t checked. She’d trusted William to make sure Elizabeth was secure before heading to their meeting place. William…
Now her heart completely stopped. If Elizabeth was free, what had happened to William? Had he gotten away before Elizabeth had somehow finagled her way out of the bonds? He had to have. He wouldn’t have delayed there. He would’ve tossed the ring and started for their meeting place right away—
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