Chapter 11
C HAPTER 11
AUDEN
Healing Lavinia Blackgate isn’t as simple as I’ve made it out to be.
Each magical line is amplified by its preferred specialty. In my case, the elements enhance my magical abilities, and my magic is at its best when they’re used in each spell cast. In this case, to heal Lavinia, I have to manipulate the fifth element, life, to do it.
Not her life— my life.
The price is a balance between what’s been damaged and what I have to give whole. Sometimes, it’s a life for a life. In her immediate grief, Winter was ready to make that exchange tonight for our grandmother—a cost Evander and I thought was too great. Here, the price is small, but will mean big things to the Blackgates.
The Blackgates don’t know this—and I need an answer as to why they don’t.
It’s been clear since they returned to Hegemony Manor that not only have the girls been spelled to forget the execution of their father—and as someone with a dead father, I can’t blame them for being completely uncurious about that particular hole in their collective memory—but they’ve been left completely uneducated about both the Four Lines and their inheritance within them.
I want to know why.
And I want to know who.
Who murdered Ursula? Why?
And what does missing Marsyas Blackgate have to do with it?
Death witches aren’t typically a cuddly lot but still it seems too terrible to think that not only is Marsyas guilty and gone, which robs us of a chance to fulfill the necessary tasks to break Ursula’s final curse, but that she’d condemn her beloved granddaughters at the same time.
“Place your hand in mine,” I tell Lavinia, crosshatching my palms.
She takes a step forward and immediately sways as she tries to plant her foot, pain claiming her balance this time instead of the clumsiness I saw in the garden. On pure instinct, my left hand shoots out to steady her, cuffing her upper arm to keep her from tumbling to the grass. Her skin is cold and trembles under my touch, pain and adrenaline pulsing through her body.
Lavinia’s jaw unhinges, and she seems to attempt a smile, though it comes off like a grimace, the streaking lines of tears bracketing her full mouth as she calls back to our conversation in the garden. “I guess I’m not good to walk on my own after all.”
I can’t look away from the mixture of panic, pain, and resolve in the glassy darkness of her eyes.
No, this is not the Lavinia Blackgate of old.
Though I suppose I’m not the same Auden Hegemony either.
The one I am now calmly assures this panicked and pained girl, “You will be in just a moment.”
Then, as gently as possible, I gather her injured hand in mine. The first two fingers are so mangled by the magic I’m surprised she didn’t immediately faint. I’d seen the whole thing—Kaysa reaching for the barrier and Lavinia reacting without a care for herself, putting her body between her little sister and disaster. They may have been spelled to forget and coddled to be in the dark, but that sort of fierce protection isn’t something that can be stamped out.
A curl of admiration unfurls in my chest as I cup my hands over her injury.
Lavinia hisses, and a new batch of tears wells in her eyes as they flit from the verdant magic flickering between my skin and hers and my face. I hold her gaze for the barest of moments, the spell to heal her nearly as quick as the exposure to magic that ruined her flesh in the first place.
A breath, the tiniest fleck of my life element, and it’s done.
The magic dies into her skin, and, steering well clear of the charged Death Line relics dangling dangerously from her wrists, I carefully let go. As they fall away, Lavinia’s right hand is revealed, repaired and whole.
As good as new.
Flexing her fingers, Lavinia seems stunned to silence. Kaysa gawks beside her, wide-eyed and mouth curled into a little O before she exclaims, “Shiiiiite, that’s amazing!”
“It’s too much.” Lavinia catches my wrist with her newly healed hand, her preserved rabbit’s foot swaying but not touching my skin. “Thank you for healing me but—why are you doing this, Auden?”
Honestly, I don’t know until I’m talking.
“Your grandmother abandoned you, and you know none of that looks good for you”—I jab a finger behind us, toward the void left by what I assume was Marsyas’s chauffeured vehicle—“especially with that man very visibly mangled by Death magic.”
Both girls go a little green in the waning light of the night. “And,” I say, “given the obvious gaping chasm in your magical education, it’s no wonder you tried to leave. You panicked. I would panic too—”
“Auden! Are you out here?” Hex’s voice calls out.
Without hesitation, I yell back. “Stay there! I’ve got them!” Then, lowering my voice, I whisper to the girls, “Quickly, now. Toward the house before he leaves the steps and sees the body down the drive.”
Lavinia’s brow creases, even as she follows my instructions and begins swift-stepping forward, her newly repaired hand tucked into Kaysa’s own. “But they’re going to find it eventually—as soon as it’s light. What’s the point in hiding it?”
“The point is to give you more time to figure out what your grandmother has done—and why.”
Lavinia frowns and gestures toward the man, now twenty paces ahead with the rate we’re moving. “Doesn’t that make us look even more guilty?”
Hell. She’s not the same, yet still stubborn as ever when push comes to shove. And right, regrettably.
“Coming!” I shout to Hex with a wave. It does the job, and when he’s looking at me and not our surroundings, I reach for the spark of my magic. When I’m sure the driver’s hidden from Hex’s view behind Evander’s ridiculous Maserati, my magic descends in a green haze, instantly cloaking the dead man in his own corner of night.
Beside me, Lavinia’s step falters anew. My hand shoots out again to steady her, but Kaysa is already on the case, holding her sister about the waist as her body’s equilibrium recalibrates from the receding pain. “What… I… did you…”
“Did I buy you more time? Yes.”
Lavinia and Kaysa again exchange a look, and I know they’re as skeptical of my aid as they are scared of the truth.
I am too.
“What was that all about?” Hex asks the sisters as the chandelier light from within the manor finally reaches our faces. “Your memories flood back and chase you out the door?”
“No,” Lavinia answers flatly. Her voice is still rough from pain, but she’s trying to hide it.
“We were searching for Nona,” Kaysa explains.
“Like, physically searching?” Hex squints at her. Kaysa squints right back. “Why don’t you just use a hunting spell?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Athena isn’t one for magical education,” I reply, dryly. I try to push past him and into the house in an effort to keep his curiosity away from the driver, but Hex doesn’t budge.
“Not an excuse to keep them wondering, Auden.” He turns to the Blackgates, grinning a little too widely. “I can do it for you. It’ll only take a sec.”
The girls exchange yet another glance—they’re quite possibly more in tune than even the Cerise twins when it comes to wordless communication—but before they can consent, Hex leans in and plucks something off Lavinia’s shoulder strap.
“What—is… is that her hair?”
“I would assume so, unless you’re going gray mighty early,” Hex answers with a waggle of his eyebrows.
Lavinia purses her lips and, despite what she’s just been through, manages to cross her arms, relics suddenly prominently displayed—an obvious threat, should he attempt to pull anything like when he tried to “help” with her nicked skin on the terrace. She may have been left in the dark by her mother and grandmother, but it’s clear she knows how to use those amplifiers. “How does this work?”
“We just need a piece of Marsyas to trace,” Hex tells her, the silver hair shiny in his pinched grip. “The rest is magic.”
And then he goddamn winks.
“On with it, show-off. We need to get back upstairs.”
Hex smirks at me and shoves the rolled-up shirtsleeve on his left arm until it bunches past the elbow. There, on the underside of his forearm, is a long set of vertical lines. They’re carved in the same silver-tinged magical ink that shimmered up from the page on Ursula’s will. He doesn’t yet have the extra line that the Cerises use to signify an oathed heir, but he likely will soon.
Tattoos bare, Hex twists the ring on his right index finger. The ruby stone slides away to expose a small, slightly hooked metal point. It’s the size and shape of the thorns on a rose stem, and far more sharp.
The inked lines aren’t labeled, but Hex seems to have gotten my memo about haste and doesn’t bother to dither or explain as he slices the length of the first line with the thorn point. The cut is the exact length and width of his tattoo, the blood that rises to the surface of his skin completely blotting out the black line.
Hex swipes the blood onto the opposite palm, and presses Marsyas’s hair into it, holding it until it’s sufficiently soaked and sparkling with the ruby red that signifies Blood magic. “Auden, a gust of wind, if you would?”
I oblige, gathering a strand in my palm and shooting it at Hex’s spell.
The Blackgates gasp in tandem as the emerald-tinted Elemental wind snatches up the stained hair and foists it out into black of night, traveling north in a counterclockwise loop around the house and across the grounds with the same effect as a sonic boom.
In one delayed thrust, the gust boomerangs around the ten thousand acres in a jolt, returning Marsyas’s hair on a raft of air as soft as an exhale.
The bloodied strand lands in Hex’s palm. He closes it for a moment, then opens it again. The stain of his blood remains, but the hair is gone, disintegrating to white ash that smears of crimson.
“What… what does that mean?” Lavinia asks, staring at Hex’s result with big, dark eyes and a prettily furrowed brow.
“It means Marsyas isn’t on the grounds.”
Lavinia visibly swallows but Kaysa scrunches up her nose. “I really thought she was in the loo.” Her eyes snap to Hex’s. “Did it check the loo?”
Hex just dusts his hands. “Of course. It checked everywhere. Your grandmother isn’t locked in by the spell with the rest of us.”
“Marsyas Blackgate is not on the premises,” Hex announces as the four of us enter the study. “Magically confirmed by moi .”
Ada squints from her brother to the girls to me. “You were looking for Marsyas? Now? When we’re about to read the first clue? You decided that was the perfect time to put out a Silver Alert?”
“I’d rather not have anyone on the grounds after dark,” Evander adds. “It’s extremely treacherous.”
“Noted. We’re sorry. We’re just a little overwhelmed,” Lavinia replies as the sisters assume the same standing position they’d had before they left. Evander scoffs under his breath at her word choice—because yes, he, Winter, and I own the lion’s share of rights to feeling overwhelmed tonight—but says nothing. Lavinia swallows and announces, “But, yes, now we don’t have to wonder. Nona isn’t here, and the car we came in is gone, so we know now that she left before Ursula’s spell locked into place.”
“So, if Marsyas did kill Ursula,” Infinity starts, glancing at Luna, “either the magic will have to be more flexible than Ursula intended or… it won’t.”
“Meaning we’re stuck.” Ada frowns.
“We’re not stuck . We just need to execute Ursula’s final directive as a team, together,” Evander answers. “Perhaps if we find all of the master relics, we can pool our magical talents to create a counter spell so great we can break Ursula’s spell as a last resort.”
It’s a decent plan. Therefore Hector seems to take credit for having the same idea.
“Which is exactly why we shouldn’t delay further in reading the first clue,” he says, “now that we’re all here .”
“We could’ve done without that last bit, Hector Cerise Senior,” Luna scolds. “Especially since you’re the one who was griping at those girls to know exactly where the woman went not ten minutes ago. Don’t order them to sing and then complain they’re too loud. It’s rude. Now, let’s get on with it. We don’t have all night.”
“Luna’s right,” I say, rounding the desk.
“Of course I am.”
I pointedly place my hand on the page, thumb neatly aligned with the blood-marked print. Immediately, the paper warms beneath my skin, like wax over a flame. The signature swirls, sharpening into five lines.
I clear my throat. “The first clue is this…
“ When breath became air,
the mountain stood tall with forever frost.
Though the call of the falcon
and flick of salmon fin, did not dim the fires,
we worship. ”
“Who wrote this clue?” Kaysa asks, perhaps trying a tad too hard to appear engaged after their disappearing act. She knocks her sister’s arm. “What the hell does that mean?”
Lavinia frowns. “I think it sounds poetic—a bit like Dickinson, actually.”
Making a left-field comparison to poetry is something I would do in literally any other situation. It’s practically my secondary aim in life given I’d been named after a smattering of Callum Hegemony’s favorite poets.
“It would if it were written by the man who built the manor,” I confirm. “Shadrack Hegemony and Emily Dickinson would’ve been contemporaries.”
No one counters my assumption that the clues are likely as old as the deed on the land itself.
“So we need to think like someone who would be more than two hundred years old at this point?” Infinity asks, slightly stricken, their meticulous brain clicking forward.
“Oh come on, it’s not that hard,” Ada sniffs. “It’s obviously an Elemental clue. All the elements are mentioned, including life.”
“What does it mean, Hegemonys?” Hex asks.
All eyes seem to find Evander’s form beside me. I look to him too, our de facto leader. The would-be High Sorcerer. The Elemental patriarch.
Evander rubs a hand down his face, and admits, rather bravely, I think, “Honestly, I don’t know.”
There’s a beat of silence and then Hector shifts on his feet. “Well, one of you must know,” the Cerise patriarch urges. “Surely.”
“The clue is full of signifiers,” I say. “They aren’t direct, but they aren’t completely opaque either. They were designed to help us locate these relics, not stand around second-guessing ourselves. It’s not a riddle, it’s a hint .”
“Okay, so what’s it hinting at?” Hector pushes. “Surely you have an idea of what it’s supposed to signify within your own home.”
When we remain silent, he gapes between all three of us. Winter sighs. “I’ve lived here nearly my entire life, and yet I’ve never seen the Elemental master, let alone any of the others.”
I nod, and Evander adds, “We need to think about it.”
“But she wants— wanted —us to find the relics,” Hector argues, almost to the room itself as if Ursula’s ghost is listening. “She wouldn’t have given us clues we couldn’t decipher.”
“They’re Shadrack’s clues, not Ursula’s,” Winter reminds him.
“She was High Sorcerer. She gave us a hunt worth completing. That’s it.” Luna begins to slowly rise from her seat, and Infinity immediately offers an arm. “If you don’t know now, let’s not start scrabbling for straws. It’s an hour past my bedtime and if my experience is going to be of use to any of ya, I need to rest. Infinity, help your grandmama to our room.”
I check the clock. It’s half past ten now. Very late for Luna and her century-old bones.
“Yes, you rest up, Luna,” Hector agrees, rising as well. The patriarch reaches into the interior lining of his coat, slips out a cell phone, and snaps a quick picture of the clue. Satisfied with his photograph after rotating it, he packs the phone away and tips his head. “The Cerises will begin our search immediately and report back in the morning.”
Evander moves to round the desk toward them and repeats the same concern he flung at the Blackgates. “Wait—please stick to the house. As I just explained, the grounds aren’t safe at night.”
“Oh, if they want to break their ankles, let them, Evander. They’ll learn or they won’t,” Luna says with a dismissive wave before disappearing into the hall, Infinity at her side.
“We have no intention of that,” Sanguine says, “we’ll just be putting our heads together.”
With that, the Cerises file out.
Winter pivots to Lavinia and Kaysa. “I know you didn’t intend to stay—Marsyas never does—but we did set aside a suite in the event that she wanted to spend the night. I’ll lead you there.”
The girls nod, unable to hide their weary surprise. As Winter collects them, she throws a glance over her shoulder, back at us. Her smudged face is as placid as a glass-clear lake, the broken girl she was just minutes ago stuffed down deep where no one will ever excavate her. Her bright blue eyes glow fierce and so much like Ursula’s in that moment that my heart stumbles.
Then, just like our grandmother did so many times in this very room, she gives an order we’re expected to obey. “Neither of you move an inch. We need to talk.”