Chapter 27
C HAPTER 27
AUDEN
In the next second, every one of us is in motion.
Lavinia hauls Kaysa to the floor, using the table as a shield.
I throw up an actual shield, covering the three of us as Evander launches twin fireballs straight at the Cerises. While Winter… sprays water directly at Evander’s fireballs before the magic collides with the Cerises’ cover.
In the silence of the flames hissing out, my eyes dart between the twins, shielded behind a glittering vermilion wall of magic, and Evander, who spits, “You admit to attacking us?” at the same time Winter whispers, “Hex, you what ?”
Hex draws his phone and waves it behind the magical protection.
“Would you like to see the video? Because I documented it.”
“I’d rather not watch myself nearly bleed out, thank you,” Evander retorts. “You’ve had your time to gloat. Now give me one reason I shouldn’t march you straight out of here.”
Hex bares his teeth. “Look, we’re not gloating. And we don’t have much time.”
I give an exasperated laugh. “None of us have much time. We’re coming up on twenty-five hours, to be exact—”
“Not that,” Ada snaps. “We don’t have much time because you don’t know how he is. You don’t understand…”
“Stop speaking in riddles, and we will understand,” Winter hisses. Her eyes shoot to Hex. “What the hell are you talking about? Tell us clearly, tell us now, or leave.”
The Blood witch draws in a deep, shaggy breath, and pushes his hair out of his eyes, his carefully gelled coif now ragged. He makes eye contact with his sister and they both drop their shields.
It’s an olive branch—unguarded physically, to lend credibility to an unguarded truth.
“Blood Line families have a secret—one that even Ursula did not know,” Hex says. “We can control others with a single drop of blood, yes, for a short time. What isn’t something that’s documented or discussed is that in Blood Line families, parents can control their children indefinitely .”
The Blackgates pop up from beneath the table, eyes wide and watching as silence descends upon us, his admission sinking in.
If this is true, the twins have never truly had bodily autonomy. Their parents may coerce them into doing things without their consent. At any time.
Again, I lower the bookend.
“They can force us to do anything because our blood is their blood. As long as it’s in their veins and ours, they can control us until that connection is permanently severed.” Ada is still staring at her familial ring, head bowed, as her brother finishes. “And today they forced us to hurl knives at people we call friends.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“That’s what you told Hector you wouldn’t do at the Field of Stars,” Lavinia surmises quietly from where she rises to her full height. She looks from Hex to his sister, eyes narrowing. “And he told Ada to keep you on task.”
“They can make us, but being absolute controlling assholes in every sense of the word, they’d rather we just do what they say. Less painful for all involved.” Hex swallows. “If I resist, it affects Ada too. And I don’t want to see her get hurt.”
“We both try to resist but…” Ada adds, sullen, “in the end it’s too difficult and too painful to outlast their coercion.”
Hex’s coal-dark eyes lift to Evander’s face. “I’m sorry, man.” Evander is a brick wall, per usual, but there’s not a trace of anger on Lavinia’s face. Something about the juxtaposition makes Hex’s throat bob. “I’m sorry, Lavinia.”
“Because they’re competition?” Winter asks.
This time, it’s Ada who answers, her face grim. “Originally, it was supposed to be just something to scare whomever we came upon. A way to turn the players against Evander as the best candidate for High Sorcerer. But when our parents found Luna murdered in the house, they changed tactics. Papa decided we should go after all of the heirs, and make it look coordinated with what happened to Luna. He was going to ‘survive’ a knife attack too—we just didn’t get time to properly stage it before you found Luna.”
Hex’s gaze shifts around the room. “He didn’t want to hear our concerns about how two different methods would make no sense, or that his survival would make him look guilty, not powerful and innocent like he hoped.”
“How do we know you’re not under their control right now?” I ask.
“They’re asleep.”
I nearly do a double take. “Wait—after that big show about how he needed the clue and someone had to get us out of here or we’re all dead, your parents are asleep?”
Hex shrugs and for the first time, a little smile crosses his face. “They travel with sleeping pills.”
Kaysa does do a double take. “You drugged them so you could come here and tell us you tried to knife Evander and Lavinia today while under the influence of your parents?”
“Yes. But also that they didn’t murder Luna. And if they didn’t, who did?” Hex tosses his arms wide. “A person in this room? Infinity? Or is there someone else on the grounds that we don’t know about? Someone not bound by the rules we are?”
“We’ve been down this road,” Evander argues. “It’s a dead end.”
“You know what’s not? The information we brought you.” Hex swipes at his phone and again turns it toward Evander, who still stands several feet away, a coffee table dotted with Ursula’s knitting magazines between them. “Papa changed his plans and arrived two days before the rest of us. And I’ll give you one guess as to the two individuals I found in his incoming calls the day he altered his schedule.”
“Marsyas and Luna,” Evander answers, resolute, eyes pinned on the small screen several feet away.
The twins nod in unison. “We don’t know that Papa murdered Ursula, but we think he knew she was going to be murdered. Maybe Marsyas, Luna, and our father had a plan. Maybe everything changed when control of the Four Lines came up as a possibility. We don’t know. But what we do know is they didn’t just call each other, they met up.”
He swipes at his screen again and shoves the device bravely in Evander’s air space. Winter carefully accepts it.
“A private room at Le Sur in Denver,” she says, squinting at what looks to me from over her shoulder to be an emailed receipt, “a day before the annual meeting.”
“Papa paid for three meals and a bottle of very nice cava during a four-hour lunch,” Ada says. “The three heads of family met together the day before Ursula was murdered. Now Ursula is dead, and her title is on the line.”
Hex taps the phone in Winter’s hand. “And of the three people in that meeting, only Papa is still standing here.”
“Are you sure your parents didn’t somehow murder Luna and avoid Ursula’s punishment?” Lavinia asks.
The twins exchange a glance.
“We don’t know,” Hex says. “But what we do know is that they will do anything for the prize because the power’s the point.”
The power’s the point —the line kicks me straight in the chest.
Was that always the truth? From Napoleon to Mercy to Ursula to us?
“Being seen as the redeemer of the Cerise name?” Ada’s voice is no longer weak but as thorny as ever. “The one who finally avenged the power lost by Napoleon Cerise? The one who returned rightful power to the Blood Line after four hundred years on the sidelines? It’s what they dream of. And after what they made us do today? Nearly killing Evander? They’ll use us in any way necessary to make this happen for them. I’m sure of it. Whether it kills someone or kills us, honestly, I’m not sure they care.”
“Kill you two?” Lavinia clarifies as Kaysa gasps.
Hex spears them with a stoic glare. “My sister said what she said and I agree.”
The room spins as his admission and confirmation ring in our ears.
“I need a drink,” Evander announces and turns for Ursula’s sideboard.
“We all do,” Hex agrees.
Evander unstoppers the scotch and splashes it into two glasses. An olive branch of his own, I suppose.
“I want to know what you expect us to do with this information,” I say as evenly as I can, though my heart rate is increasing at the same clip it did while chasing Evander up the Mercy’s Point trail. “Confront them? Given what you just told us, it won’t be a peaceful meeting. We could try to plan but—”
“Look, I don’t think there’s a point to a plan,” Hex responds, accepting the second glass from Evander. “We wanted to warn you guys. After what happened tonight, I’m not sure we can talk to you publicly in any way that’s not antagonistic. If we’re not plainly your enemies, we’re not contributing to the family cause.”
“Bullshit,” Evander snarls over the lip of his glass.
And honestly, I agree with him.
“You came here. You know what’s right,” I say. “If your dad is who you say he is, we need to make sure he doesn’t gain control of the Four Lines, no matter his actual role in whatever those three may have planned.”
Ada’s expression gathers like a thunderstorm. “I don’t care who’s in charge after all of this, but I’m telling you right now the only way my father is going to allow someone other than himself to have control of the Four Lines at the end of all this is if he’s six feet under.”
“Yep,” Hex agrees, nearly glib, before downing the entirety of the scotch, grimacing as the burn hits. He immediately moves to pour another.
There’s a long silence and then—“Why don’t we just give it to him?”
Winter’s voice is quiet but sharp.
“What?” at least three of us ask.
“Hector,” she says, louder, braver.
“You—you want to give my father the title?” Hex asks with a wincing cough as he pounds his sternum, willing his most recent drink down his throat. “After all we just said?”
“A title is not worth any more lives,” Winter tells him, steel in her voice and edging every syllable. Her blue eyes, shiny with new tears, scan the room now, pleading. “Let’s just give it to him if he wants it so badly.”
“Win,” I start, pressing my fingertips to my temples because I can’t believe I have to say this out loud, “he actively tried to kill Evander and Lavinia today. He could’ve murdered Ursula and maybe Luna. We can’t just give in to that.”
“Why not? Why don’t we give in? What does it matter anyway?” Her entire carriage from her pleading eyes to the tips of her dirt-scuffed shoes is hopeless.
“Because that’s like giving in to terrorists,” Lavinia bites out, joining my fight.
Winter doubles down. “If we give in, we’re alive.”
“And he’s in control of our magic,” I point out. “To control the lines is to control all of us.”
“So? Why is that so bad?” Winter practically shouts, gaining steam as the rest of us go still. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, my cousin actually arguing for surrender. “He’s trying to avenge a perceived wrong. Why on earth would he accept that power and then try to be anything but a good leader? He’s trying to undo the damage Napoleon did. The way he’s going about it is wrong but maybe the end result is both inevitable and not that bad.”
“Win, did you not hear anything I’ve said?” Hex scoffs and blinks at all of us with incredulous eyes. “I’m the fucking heir to the Cerise name, I wouldn’t be sitting here if I wasn’t scared shitless for what he will do—in the context of the game, in the context of power. This is the man who turned in Marcos Blackgate,” Hex reiterates with a grand sweeping gesture in the direction of the man’s daughters. “He will say and do anything, no matter what happens to anyone else involved. Family or not. Friend or not. Everyone is disposable to Hector Cerise.”
Lavinia gasps and her voice is so raw her accent flattens into nothing at all. “He… Hector turned in…”
She doesn’t finish but she doesn’t have to. The horror of it all crawls across her face, perhaps a memory locked tightly away washing forward in a tide of blood. Ursula did the deed, but Hector pulled the trigger.
“Ursula wanted someone to punish,” Ada confirms before drawing the final dagger and stabbing the Blackgates in the heart, “Papa made it happen.”
Kaysa shoots to her feet, stop-sign hand in the air. “Hold up. Wait. You’re saying that your dad is the reason our dad was…”
“Convicted of magically influencing the Hegemony scions and compelling them to attempt to bypass master relic security only to blow themselves up in the process?” Hex asks, steadying himself against the sideboard, another pour of scotch in one hand as he finger-guns her with the other. “Yeeeeep.”
“But… how… why?”
Hex’s cheeks immediately darken.
“They all knew about it. Everyone of that generation was in on it. Our parents, Erasmus and Sorcha, Marcos and Athena. Every last one of them. They wanted to bust up the lines and decentralize control of the masters. They thought no person should have so much power. But rather than overthrow Ursula, they tried to go around her. Ran into the security curses put upon the masters and blew themselves sky high. BOOM. ”
Evander plunks his glass too hard on the sideboard. “Everyone was in on it? That’s just a rumor.”
Hex’s grin gets sadder and meaner with each new variation.
“Nah, it’s the truth. Ursula was mad enough to take out the rest of that generation and she would’ve done it too if Papa hadn’t served up Marcos on a platter. Death magic was always the black sheep. And it was better him than anyone else.”
“His daughters disagree with you,” Kaysa says, coldly.
“I know.” Hex shrugs. “Blood on our hands, even if it’s not as visible as the blood on Ursula’s. Can’t blame her for wanting closure after losing her kids like that.”
Next to me, Lavinia is trembling. She’s trying to hide it, hands jammed into a double grip of the marble table edge, but both arms are shivering up to her shoulders.
I swallow thickly. “We don’t need to talk about this anymore.”
“Why not?”
Hex takes a step and wobbles like he’s got a low-grade concussion. He thinks better of it and thunks back against the sideboard, sending Evander’s chip bag slumping into the baubles and glasses. He ignores it. “Look, everything changed that night. Everything. Not when your parents died. No, when punishment was doled out. Everything changed.”
“You girls left.” Hex tosses a hand at the trembling Blackgates beside me. “Our parents and Infinity’s parents walked away scot-free. But it just as easily could’ve been us. You don’t think Luna didn’t think that? That it could’ve been Erasmus instead? And Marsyas—she kept showing up with a fucking smile on her face to make small talk with the woman who killed her son because if she didn’t, it wouldn’t just be the end of her but the end of her family.” He waves at the Blackgate girls like they’ve boarded a train and are leaving the station. “This was ten years coming. And if Ursula didn’t see the signs, she was blind as a bat.”
Winter has had enough. Arms crossed and palms wrapped round her elbows, she approaches him.
“Hex, I think you need to go back to your room.”
“When we’re just clearing the air? That’s unfair, Win.”
He pushes off the sideboard again, body too loose, steps a slide. She catches him under the arms and sweeps him into her vacated chair at the table. Hex blinks at the table as Winter hands him her fork.
“You just shotgunned a couple of ounces of straight liquor and clearly haven’t eaten anything.” She points at her own barely touched plate of wagyu. “Finish this for me. Now.”
Slowly, he nods, and obediently takes a bite, swallows, and says, “I love you.”
“That’s your problem,” she barks back. “Eat.”
I clear my throat. “I still maintain we need a plan. We have the element of surprise, thanks to the twins. What if we go down there right now, wake them, and calmly reveal what we know?”
It’s as good an idea as I’ve got that shouldn’t get violent. Won’t get us any closer to finding the relics and getting out of here, but perhaps it will keep us alive long enough from Hector Cerise’s apparent lethal greed to do so.
“Maybe Hector will just be dying to tell us his whole intricate plan?” Kaysa agrees. “He does have ‘villain itching for a big monologue’ written all over his face. No offense, Cerises.”
“None taken,” Hex confirms, raising his mostly empty scotch glass. Winter snatches it away and gestures again to the beef.
“Wait!” Lavinia calls, eyes suddenly bright. “‘Out damn spot’!”
“Lavinia,” Kaysa tuts, “we all recognized the Lady Macbeth reference in the clue. It’s not like it’s obscure. It was literally a callout to one of the most famous lines ever written.”
“Gah—no! Hex said Ursula had literal blood on her hands.” Lavinia looks down and away. “I know I have a block, that I don’t remember, but—was there blood when Dad died? Was it on Ursula’s hands?”
I raise myself to standing and meet her eyes. “Yeah.”
The line is immediate, burned into my memory. On the paper set aside. “Out damn spot, blood will never go…”
Lavinia meets my eyes and speaks the clue’s finale. “But never gone, stained with what was.”
“I think—” Lavinia draws a deep breath and tries again, “I think the clue might be pointing to where Ursula punished our father. I mean, I know Shadrack wrote the clue, but, like…”
“Everything Ursula did, Shadrack did first,” I tell her. “In the same place.”
Several iterations of curse words fly through the air between all of us. Evander disappears down the hallway and returns with a set of old-timey lanterns that he lights with a magical snap of his fingers.
“Phones as flashlights if needed; let’s use these first to protect battery life,” Evander barks, passing them out, his warnings about the grounds’ treachery after dark forgotten. “Cerises, are you staying with us or returning to your rooms?”
Swallowing the last of Winter’s dinner, Hex pushes away from the table. “And let you have all the fun? Not on your life.”
“Are you people insane?” Winter cries. “You just spent the wee hours of this morning explaining in intricate detail how deranged Hector Cerise is, and now you’re going out in the pitch dark to free the relic tethering his power to the title he wants most in the world?”
“Yes,” Evander says.
“He’s asleep,” I point out.
Winter’s hands ball at her sides, color rising in her cheeks, her eyes bare fury. “No, no, no. You two need to stay right here. Until dawn. Until we can lay down the olive branch, tell Hector where we think the master is, and go together, in a sign of solidarity, so he doesn’t just pick us off for fun .” She stabs one fist at each twin. “And use our friends to do it.”
“That’s a chance we have to take. Let’s move.”
Winter curses and twines her arms around herself.
I agree with Evander, and yet I pause, Lavinia standing back, watching the movement as if from behind a two-way mirror. Kaysa is the one who immediately steps forward, collecting a lamp from Evander. “If you don’t want to go to where it happened, I’ll stay with you.”
And I will.
I know what’s at stake—we have less than twenty-four hours, another clue to decipher, another relic to find, and the increasingly complicated question of who killed Ursula to unravel.
Yet, it hits me like a falling rock that I’d stay with Lavinia. Door locked, silence descending, waiting for word.
Lavinia sighs with her whole body and when her eyes meet mine, there’s sorrow as deep as the ocean. “I want to be there. If what Hex said is true, he died because he helped the Hegemonys find these master relics. And then he lost his life because of it, within spitting distance of one. I need to pay my respects.”
With that, we head for the door. Leaving only Winter.
I hover in the doorway, Lavinia on one side, Hex on the other. He holds the jamb, the footsteps of his twin, Evander, and Kaysa growing softer as they move down the hall.
“Are you coming, Win?” he asks, beating me to it.
There’s a long pause before the answer comes in the form of her stomping over, palming a chocolate bar and Evander’s bag of chips—a bold choice indeed because he hasn’t had any—and shoving the salt-and-vinegar snack with a great crinkling sigh into Hex’s chest.
“Keep eating. Fall on a rock, and we’re leaving you there to heal yourself and sober up. Say a word to me edgewise about what I’m about to do, and I’ll shove you down myself.”
Hex grins sloppily. “I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said I love you.”
“That’s your cross to bear—you know my heart’s taken.” Winter shoves him ahead. “Now walk.”