Chapter 4
C HAPTER 4
RUBY
The partygoers descend like vultures. Swooping in, all speed and precision, talons extended toward the fresh meat.
Wren and I—Kaysa and Lavinia.
The Cerises take the left flank. The Starwoods the right.
Ostensibly, Marsyas is clutching us for support, but in that first moment I feel that if I weren’t holding on to the soft swell of the woman’s forearm, I might float away altogether.
Because, as they close in, I am sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that these people will know we’re total fakes. And then we’ll really be in trouble.
I brace myself as Hector Cerise greets us first. Like his wife and seventeen-year-old twins, he has the air of old Hollywood, as if they were made to be in black and white. To wit, Hector is all slicked-back hair and cigar smoke clinging to his navy suit coat and pants as he crashes into our three-person line with a showman’s gravitas. It’s impossible to miss a large ruby ring on his right index finger as his hands press together in front of his chest.
“Marsyas, you’ve enticed your girls into coming!” he exclaims—bowing to Marsyas like she’s royalty and not an old lady dressed in dead animals. “After all these years? Bravo!”
“And what fine young ladies they’ve become,” crows Luna Starwood from the elbow of her grandchild, Infinity. They’re both wearing gauzy white, paired with brilliant grins on their dark brown faces. They look about a thousand times more comfortable than I feel. Luna’s midnight gaze meets mine. “You must be Lavinia?” I nod automatically, wondering how she got it right on the first guess. Really, for all our differences, Wren and I look alike. Similar height, bone structure, coloring. “And Kaysa, how lovely are those hazel eyes?”
And now I know. Something subtle. The smallest of tests passed.
“They’re just the spitting image of Marcos’s gaze, Marsyas,” agrees Sanguine Cerise, Hector’s wife. Every one of her attributes is best described with a “very”—very tiny waist, very big boobs, very sharp cheekbones, very blond hair, very red nails, all wrapped in a very tight long-sleeved dress. And apparently, she’s very pointed in her commentary too.
Sanguine doesn’t mean to be unkind— I think —but under my grasp, Marsyas tenses at the mention of her late son’s name. Wren catches it too, immediately giving “Nona” a loving pat while cooing, “Such a compliment, Mrs. Cerise. Why, thank you so much.”
“Call me Sanguine, darling. And Hector is fine for my love.” Sanguine gropes Hector’s bicep as if we’d have some sort of confusion over whom her heart adores. They seem like the type of couple that mistakes codependence for affection. “Kaysa and Lavinia, please meet the twins, Ada and Hex.”
Wrapped in a dress with longer sleeves than a hem, Ada is her mother without all the extremes, soft and natural, like a museum painting of a girl frocking among wildflowers. Or maybe poppies. Something poisonous. Hex—short for Hector Junior according to Marsyas’s document—is tall and dapper like his father in a matching navy suit. He has the bearing of an athlete—the kind named team captain not out of talent but out of fear. Given that he’s a varsity linebacker, he probably shoves kids into lockers as a pre-practice warmup at the fancy Pinault Day School the twins attend.
“We know each other, Mama,” Hex scoffs, his coal-dark eyes pinned on me. My heart gives a little kick.
“Prancing around in your nappies a dozen years ago doesn’t imply knowing them as they currently are,” Sanguine insists with a dismissive wave that has me noticing that it’s not just Hector—all four of them are wearing matching rings on their pointer fingers. I don’t know the first thing about gems but these aren’t costume jewelry. Rubies, garnets, or whatever they are, they have the weight of a family heirloom. I wouldn’t know. The pearl earrings I’m wearing are the closest thing I have to my own and they’re not even real.
Ada frowns at Wren. “I thought you preferred ‘Kay’?”
Shit, I think, but Wren handles this little snag like a pro with a shrug. “I grew out of it. Kaysa fits me better these days.”
Ada’s lips twitch as she accepts my sister’s outstretched hand, but she doesn’t comment further. Phew. Keeping to my current plan of smiling and saying as little as possible, I accept Ada’s hand next with the barest of pleasantries.
Meanwhile, when I move to Hex, there’s a sharp edge to his features, and his long fingers are far too cold for the summer night. His unfortunate nickname does his general air of presentation no favors.
As I’m doing everything I can not to rub my clammy, and now chilly, hand against the lovely silk of my very expensive dress, a musical voice calls to us from somewhere in the vicinity of the manor.
“Are those the long-lost Blackgate girls I see?”
We all turn, and there, approaching, is not so much a person as a living, breathing candle flame.
Winter Hegemony.
Like the perfect grass, the floating chandeliers, the soft air too still for the mountains, her outward appearance feels aggressively manufactured—a mirage with a pit crew.
Honestly, it’s absolutely unnerving.
“Best get your eyes checked, Winter Hegemony, because we’re all here,” Luna shouts in her direction, with a cackle that shakes her frail frame as she hangs on to Infinity’s strong arm for dear life. I immediately like her—Mom’s favorite patients were exactly like Luna, ornery broads whose love language was subtle verbal decimation.
“There’s no missing you, Luna—how are you?” Winter makes a point of enveloping the ancient woman in a gentle embrace the moment she reaches our circle.
“Not dead yet, which is pretty great when you’re ninety-seven, I’d say.”
“Pretty great, indeed,” Winter agrees, smoothing the old woman’s ivory caftan as she disentangles herself, careful to make sure Luna is still well balanced against Infinity. Winter greets the younger Starwood with a gentle embrace that doesn’t upset the balance of their grandmother, and an enthusiastic compliment about the cut of their ethereal jumpsuit.
Then, with the practiced precision of someone painstakingly trained in the social arts, Winter precedes to welcome each guest warmly, proxy to the hostess, promising her grandmother’s imminent arrival. She gives everyone their due, their time, working with both class and efficiency before concluding, most likely purposefully, with the three of us.
“Can you believe it?” Marsyas asks, pointedly squeezing us close in a remake of the Louvre photo she showed us at the Ren Fest. “My Lavinia and Kaysa, in the flesh!”
Winter agrees that it’s so wonderful she can believe it, and then pulls us each into a warm, rose-scented embrace. “So lovely you’ve decided to join us this year,” she muses to the pair of us. “It’s been so long—whatever changed your mind about attending?”
“Yes, Marsyas, what spell did you put upon them to do your bidding?” Hector asks, hopping in with a grand laugh. “Mine are starting to weasel out of my instructions.” Both twins flinch as he claps them heartily on the shoulders. He squeezes, his large gemstone ring outshining the plain gold wedding band in the floating light with the movement. “It’s quite infuriating as a patriarch, honestly.”
I don’t think I’ve heard a person outside a Regency novel describe themselves as a patriarch. Maybe he does belong in another time.
“Nonsense,” Luna insists with a wave of an elegant ebony hand, “these charming young ladies needed no convincing to attend a party.” She winks at me. “It’s your mother who needs convincing. We know, girls, no need to pretend.”
Wren’s mouth pops open to give the stock answer we’d agreed upon about “our” attendance, but Marsyas lets out a practiced chuckle, insisting, “It was high time, nothing more, nothing less.”
“Speaking of time, I want to hear where you’ve been, what you’ve been up to, all of it.” Then, before either of us can object, Winter claims our wrists, dislodges us from Marsyas, and aims us toward a fountain gurgling merrily among the expertly shaped topiaries.
I look back at Marsyas for some clue as to whether a directive—and a physical assertion, no less—from Winter Hegemony counts as doing what her grandmother says, per her final set of instructions. In answer, Marsyas pointedly tugs Sanguine down to sit on a nearby bench, and waves over a waiter bearing a tray of gleaming crystal flutes bubbling with champagne.
Wren uses that as her cue to happily launch into the story she’s concocted over the past six days.
A manor house just outside London, a penthouse in Barcelona, a walkup along the river in Prague, a little cottage in Bavaria to retreat to when we please. Boarding school, complete social media ban, everything directed by our mother, Athena, and Nona Marsyas.
Reveling in their undivided attention against the hum of string instruments being piped in from somewhere discreet, Wren clearly finds this part of tonight exhilarating, while I find it completely and utterly exhausting. So good at putting on a show, my sister, while I can barely hold up the curtain.
Sometimes, I’m not sure how we’re related at all.
Wren is in the middle of a very spirited tale about the time “she” chucked a scone slathered with clotted cream at a boy’s head in the Baxter refectory, resulting in an explosion on contact if her hand gestures are any indication, when a voice appears in my ear.
“This story isn’t about her.”
There’s a wryness to his delivery, as if he’s in on a joke, and a weight to his presence that hangs between us in the thin mountain air over my shoulder.
I turn toward this boy—bracing because he could mean that sentence and humor in any number of ways, including seeing right through our sister act—and my breath catches. I immediately recognize the lacrosse-star build and clean lines of his classically handsome face from Marsyas’s files.
Auden Hegemony.
I know who he is. And yet, I’m so startled—by him, by his droll accusation, by the stupid way my breath hitched—that I laugh .
“Um, what?” I grasp for my accent, which slid away in my surprise, and clarify with a questionable British lilt, “How do you mean, Auden?”
A wry smile lifts now to go with his delivery, and there’s just something a tad bit dangerous about it. Like black ice—hardly visible and deadly all the same. Still, his eyes, blue rimmed in brown, twinkle in a way that signals he seems pleased not to have needed an introduction. “You’re the kind to bean an adversary with a perfectly good pastry. That’s all.”
“So… you think this story is actually about me?” I ask, slowly, hoping I’m understanding this whole bizarre tit for tat correctly and that he hasn’t just casually dismantled our entire ruse.
“Yes.”
I squint at him, a small, confused smile tugging at the corners of my mouth because whatever the heck is going on here was not outlined in his file. “Is that some sort of compliment?”
He tips his chin. “Please consider taking it as one.”
“Auden Hegemony,” Winter’s voice breaks in, chiding and insistent, “what kind of host are you?” She flourishes her mostly filled drink at him with a very toned arm. “Reacquainting yourself with one Blackgate but not the other. Don’t play favorites, it’s rude.”
I would not call his attitude toward me any sort of favoritism because what in the name of rich people was that ? But I’ll happily accept the benefits of Winter’s instruction and Wren’s enthusiasm as she hops to her feet from where she’d settled in on the fountain’s edge for story time. “Kaysa,” she announces. “Lovely to meet you again, Auden.”
Wren’s tone is tickled—like she just can’t believe she’s meeting him at his very own home. And, as Auden is shaking her hand, I realize he didn’t afford me the same hospitality. Or even greet me really. Yet, as I watch, he goes through the same routine Winter executed, spending time talking to each and every person like he’s a politician or something.
Apparently, he doesn’t need or want my—Lavinia’s—vote.
With a delicate quirk of her brow and a pointed perusal of the garden, Wren announces, “I’ve collected two of the three Hegemonys. Now, where is the—”
“We’re not a set.”
My head whips around as a brooding, broad-shouldered boy steps into view. Warm brown skin, close-cropped dark hair, eyes the color of the shadowed depths of a forest floor, and the unmistakable air of Hegemony in his refined features.
Evander. The oldest cousin.
Eyes twinkling, Wren smiles at him like he’s exactly what she’s been waiting for. “That’s not what the collectors say. Hegemony sightings are very valuable on the black market.”
He doesn’t laugh, but Winter does. “Come now, Evander, isn’t it nice to be sought after? I won’t bore our guests with the travails of your love life but suffice to say your reputation as a sourpuss is not as sexy as one would assume.”
Evander simply meets Wren’s delighted expression, and deadpans, “I’d say sightings of the Blackgate heirs are much fewer and farther between.”
Heirs. Again. Used in a sentence by someone who just graduated high school. So formal. So weird. Maybe rich people are a different species.
“Well,” Wren says, a sly twist to her lips, “if there are stories to be had about Evander Hegemony’s love life travails, I can guarantee you’ll be seeing much more of us.”
Wren winks at Evander, her dark eye makeup shimmering in the floating glow of the lighting arrangement. This makes Winter laugh, Auden smirk, and Evander scoff.
No one, not even Evander, can deny it. They’re an obvious set.
And just as I’ve determined that, their final piece arrives.
In that moment, the volume of the party bleeds into nothing but prim footsteps as the matriarch of Hegemony Manor appears on the stone veranda above the garden, framed by a slate of massive windows ablaze in reflection of the setting sun.
Ursula Hegemony is straight-backed and prim, a tall woman, who, even if not stationed above the party, would have no trouble looking down her nose at everyone around her.
That much I’d expected. What I don’t expect is her age. She should be a contemporary of Marsyas or Luna. But whether it’s a trick of genetics, the distance, or, perhaps, her obvious fortune, Ursula Hegemony doesn’t appear a day over forty.
“Welcome, welcome to Hegemony Manor, all of you.” Ursula’s graceful arms sweep wide and warm, even as she stands purposefully above and apart.
I realize this is her dinner party, but it is a dinner party, not a presidential address. Yet as I glance around, no one seems surprised, except for Wren, who mouths to me, Revival of Evita ? She gestures like she might burst into “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” before winking and returning her attention to the balcony.
Ursula continues in a strong, clear voice. “I have summoned you here as allies and friends, our most unusual and unbreakable family, for a night that is wholly ours.”
I wait for Ursula to launch into a full speech, but instead our hostess simply gestures to the long, beautifully appointed table.
“Please be seated—we will feast and then tonight’s business will begin.”
I am extremely happy to take that as my cue to start moving and latch myself back onto Marsyas’s arm as quickly as possible. Wren is more leisurely about doing the same, but she eventually pries herself away from Winter and Evander, who she clearly finds intriguing.
We’ve made it two steps in the direction of where the table is set under those gorgeous, glowing, floating chandeliers, when I feel Marsyas stiffen under my grasp. “Ursula, hello! You look as stunning as ever.”
My gaze snaps up and there, indeed, is Ursula Hegemony.
I have no idea how she arrived so quickly, but she’s only feet away now. This close, her eyes are as blue as tropical water and Ursula wields them with an intensity that confirms, without a shadow of a doubt, that she sees everything. I immediately regret prompting Wren’s Evita reenactment.
Marsyas’s grin stretches to the point where it might fall off her carefully powdered face and turns to us. “I’d like to reacquaint you with my granddaughters,” Marsyas announces. “Lavinia, my oldest, and Kaysa, my youngest.”
Wren offers a hand and a grin. “It’s fantastic to see you again, Mrs. Hegemony.”
Ursula’s eyes flick to Wren’s pink-polished nails and the swinging rabbit’s foot, and she sweeps her own hands together, lacing her elegant fingers in a clear, stunning denial.
Wren, ever the actress, drops her proffered hand as if it had never been raised at all. Ursula’s attention returns to Marsyas’s face. “I see you’ve prepared them for tonight, Marsyas.”
The old woman forces a chuckle at Ursula, even as her nails dig into my skin to the point where they’ll definitely leave a mark. “I’ve only had my heirs back a day. Their skills are still quite raw.”
“I do hope Athena is taking the heirs’ grooming seriously, Marsyas,” this woman says as if we’re not standing right here. “With Marcos gone, they are the Blackgates’ future.”
Marsyas swallows so deeply her spiderweb earrings sway, and I swear her eyes mist at this mention of her son. Unlike when Sanguine referred to Marcos, I’m fairly certain this allusion was meant to hurt. When Marsyas answers, her words are carefully etched. “My Marcos’s absence will forever be a chasm, Ursula.”
“A feeling I know quite well.”
Something passes between them. The losses of Ursula’s own children, most likely, though there’s an edge to that buried pain I can’t read. “Fortunate we are to have the next generation.” Ursula regards the two of us again and I would not be surprised if I glanced down and found my flesh burned straight through.
“We are so very happy to be here, Mrs. Hegemony,” Wren pipes up. Clearly trying to prove she’s perfectly pleasant and not bothered by the extremely precise, extremely coded small talk. “Your estate is lovely, and your grandchildren are so very welcoming.”
Ursula eyes my sister. Then, she extends her own hand—not to Wren, but to Marsyas.
“Come, Marsyas, we have much to discuss.”
I automatically take a step forward.
But Ursula’s mouth quirks at the sight of my assumed inclusion. “Just your matriarch, Lavinia.”
Marsyas drops our forearms and steps forward. Our hostess beckons to the party at large. “Auden? Evander? Please see to it that the Blackgate heirs are properly entertained at dinner.”
Great, we’re being assigned handlers.
As they arrive, Wren immediately latches onto Evander’s elbow, pleased as punch at this turn of events. An opportunity to flirt at close range. She’ll probably tease him about ghosts.
Meanwhile, Auden turns to me and offers his crooked arm—we apparently needed to add Regency-era actions to go with the Regency-era word choices. Then, he goes further, twisting his palm skyward so it’s open for the taking.
My brain short-circuits because this whole thing is so bizarre and when I know I’ve spent too long deliberating, I reach for my terrible accent and a bit of humor. “Such a gentleman, and only moments after accusing me of being a scone-throwing maniac.”
Auden smiles, but I have the distinct feeling it’s not for me. Something he seems to confirm when he admits, “I’m sure you of all people will understand that when my grandmother tells me to do something, I oblige.”
“That I do. I’m here because I wasn’t in a position to say no—to coming to this dinner or to my grandmother’s fashion choices.”
I lift the wrist nearest to him in demonstrative presentation, the black rabbit’s foot swinging morosely. It’s possible that I’ve waved it too hard because on the upswing, the taxidermic animal appendage grazes the side of his offered bare hand.
Auden jerks away as if I’ve bit him.
“It’s dead, Auden. It can’t hurt you.”
I attempt a smile. If he has an actual phobia, I’ve made things worse, and I have no idea how to remedy that.
But Auden simply tugs at his very expensive suit sleeves. “It comes with the territory. Part of what makes you a Blackgate.”
I have no idea what he’s getting at but I nod, because that seems like the right thing to do. But even that seems all wrong, and I have the suspicion that I’m trying so hard to be someone else that I’ve literally lost my grasp on how to be a normal human being. In an effort to reset, I turn away from Auden’s extremely handsome face and make it a point to watch the others situate themselves at the long rectangular table. Ursula at the head, the adults filling in up at the top. The kids round out the rest.
Then, Auden surprises me and offers his arm again.
Because he’s a gentleman and this is how gentlemen human, apparently.
“You know,” I say, “I think I’m good to walk on my own. Very kind of you to offer. Very regal.”
He pointedly slips both hands into his trouser pockets. “Suit yourself.”
I have no idea if it’s me, or if it’s him, or the combination of the two of us, but there’s a thorn buried somewhere beneath this Auden and Lavinia relationship. If I’m going to survive the next four hours, I need to steer this ship in an entirely new direction.
“Auden,” I begin as we finally start strolling across the beautiful, star-shaped ceramic tiles of the garden, “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Can we give it another go?”
I hold out a hand to him, hoping that starting over at a proper handshake will do some symbolic heavy lifting to get us out of our apparent social death spiral. “I’m Lavinia, nice to meet you again.”
Auden eyes my peace offering and for a small moment, my heart drops at the thought of him delivering the same clear admonishment his grandmother dealt Wren. I know Ursula Hegemony is watching us from her seat at the head of the table. And though she turned her nose up at us, Auden’s own admission is that he must do what his grandmother says, and she instructed him to take care of me.
It’s a small gamble. A tiny, little dare.
Auden sets his very nice mouth into a line, a decision made.
He reaches out and accepts my hand.
His fingers are warm and dry, and carefully still—a clasp rather than a shake, which keeps the offending bunny bauble from swinging his way a second time. His eyes lift to mine, narrowed slightly, as if they’re trying desperately to read something that isn’t there.
Because I’m not who he’s looking for.
I breathe as shallowly as possible, trying to stave off my panic at the idea that—again—Auden Hegemony can see right through me.
But then his face breaks into that classically handsome smile.
“Auden, and likewise, Lavinia.”