Chapter 28
C HAPTER 28
RUBY
The bobbing of lanterns feels like a step back in time. And maybe it is.
We’re not the first to walk this path in the dead of night, flames flickering, doing little to keep the shadows at bay as they’re as much inside the mind as they are in the encroaching blackness.
Clouds have swept in, fat and low, swallowing the surrounding peaks. A stiff breeze rustles the trees loud enough to muffle the crunch of our footsteps and the low moan of conversation.
Twice, Evander’s lantern blows out from the leader’s position, and twice, I assume, he rekindles it with a spate of near instantaneous magic. It doesn’t escape my notice that he keeps his right hand unencumbered at his side, the set of it supple but engaged, like the hand of a cinema knight sitting atop the pommel of his sheathed longsword.
Wren is next to Evander, stride for stride, chin bowed nearly to her chest, both her head and her heart taking very seriously her role and what we’re about to see. I appreciate this in her even as I wish it hadn’t taken so long. Winter is knotted with the Cerise twins. I don’t miss how Hex keeps glancing at her.
Auden has stayed beside me in the rear, as alert and on guard as Evander, though his attention is on the twins as much as it is his footing. And with those threats accounted for, he worries over me—over Lavinia.
I worry about her too.
How would it change a person to come to a dinner party as a family and leave without your dad? Standing under a summer sky like this one, losing him forever in the blink of an eye? That’s a bitter pill I know well from my mom’s death, but still Lavinia had it worse, I think. The shock and searing pain heightened by the run-up of humiliation among people deemed family.
Watching helplessly as he’s tried. Sentenced. Executed.
It isn’t any wonder no one has questioned our scattered memories.
It isn’t surprising that everyone was shocked to see the Blackgate girls again in the flesh.
To me it’s almost more stunning that Marsyas kept arriving to the annual dinner. Kept slapping on a Blackgate smile and her familiar relics, returning to the scene of her greatest heartache, over and over.
“Did Nona ever come here when she visited over the years?” I ask Auden as we wind past a gated cemetery full of Hegemonys. Two dozen graves at least, maybe more. It’s impossible not to notice that at the front are three identical graves so new their stones have not darkened or softened with age, the marble pristine obelisks reaching for the sky. Ulysses. Callum. Lana.
“Not to my knowledge. Marsyas was very consistent—drinks, dinner, disappeared by midnight. She never stayed until morning or explored the grounds.”
“And she didn’t visit any other time during the year?” Then I add, truthfully, “We never talked about Ursula.”
“Not to my knowledge.”
There’s no sign announcing the official execution site of the Hegemony estate. It’s surprisingly close to the house, separated by a massive boulder, covered completely with paint—one of Shadrack’s murals from the courtyard. Facing the cemetery and the manor—though a steep drop obscures it from easy view—is what appears to be a depiction of dawn or dusk. It’s fuzzy around the edges and ghostlike in the faded, inconsistent illumination of our lamps and phone flashlights, and the reflection of the earth upon the low-hanging silver of the clouds. Though, on the side where Evander halts our procession, the boulder is swathed in rich black, like the endless depths of death.
It smells of blood.
Auden and I are the last ones to arrive. He’s so close, the sides of our hands brush.
And though I’m not Lavinia Blackgate, though this isn’t the killing ground that took my dead parent, though this isn’t my pain, the sharp realness of what happened here ten years ago drives into my chest—I find myself grabbing for the safety of Auden’s hand.
He stiffens at the contact. Then the surprise fades as quickly as it came, and his hand shifts until he has me cloistered in his own grip.
“Lanterns around the platform,” Evander says, an order and a direction.
It’s a relief Auden doesn’t let go as he obeys.
Before us, a platform and an adjoined post are awash in overlapping lamplight. The post is iron and shackles are attached to it, too short for comfort or struggle. The length of them won’t reach the black expanse of the painted boulder, which almost serves as a backdrop as much as a void. The platform is wooden and low enough that there are no steps—it’s perhaps no more substantial than a few shipping pallets laced together. There are wide slats built in. Drains.
Bile rises in my throat. I swallow hard, nose stinging with a flush of heat that makes my eyes water.
Beside me, Auden retrieves the clue, and I realize now he must use some sort of magic to store the paper away but keep it on his person. He reads, voice quiet and reverent, his grip on my hand never wavering.
“Out damn spot, blood will never go
It paces, hot and urgent, then goes cold
The heart moves it, Princess
Until it succumbs to the elements, shriveled, hard, alone
But never gone, stained with what was.”
“It’s either in the base of the post or buried under it,” Hex suggests, his voice, like his posture and stride, sturdier than it had been.
Auden and his mind for poetry has a more dramatic line of thinking. “The blood drains through the slats to the earth, where it stays, staining the layers all the way down.”
Evander agrees with a stout, “Let’s remove the platform.”
There’s a flurry of movement, and I want this over with almost as bad as I want to keep holding Auden’s hand. I nudge us both forward, to help in the destruction of the platform. Wren notices and joins in, and no one questions that we’re standing where our father died. I suppose it could be cast off as catharsis—physically destroying a space that took so much from us.
When the platform is removed and the lantern light reaches what’s underneath, my breath catches in my throat.
It’s not soft, absorbent silt, but a broad, flat tablet of amethyst. The sides are rimmed black, and after everything it’s hard not to believe it’s some sort of years-old, magical blood. Marcos Blackgate’s blood.
And in the very center is a wooden box.
It’s stained red with time, placement, tragedy.
Evander and Hex bend together to it, Wren cuffing the eldest Hegemony’s shoulder as he sinks to the earth. Winter and Ada lean in, holding their breath. Again, my fingers snake into Auden’s. He squeezes me back.
“You do the honors,” Evander tells Hex.
Hex rubs a forefinger over the same precise lettering we’d seen marking the other two. The lamplight flares with the weight of it and he reads.
“The Heart of Cleopatra.”
Wren gasps and I know her little Elizabeth Taylor–worshiping brain just short-circuited. “ The Cleopatra?!”
“Elemental witch, princess come queen,” Winter replies. “Iconic in our line.”
“Iconic outside the line too,” Wren agrees.
Yet another master relic that mixes lines. An Elemental witch, but the item preserved is that heart of hers, so famous for loving Mark Antony.
Auden grapples to apply the logic we’ve used on the other two. “Iconic, yes. But it’s the motor of the circulatory system… so it’s the Blood Line relic.”
I open my mouth to agree—
“That’s right. Therefore, it’s mine .”
We all know that voice, even without the unhinged joy smothering the final word.
Stepping out of the shadows beyond the reach of the lanterns is Hector Cerise.
One sleeve is rolled up, glistening, fat lines of crimson weeping from his vertical tattoos, the single horizontal stripe denoting him as an oathed heir and patriarch, a pearlescent black. The cut means he’s primed to call his magic. Against us—or at least to threaten us. Maybe Ursula’s prison punishment spell didn’t make a mistake in Luna’s death. Maybe it never worked at all. Maybe he knows this. Maybe he murdered Luna and lied to his twins.
As my mind puzzles that, I realize Sanguine is not with Hector. We haven’t seen them apart this weekend—curious as it only adds to the unpleasantness of his sudden appearance.
“How interesting,” Hector says dryly, “as I was informed multiple times how very unsafe the grounds were after dark, and yet here you all are, holding my master.”
Hex and Ada freeze, the boy in a crouch, his sister bent over our find, her body roughly facing her father. Color flushes high in their cheeks in the lantern light, rushing to the surface as if it’s answered a call—and maybe it has. I picture their blood drumming in their veins, at attention for their father.
“Hex, bring the box to me.”
The Cerise boy stiffens but doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink. “I can hold it. As your heir.”
At this, his father smiles. “You’re my son, but you’re not the oathed heir.”
Hex’s mouth drops. “Not yet, but I will be, and I can hold it—”
“Your sister has already been oathed.”
We all turn to Ada, who swallows thickly.
“Is this true?” Hex asks, voice a rasp, his face paling as he stares at her, his big frame suddenly seeming smaller as he remains crouched.
In response, his sister pulls up her sleeve, revealing her tattoos. They look just like Hex’s, a series of vertical lines. But then, the skin there begins to blur at the edges, and a horizontal sweep of ink just like Hector’s reveals itself.
Hex’s face contorts as he glares as his twin. “You hid it from me? You lied to me?”
“Oh, don’t be so sour, Junior,” Hector crows, stepping closer. Blood twines down his arm in ruby ringlets. “We figured your girlfriend would’ve told you. The Liaison of the Lines is notified after each heir is oathed.”
Beside me, Auden inhales sharply, surprise in it. Evander goes still as stone, still bent with Hex by the box.
And Winter—Winter is furious. “Ex.”
Hector just smiles broader. “All the more reason for you to keep Ada’s oath from him.”
Winter stiffens but doesn’t deny it. She knew that Ada had become the Cerise heir.
“Everyone will let you down except your blood, son,” Hector says, self-satisfied. “Everyone.” Then. “Hex, bring me the box.”
This time it’s not a question, it’s an order. A spell.
What the twins described their parents to be capable of.
Hex jerks into motion like a marionette, vise grip on the box, prying it free. With a cry, he wrenches his fingers open and drops the box onto the amethyst. The relic doesn’t break on impact, but tips over onto its side and slides down the stone to the blood-soaked dirt.
Hex’s eyes spring open, glassy against the strain of every capillary and vein in his face puffing up, the blood within him compelled to comply with the magic of his father’s words and spell. Still, he manages to lift his head and stare his father in the eye across the distance, defiance etched in his coal-dark glare as much as his will to resist.
“You are such a disappointment.” Hector’s mouth curls into a mean smile. Too much time has passed—somehow Hector’s use of magic on, or perhaps against, his own child is a loophole within the rules. He’s not afraid to use it against them, or apparently in front of us. One more secret worth revealing in the sake of the power in play. Hector aims that smile and his attention on his daughter. “Ada, my heir, the box.”
A small whimper escapes her lips as her father’s spell seizes hold, her body moving under his command. Ada stiff-arms Hex away and snatches the box, rising awkwardly to her feet.
“Good girl,” Hector coos. “Bring it here.”
Ada moves to do so, poorly navigating a step between Evander and Kaysa—
The security wards detonate.
The ground beneath the platform rumbles and then explodes in a curtain of light, encircling the seven of us on the platform. My fingers clutch Auden as I realize we have no protective shield this time. I duck my head and squeeze my eyes closed, and then it’s over.
I blink back into the strange reality of Hector’s cruelty—and see Evander has plucked the relic from Ada’s grip. “We agreed every master stays with the Hegemonys until the clue is confirmed.”
Hector closes the distance, stabbing a furious hand at Evander, spittle flying. “You just determined it was the Blood relic. You may not have invited me for your little druid hike onto these unsafe grounds at two in the morning, but I heard you. It’s mine.”
There’s a terrible glint in his eye and both twins seize, magic gripping them harder.
Ada jerks and jumps, claws out as she attacks Evander under Hector’s direction. On the ground, a wail of pain lances through Hex as his body fights to rise and help his sister obtain the box, as his mind fights the compulsion of his father within his blood. His whole body is vibrating with effort though his movements are infinitesimal. Like a deadlocked arm-wrestling match. Winter is cupping his straining shoulder.
Auden tenses next to me, and the ground begins to shake, a seam opening up from the tip of his shoes and slithering toward Hector. Earth—an element. My breath hitches. “Auden,” I whisper, “you can’t use your magic against him or—”
“Stop compelling them and we’ll let him hold the box!” Winter doesn’t look to Auden or Evander. Doesn’t ask permission. Just announces it, a Hegemony family decree. “You have my word.”
Auden grips me tighter, and to my relief, he’s heeded my warning. The gash in the earth between us and Hector fading to nothing, two yards from swallowing him whole. Hector doesn’t notice the crack, his gaze snapping to Winter above a sneer. “I’m not compelling them. I’m willing them to listen, as good children should.”
“However you want to justify it to yourself doesn’t excuse that it’s sick,” Winter shouts. “There’s a reason it’s been a Blood Line secret, because it’s deplorable.”
Auden clears his throat and says, “I stand by Winter’s compromise. We’ll let them hold it, just stop .”
Everyone turns to Evander, who holds the relic over his head. Ada tears long, shallow slashes on the exposed skin of his arms, his neck, his face, as he stiff-arms her. “Fine. Agreed.”
“My oathed heir will hold it.”
Hector doesn’t look at Hex as he twists his knife. Doesn’t look at his daughter either. He only has eyes for his master relic. For his chance to be the first Cerise patriarch to hold it since the man whose mistakes his family has spent four centuries attempting to atone.
What an absolute asshole.
Evander holds Ada’s clawing hands at arm’s length. “Call off your magic, and I will give the master relic to Ada.”
The answer is immediate.
Ada droops and sways, a marionette with cut strings as Hector’s magic abates. Auden catches her with an arm across her upper back as she navigates control of her limp legs stumbling into careful standing. Meanwhile, Hex slumps hard into the blood-soaked dirt. Winter sinks to his side and tries to help him up—and it’s a surprise when Evander, still palming the relic in one hand above his head, reaches down and uses his strength to help Hex upright.
Hector tenses, watching carefully, fingers flexing.
But Evander is true to his word.
He presents the Heart of Cleopatra to Ada, who cradles it close, and leaves our circle under her own volition to stand by her father. When Ada arrives at his side, she looks as if she might split into two right there, as her father cuffs her into place, squeezing her wrist so hard the edges of her skin are as white as bone in the lantern light. Her eyes are downcast—unable, it appears, to look her twin in the eye with the truth she’d kept from him exposed.
“Hex, you belong over here.” Hector’s voice is even and stern. “Do not fight me again.”
The Cerise boy nods, and without even a glance back at Winter, follows his sister to his father’s side, head bent and body shivering from the pain and effort.
Nausea sweeps over me at the thought of all these two have endured under the facade of the perfect family. Handsome, rich, in good standing. And yet, the levels of control and loss are nearly unimaginable.
I believe every word of what the twins shared in confidence.
These people are monsters.
To their children, and likely to anyone else standing in their way.
And the next clue will be the Death Line one, which means Wren, myself, and the Blackgate relic is all that’s standing between Hector Cerise, his accessory wife, and the last step toward what they seem to want most in the world: control of the Four Lines.
I’m not even a real witch, and that thought truly terrifies me.
If Hector would kill other witches and hurt his children with his magic—which somehow doesn’t seem to trigger Ursula’s parameters… perhaps because it’s always this way with them?—what would he do to those outside the lines with power like that?
“We will read the final clue right here, right now,” Hector announces, the Heart of Cleopatra now tucked against his own chest and whatever beats beneath. “Auden, I saw you read from the clue. I know you have the will on your person.”
Auden lets go of my hand, leaving the night’s cool fingers against my skin, and retrieves the will. “I do indeed. But as we don’t have all our members in attendance, perhaps we should go into the house, and take a moment to—”
“That won’t be necessary, Auden.”
My head snaps up at the syrupy-sweet voice of Sanguine Cerise. She steps out from behind the large boulder looking as fresh as the new swipe of blood-red lipstick across her mouth.
In one hand, she holds the gun that once hung next to Horace’s roaring bear head in the tearoom. In the other, she grips Infinity, their dark skin wan and body trembling.
The barrel of the gun is pressed deep into Infinity’s side.
Winter gasps, her fingers immediately flexing as if magic might shoot at them faster than a bullet. That gun—revolver?—looks old enough that she could beat it. Winter tries to lunge forward but Evander holds her back. Sanguine smiles. “We’re all here now. Please, don’t delay.”
Something cold pools in my gut, my anger at the way Hector treated his children hardening into a block of ice so hard it burns at the sight of Sanguine treating Infinity this way. All the pain they’ve felt in the past few hours now coupled with the paralyzing fear of implied violence.
“Sanguine, please put the gun down,” Evander urges, placating.
“They’ve been through enough, you monster!” Winter’s voice breaks, tears in her eyes as she meets Infinity’s terrified expression. The grin widens and brightens on Sanguine’s face. “I’m sure it’s not necessary and Infinity will stay with us now that you have them here.”
Bracing, Infinity squeezes their eyes shut. “Yes, please.” Their voice is soft, lips and lungs barely moving in making the sound.
“Oh, I think I’ll keep the gun right where it is, as incentive to make sure no funny business happens,” Sanguine responds, blue eyes hard, even as she still gives that Dolly Parton smile. “Read the clue, Auden.”
Auden nods before stepping forward and squatting to use the amethyst slab as a hard surface, so that he can properly align his thumb with the print he left in blood as executor. As he does so, I catch Wren’s eye—we won’t get caught in magical crossfire in the next two minutes, at least. Though the real test, and the last big hurdle to determining the heir, is about to land squarely at our feet.
The magic awakens under Auden’s palm, the ink shimmering and twisting into the final clue.
From where I stand, I can see Shadrack’s final hint is again five lines. I squeeze my eyes shut as Auden reads, praying to anyone who will listen that whatever it details isn’t something only a real Blackgate would know.
Auden’s voice is calm in the dark night.
“Ashes to ashes always meant dust to dust
For us
We burn bright, we burn together
Magic is a shroud of its own
Before the lines, one for all.”
I open my eyes as the silence deepens. There’s no immediate outburst. No sighs or whispers. Perhaps we’ve wrung ourselves dry as we receive yet another riddle for a clue.
Then, as if the last few terrible minutes didn’t happen, Hector steps forward, snaps a picture of the clue, and all four Cerises turn for the house.