Chapter 22
C HAPTER 22
AUDEN
“You have a secret.”
The words have been lodged in my throat for more than an hour. I’d kept them at bay for the entirety of my hike with Evander to the Pool. The entirety of our fruitless search of the waters and surrounding area. No master relic.
But now, as we point ourselves toward a site that was on my group’s list, I can’t hold back anymore. It’s very clear that we’re not going to get to interrogate the others, so I choose to interrogate my cousin. I may have been relieved when he turned the spotlight of his suspicion off me in the kitchen, but that doesn’t give him a pass to hold on to lies of his own.
If we’re a team, his omissions need to be out in the open just as much as mine do.
Evander lowers his water bottle and turns, hiking boots scrapping pebbles out of the dirt. His expression is immediately a brick wall, as is his body language. Hands on hips, legs planted, chin raised. Even the straps of his waist pack full of supplies seem braced and tense. “Excuse me?”
His tone invites nothing but an apology. He won’t get it.
I cross my arms over my chest. “What did you do last night?”
Evander’s brows shoot up.
I tilt my head. “I was in the office, you were somewhere else. Winter checked your room, you weren’t there—and your bed was made, which you don’t ever do yourself at home. The maids are quarantined, which means your bed was last made yesterday.” That muscle in his jaw twitches. “I knew the second I saw you on the trail this morning that sleep wasn’t how you occupied your time. And you didn’t hit Mercy’s Point until daylight. So, what did you do?”
A snatch of mountain breeze rushes between us, rustling pines and lifting the hems of our shirts, both Walton-Bridge lacrosse gear—his is an actual jersey, mine is a T-shirt—that prove in more ways than one that we know how to be on the same team. Something I hope he remembers after insinuating several times that I’d forgotten.
I stare him down with the same medicine he’s given me. Closed expression, unwavering gaze, posture like a steel beam pounded deep into the dusty earth.
I expect him to walk away from me. To start hiking and toss some bullshit excuse back my way.
I don’t expect the truth.
“I searched Ursula’s suite.”
I cover my surprise with a question. “For?”
“A diary, a letter, something with a lock. Anything that could be a hint or a clue to what happened to her.” The knot in his throat bobs. “I… I just couldn’t believe this could happen without a paper trail.”
He gestures in the general direction of Hegemony Manor, referencing the empty drawers. The rows of books without even a scrap of loose paper, an unexplained margin note, not even her ledger for the present year. Nothing. Evander shakes his head. All of it gone—either by Ursula’s hand or her killer’s.
“Someone,” he says, “knew about the stipulation in that will. Someone had known long enough to plan the murder and remove any shred of physical evidence from Ursula’s personal effects.”
“Or the spell removed everything but the will,” I say. It’s possible. With a spell as strong and encompassing as the one tied to Ursula’s murder, nearly anything is possible.
“She wouldn’t have done that.”
I raise a brow in question, but otherwise wait him out. Evander will tell me—this is his opportunity to brag about being the oathed heir to the favorite grandchild.
He doesn’t disappoint.
“That woman wrote every single thing down. Not just for herself, but for me.”
There it is.
He starts walking again, and I don’t comment, just speed up so that we’re smushed, side by side, in the thin ribbon of trail playing hide-and-seek with the afternoon sun.
“My training was always underscored in written examples, journal entries, maps, documents, ledgers. Ursula had a mind like a steel trap but kept notes that were set in stone. She felt it was her duty to the lines to keep meticulous records, draft copies of her correspondence and the original replies from other High Families and clans of note. I know she left me something. Nothing makes sense otherwise, unless all her paperwork was stolen by her murderer, and even that doesn’t make sense because access is impossible without her key or ours.” We both know her key dissolved the moment she died. “So, I did the only thing that made sense to me, and opened up her suite, searching for something the killer may have missed.”
It’s a long monologue for him. Which means it’s not fully true.
“You thought she left you instructions, didn’t you?”
Evander is pointedly watching the uneven trail. He doesn’t look at me. “Instructions?”
Stealing from the playbook Winter used hours ago, I take a long step right in his path, cutting him off. His head pops up as he nearly runs into me. We’re toe-to-toe, a large rock shelf behind me, a step up, a natural barrier. “Oh, don’t play dumb. You thought she left you a cheat sheet. If she wasn’t murdered, she still would’ve had to transfer her knowledge of the master relics’ locations to you as part the final step in your inheritance of her title. You knew she wouldn’t leave that in her office, and checked her suite.”
With every word, color rises from the neck of his red jersey up his throat.
“Fine. Yes. I was looking for that too. Happy? I don’t see why you have to be so smug about me trying to do something to help all of us get out of here and keep our family’s legacy intact.”
The undertone is unmistakable. Considering my error with the Blackgates, I have no leg on which to stand to criticize him.
I smile in the face of his stony admission. “And I don’t see why you felt the need to keep that to yourself. You could’ve told us this morning; you could’ve told us when Winter asked you directly if you had a secret. You had the past hour to tell me of your search, and, I’m assuming, failure, because you’re not lording your discovery over the rest of us in a bid to prove your worthiness.”
Evander looks like he wants to run through a brick wall. Instead, he has me to go through.
“I didn’t find anything, so it wasn’t worth sharing.”
He pointedly shoves around me, up the stair-step rock.
“I think that’s worth sharing in and of itself. What if someone took whatever High Sorcerer’s manual she had prepared for you?” His pace speeds up. I speed up with him. “That seems pretty noteworthy to me.”
“It is, but it didn’t happen.”
“How—”
Now he’s the one who stops, whirling on me and blocking the rest of the trail, pines leaning close on both sides. Evander’s voice pitches low, and he taps the collar of his jersey, the chain below. “Auden, it’s in the ring.”
I gape at him.
“The knowledge?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. I… I don’t know what I was thinking—it was probably exhaustion or shock, or all of it. But I realized after we found the first one this morning that it wouldn’t be safe to write down instructions to the next High Sorcerer. And there’s one thing that ties every High Sorcerer together, whether they’ve been properly trained or whether they were called upon late, a younger heir—”
“Like Ursula.”
He nods. “Like Ursula. She wasn’t the oathed heir. Her brother was. Matthias went through the training, took the ring from their mother when her time as High Sorcerer was done. He didn’t yet have children of his own and died two years into service. Her mother was dead by then, her brother was dead, the only way to pass along knowledge was through written correspondence—which we didn’t find; which I didn’t find—or the one thing they have in common.”
He pats his chest again. The tangle of ring and key bump out from the sweat-wicking material.
“Okay, that’s a fair assumption.” I draw a deep breath—pine and sunshine and rustling mountain air filling my senses as well as my lungs. “Are you thinking that whoever cleared out Ursula’s office—and perhaps her suite—didn’t know that?”
“Either they think there’s something in her paperwork that’s useful, or they assumed—correctly—that we would also search the office, and then freak out when we didn’t find anything.”
“Also correct,” I agree, my frustration lifting now that we’re getting somewhere. I’m still pissed I had to drag it out of him, but perhaps he’ll see enough value in talking it through to not avoid doing so next time. “And if they were trying to get a rise out of us, perhaps they assumed you didn’t know about any magic within the ring to relay information.” Wait. “Didn’t Hector suggest Luna should hold the ring rather than you?”
“He sure did.” Evander’s hand drops from his chest. “It was Mercy Hegemony who first bound the masters to the ring, but that doesn’t mean the other High Families don’t know its secrets beyond being tethered to—”
The snap of a twig shuts his mouth.
Magic sparks in my fingertips, a shield spell gathering there, at the ready. I have no doubt Evander has done the same. We can’t use magic against each other, but we can use it to defend ourselves. We turn.
And there, twenty feet away, are Lavinia and Kaysa Blackgate.
“Um, sorry to interrupt,” Lavinia says, an apologetic grimace softening. She’s got a firm grip on her sister’s wrist, her body planted between Kaysa and the pair of us, awkward and leaning, a hurried posture she’s trying to make look natural. The Death magic relics at her wrists sway, a marker of the sudden movement we didn’t see.
Kaysa shoots us a more convincing grin. “We weren’t eavesdropping, I swear.”
Lavinia shuts her eyes with a sigh. If she weren’t holding so tightly to her sister, I’m fairly certain she’d pinch the bridge of her nose. Instead, she says, “We finished searching Horace’s Last Stand, and thought we’d search the Pool. But it looks as if you might have already done so?”
“We did, and found nothing,” I confirm.
“Are you sure you searched Horace’s Last Stand thoroughly?” Evander asks.
Now I’m the one who wants to pinch the bridge of my nose.
Fantastic opening gambit to starting a much-needed conversation with them.
Kaysa Blackgate has lost exactly none of her gumption, though. She skewers my cousin right in the eye and smiles sweetly. “You can trust us now, or you’re welcome to waste the next two hours of your life to prove us right.”
I break into a laugh, and I swear I see Evander’s lips twitch in a smile. This girl, so silent and dour as a small child, has somehow grown into a match for the gruff, stoic Evander Hegemony.
“Well, that answer is good enough for me,” I reply, and clap my cousin on his thick shoulder. Lavinia’s eyes widen in surprise. “Don’t you think, Ev—”
“Watch out!” Lavinia screams.
She’s running—not away, but instead chugging straight for us like a freight train in yoga tights. I blink, tracking her gaze to something over my shoulder.
But I’m already too late.
With a single, sick thud, all the breath in Evander’s lungs leaves in one stout wheeze.
A knife is buried in his back.
That shield, on the edge of my fingertips only moments earlier, sparks to life, a shimmering emerald mist. It flares out around us as two things happen.
Evander slumps into me, his legs giving out.
A second knife whizzes past Evander’s ear.
It would’ve hit him if he’d been upright. Instead, because he’s moved and the shield with him, it grazes Lavinia before burying itself in a tree on the side of the trail. Lavinia hisses as a slash of crimson blooms on the exposed skin of her upper arm. Kaysa is feet behind her, eyes the size of dinner plates.
“Two more incoming!” she shouts, and dives at Lavinia, effectively pressing both her and her sister against the wall created by Evander and myself.
The points of both knives dig and drop, one, two, off the shield.
“Is that it? Please tell me that’s it,” Kaysa whimpers as the blades skitter over the rocks embedded in the trail to the soft cushion of mountain daisies beyond.
I swallow, gaze stuck on the knife buried in the pine feet away. I recognize the black handle, three metal rivets catching the sun. These aren’t throwing knives. They’re chef’s knives.
“Three more. Seven in Maggie’s knife block.”
Evander wheezes. His fingers scrabble for purchase at my waist, trying to stay upright. Kaysa wraps an arm around him, her other around her sister. Lavinia’s blood cuts a looping swath down her arm, seeping into the thin, flowy fabric of her shirt. Seeping into mine too, warm and wet as her heart rabbits so hard, it flutters against my own ribs.
“Extend,” Evander grits out. “The… shield. Pause too…”
I do exactly what he says, encasing us all, realizing in that moment what he’s getting at.
They’re trying for a better shot.
Just as I manage to wrap the shield entirely around the vertical column made by the four of us, the final three knives fly in from the opposite direction of the first four— THWACK, THWACK, TWHACK —right off the newest portion of the shield. Perfectly aimed to hit Lavinia directly in the back. Both girls scream, as if they didn’t realize the shield was there, stiffening into our chests, a jumble of lavender soap and sweat, fear, and blood.
And then it’s over.
All four of us clamber together, in our huddle, breathing hard, eyes wild and searching.
No color, no shadows, no footsteps over the thundering of our collective breath and heartbeats. Nothing at all.
Evander’s head lolls and drops heavily on my shoulder. “Go… after… them.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that’s not a cat scratch. I’m not going after them because I need to heal you.” I turn to Lavinia. “You can manage while I help him, yeah?”
Lavinia lifts her head from where it had been pressed against my breastbone, eyes dark wells. “Yes, yes, of course. We can go after them.”
“Yeah. We can search,” Kaysa says, peeling herself from the huddle and brandishing her wrist relic a little too hard.
But I don’t even flinch because I’m not seeing anything but Evander’s blood. It’s saturated his jersey, the crimson now a heavy black. My wrist and forearm are slick with it from where I anchor him about the waist, grasping both his pack and his failing body.
I can’t waste any time.
“That won’t be necessary,” I say. “Are you able to provide a shield?”
I know the answer before the question is out of my mouth, but I need to ask it. The Blackgates shake their heads. I hold up a hand. “Fine—I’m going to need both of you to watch for another attack while I divert my magic to heal Evander.”
“Let them go,” my cousin says, his voice sliding from gritted effort to slippery whisper. “I can wait.”
He finishes with a wheeze and a rattle now. The knife isn’t just bleeding him dry, it’s buried in a lung. Maybe two. My eyes meet Lavinia’s. She pales and I know she can read the panic in them as surely as I read her own last night. She nods. “We’ve got this.”
I lower the shield and she grabs the largest knife left at her feet with her uninjured arm. Kaysa collects the other two. The sisters face out, shielding us as best they can from the woods at all sides. Something itches the back of my mind—they’re Blackgates with knives. No, I can’t question it. I can’t split focus. Evander needs all my attention on the immediate threat to him, not ghosts of years past and reputations earned.
I get Evander to the dirt and remove his waist pack, lying him on his side so I can probe his wound. I don’t miss that he’s trembling. That beneath his scruff, his lips are growing blue with each labored inhale.
The blade is an eight-inch chef’s knife, razor sharp and plunged straight through to the hilt. It missed his spine by mere millimeters. Definitely hit a lung. I run my fingers along the front of his shirt. The tip nicks my skin. I swallow away the panic.
“I’ve got to pull it out,” I inform him, forcing myself to look him in his paling face. His eyes are squeezed shut. “The magic will staunch the blood and heal. Ready?”
I’m already in position before I pretend to accept an answer to that question, one hand over the knife’s exit wound, the other wrapped around the knife’s handle. I clench my teeth, prepared to pull when Evander touches a cold hand to my own. His eyes are open now, fierce.
“If it’s too much, don’t.”
Forcing a smile, I hit him with his favorite dismissal of my pompous ass. “Shut up, Evander.”
I pull.
The knife releases with a slick tearing and Evander wails. Then my magic is pressing into him, life element fizzing from my body into his, knitting his wound, refilling his veins, inflating his lung. My own breath catches at the weight of it, my vision blurring in an emerald haze, my mind fuzzing, furring. I sway where I kneel, seasick. I clamp my eyes closed, but the feeling doesn’t dissipate. Still, I hold tight, every muscle in my body willed to hold myself steady, upright. Nausea crashes like lightning in the darkness of my mind as my life element flows out into the wound still spewing viscous, deep blood.
There’s a hand on my shoulder. “Auden?” Lavinia. “Are you okay?”
I feel my head droop and she catches it. Something clatters beside us. The knife.
“Evander?” Kaysa’s voice now. There’s some shuffling. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, you were just knifed. Take my hand to stand. It won’t tank your manliness quotient.”
Beneath me, Evander shifts. I slump from my kneeling crouch to sitting, guided by Lavinia’s hands. She puts an arm around my shoulders, her relics somehow not touching my bare skin. “Auden?” she whispers. But no answer lines my tongue. Not yet. When a life element is drained like this, so quickly, so forcefully, it takes the body time to recalibrate to what’s left.
There’s some shuffling, and then the unmistakable surge of power surrounds us. A shield.
“You left us unguarded,” Evander grumbles, his voice raspy but there.
“And you almost left us entirely,” Kaysa shoots back.
Even though I feel like literal shit, my heart swells and I want to laugh—the youngest Blackgate is on to his shit and won’t let him get away with it.
That little spike of emotion seems to be the last step my life element needs to get rebalanced within my body enough that I feel as if I can open my eyes. I blink. Lavinia’s face is the first I see, only inches away, watching me intently for some sort of sign that I went too far, pushed it too hard. It doesn’t do to think of what I’ve just lost. I need to focus on survival—which means knowing our attacker. “Check the knife. Magical signature?”
Kaysa gets the picture and immediately shoves the ones she’s collected—a paring knife and a longer utility blade—at Evander. The moment they’re tight in his grip, he frowns.
“No magic here, nothing to check. They were thrown.”
I comb through the cotton in my mind, trying to recall if I’d seen the knives this morning when I made breakfast, or at noon when we’d had our aside after putting the dead driver in the root cellar. I can’t remember.
“Who the hell throws knives?” Kaysa asks.
“Someone who wanted to hit me straight in the heart,” my cousin answers.
“Not just Evander. He went after Lavinia too,” the younger Blackgate points out. “Didn’t try to hit me even once.”
She’s right. The final three throws weren’t just from the opposite direction, they were for a new target. The way we were situated, if the attacker wanted to hit Evander from another angle, the knives would’ve bounced off Lavinia’s portion of the shield.
Evander and Lavinia as targets.
My cousin gets there before I do, his mind churning forward as his body completes its renewal with my life element.
“Heirs,” Evander says. “Someone’s going after the heirs.”
I look to Lavinia then. She cups my shoulder, her face farther from mine now and pale. Blood covers her opposite arm as it lies limply in her lap. I press my fingers to the wound, fully expecting her to shrug me off, to tell me not to, with what I’ve just done. Evander beats her to it.
“No, you don’t, I can heal her. Lavinia, don’t let him,” Evander barks. “Lavinia?”
“The heart.”
That’s all she says. Quietly, almost to herself.
She blinks up, her lips falling open. We’re all staring at her now.
“Straight in the heart. The gaping center.”
I nod at her. “The clue—yes. With the sun, its reason, its heart, the gaping center.”
“The master’s not inside me, I can assure you,” Evander responds in what I think is a joke? Thoughts churn across Lavinia’s fine features, and I watch the white kiss of teeth as she bites her full lower lip. As a sudden light appears in her dark gaze.
“The gaping center—could the master relic be in the courtyard?” Her voice is breathless. “Is there something with a bear on it? The moon? The sun?”
Her attention flies from my face to Evander’s, and another surge of wooziness slows my guess, my mind spinning forward at a pace my body can’t keep.
“Plenty of somethings. Sundial, gargoyles that could be bears—oh shit.” My mouth goes dry as the muscles in my legs fire and I try to get them under me to stand. My body won’t move properly, and I knock into Lavinia. She steadies me just as the answer finally falls out of my mouth.
“Shadrack’s mural.”
The Blackgates stare at us with twin pinched expressions of confusion.
“Speak in non-Hegemony, please,” Kaysa begs.
Evander is already refitting his waist pack, ignoring the question in favor of getting a move-on. I swallow, my parched throat catching.
“Shadrack painted four murals in Hegemony Manor.” Though I’m exhausted, a smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “One in the foyer, one in the dining room, one on the boulder marking the cemetery, and one in the courtyard—a map of the night sky.”