Chapter 29
C HAPTER 29
AUDEN
It seems as if Hegemony Manor is crumbling before our eyes.
When we return to the house from the killing grounds, huddled together, my cousins, the Blackgates, and Infinity, the star tiles of the garden are worn and shapeless, weeds crumbling their corners into the dry earth. Fissures spangle the terrace in the bobbing illumination of our lanterns.
Within, all the fires have gone out again.
The solarium is pitch black and cold, Luna’s shroud a lump of shadow.
The cold embers in the fireplaces have been a pattern. The flames snuffed out when Ursula died, which made sense with her magic leaving elsewhere—the plants, the trappings of the outdoor chapel—but as we maneuver our way back to her private apartment, I realize there’s more to it than that.
There are fractures in the walls now. Cracks, spiderwebbing out, fine in some places, gaping in others. The more pronounced crevices score the heavy damask wallpaper in large, harrowing gashes.
The magic is giving out without the masters on the grounds.
Maybe this house will crumble around us, burying the lines before we ever have a chance to get out.
Up ahead, Evander throws open the wards and physical locks to Ursula’s suite, and announces, “We need to talk.”
“I’m not apologizing for Hex,” Winter immediately counters, the words bursting from her lips as if she’s held them in since the killing grounds. Her gaze finds Infinity’s. “We haven’t been anything for almost two years. It’s not my fault he seems to think otherwise.”
Infinity’s brow furrows. “Noted.”
Meanwhile, Evander strides straight over to the sideboard, pours himself some scotch, and downs it in a single gulp. He squeezes his eyes shut, the back of his hand pressed to his lips, and leans heavily into the sideboard, glass clinking as his weight throws the whole thing off-balance. “We need to talk about me—I need to talk about me. Just. Sit please, now.”
My heart kicks in my chest at his broken, near-breathless request.
He’s spooked.
This isn’t about what just happened at the killing grounds. It isn’t about the Cerises, or the relic found, or the final clue. This is something else entirely. My cousin looks like he might jump out a window if he can’t release whatever he needs to say.
I immediately take my seat.
“We’re here. We’re listening,” I assure him. “What is it?”
“It’s just—” Evander rakes a hand through his hair, eyes snapped shut. “I’m not ready. I’m not prepared to be the patriarch or the High Sorcerer and…”
“And that’s not true,” Winter insists. “Evander, stop. You—”
“No—it is true. It’s true.” His eyes open and pin on me. “Ursula never planned for me to be the Hegemony heir. She wanted you, Auden.”
There’s a collective sharp intake of breath but I’m already waving off this nonsense.
“No, she didn’t,” I scoff, ignoring the spike of hot surprise in my gut. “You’ve taken the oath, visited her every weekend from school—”
“And had a gap year planned for next year before excelling in the major of her choice.” His green eyes flash, his teeth flash, everything about him is like a tripped fire alarm. “Yeah, I know. But I was also there two years ago when she told me that she wanted you .”
My mouth is suddenly desert dry.
Two years ago was when Evander started his training. At sixteen.
“She never mentioned it to me,” I push back. “Not two years ago, not in January when she named me executor, never.”
Evander’s gaze drops.
“That’s because I blackmailed her.”
All the air leaves my lungs.
I gape at him, inert, as if swaddled in Ursula’s spelled punishment.
“You what ?” Winter asks in a rasp.
Our cousin pointedly digs his key out from beneath the collar of his tank top. It clinks against the High Sorcerer’s ring as he yanks the chain forward, bringing it into the illumination provided by the pendant above our heads.
“I stole this ring from you, Auden. You’re the person Ursula chose as her heir.”
I won’t have him do this. Not now. None of the words he’s saying are making sense. “You didn’t steal—”
“Yes, I did .” Evander drops the necklace and the twin pendants thud against his chest. “Shut up, Auden, and listen to me for once in your goddamn life.”
The building excuses shrivel on my tongue. I press my lips into a line, cross my arms over my chest, and shut up.
“Thank you,” Evander says, jaw muscle flickering as he carefully folds his meaty hands before him, and proceeds to close his eyes and tell the story.
I listen.
“When I turned sixteen, Ursula summoned me to her study. I nearly skipped in and sat down, ready to hear that I had been named oathed heir just as my father had.”
Here he pauses, eyes flashing open. He nods at Winter, who has both elbows planted on the tabletop, hands cupped around the sides of her neck as she watches him with unreadable eyes; Infinity in the shadows; the Blackgate girls, who wear dinner-plate eyes and parted lips; and, finally, to me. When he speaks again, he doesn’t drop his gaze from mine.
“She knew I expected to be named because I was the oldest, and that’s how these things work. Which was exactly why she made it a point to call me in as expected and tell me that I was ill-suited to be her heir because I was too loyal to the Hegemony name.”
Recognition cracks across Winter’s face like a jag of lightning splitting a tree. We’d all heard it then, when receiving our keys. The same succinct discussion of our loyalties.
Evander—loyal to the Hegemony name.
Winter—loyal to the Hegemony family.
Me—loyal to who the Hegemonys are.
“My loyalty wasn’t a good quality in this instance, she said, because the Four Lines expected my faithfulness to be to them, not only to my line.” Evander sucks in a steadying breath. “It was her concern that as a candidate, this quality could, under the right conditions, create a myopia within me that may invite a similar reign to Napoleon Cerise.”
A flat buzzing blooms in my ears. Static. Confusion.
“Wait,” Winter calls out, blanched. “Ursula suggested you would want to end the other lines?”
Evander shakes his head. “No, she just said that being a High Sorcerer with choices for an heir, she was being judicious. And given the three of us, Auden and his loyalty to the Hegemony position within the Four Lines made him the best candidate.”
My lungs expand, but the air doesn’t seem to reach my brain. “What did you tell her to change her mind?”
Evander swallows. Resets.
“I told her that if she didn’t make me her oathed heir, I would tell everyone that she executed Marcos Blackgate to cover up what really happened to our parents. Hex was telling the truth. That entire generation was working together to retrieve the master relics and release the lines.”
I exhale, stilted. “How do you know this rumor is true?”
For a quiet beat, Evander examines his hands, folded tightly atop the marble. Then, he raises his gaze to mine.
“I watched my father die.”
A sob rips out of Winter a moment before her hands fly to her mouth. The Blackgates are smooshed together, nearly clinging to each other in surprise. In my periphery, Infinity silently backs into the nearest wall.
“You what?” I choke.
Evander’s whole face is so red it’s nearly purple. “I saw them finalize their plan the night before. They were going to retrieve the relics at once and disband them from the High Sorcerer’s ring. It was a coordinated act of rebellion—one they miscalculated. Instead of successfully untethering the lines from the master relics and Ursula and all the baggage that comes with this whole unusual, unbreakable family, they died.”
Tears prick in Evander’s green eyes. Still, he lowers his shoulders and plows on with the unbelievable.
“I told Ursula that I saw my father die. Watched the security wards explode around him, burn his flesh.” His hands are shaking now, twined together and trembling. “That I had eavesdropped on their meetings. That I knew it was being led by my father and aunt and uncle, not the other heirs. They were part of it, they had all agreed, but our parents, her children, were doing the dirty work because they thought that was the best thing to do to make things better for all of us going forward. They didn’t believe someone should hold so much power. And they suffered for it.”
Evander pivots to the Blackgate girls, shrinking in on themselves like dying irises. “I think Ursula knew it; I think she knew exactly what happened but she couldn’t let that stand. And she had to punish someone, to avenge their death, to maintain her iron fist, to send a message to the generation of heirs who coordinated this.”
“And Hector Cerise handed her Marcos Blackgate on a platter…” I finish, quietly.
Evander nods, and my own thought, our own Hegemony edict, echoes in my brain.
All rumors are assumed to be lies until proven true.
“Hector knew if he put forward another name, Ursula would run with it,” Evander says, still nodding, as if it’ll make the words land hard enough that we won’t question them. “And she did.”
Winter swipes at the tears that have spilled, fury pinching her features as burnished patches, raw and wet, pebble atop her cheekbones. “Instead of interrogating herself about why an entire generation of heirs would want to dismantle the lines, she shut them up by killing a man before his daughters’ eyes—that’s what you’re saying?”
Evander draws in a shaky breath but rather than saying more, he simply nods.
Winter’s shoulders quake as she scrambles to wrap herself in a hug, and falls heavily against her seatback, the whole chair shuddering and tipping for a precarious moment.
“Why is this worth protecting? Why? Why are we protecting it?” Her voice breaks and her arms fly out, air quotes wrapped around the next words along with her rage. “This unusual, unbreakable family is nothing but an excuse. To chain human beings to a tradition that would rather kill its own than see it questioned.”
Winter’s looking at me, the one who is loyal to who we are. To the Four Lines. And I don’t have a single thing to say. My heart feels hollow as I process what she’s arguing, the fury, the truth.
Ursula used her power and position to kill a man who’d watched his friends die. A man who’d had a role identical to his friends who weren’t accused. All of them grieving, one of them made scapegoat. All to keep the Four Lines going in the face of the fact that an entire generation gambled and lost trying to rip our unusual, unbreakable family apart.
“I met with Ursula.”
My head snaps up to the new voice—Infinity.
“What?” Winter asks, hoarsely.
“I’m the one who wanted the Celestial Line to leave the Four Lines. It was my idea. Grandmama went along with it because she knew she didn’t have much time left, and wanted to leave me in a happy place. So she set up a meeting for us with Ursula. We went… and it did not go well.”
Their eyes drop and my stomach does too. “When was this?”
“December. When I was home from school.”
I catch my cousins’ eyes. Lavinia was right. The threat Ursula meant to address was to how things had always been. Yet another generation straying from tradition.
“I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but… I’m sure Grandmama is dead because of that choice.” Infinity covers their face. “I know it.”
Winter crosses to them, tugging their hands away from their face and holding them tightly. “It’s not your fault. I know you think it is, but it isn’t.”
“Did you know Luna met with Hector and Marsyas before the meeting?” I ask as gently as possible, feeling like an asshole. “The twins had proof that Hector had a private lunch with two people, and based on his text messages we think it was the two matriarchs.”
Infinity allows Winter to wrap a comforting arm around their shoulders now. “We typically travel together, but she came here early. I didn’t ask why.” Infinity’s eyes flash up, wide and sorrowful. “Do you think they were up to something? Together? Wanting to leave the lines or… or… to assassinate Ursula?”
“We don’t know,” I answer, honestly. “And given Hector’s behavior, we won’t be getting any answers from him.”
The Blackgates are downcast, their shoulders slumped. No answers from Marsyas, no answers from Luna, no answers from either woman’s grandchildren, kept in the dark. And so we are too.
Infinity’s head shakes and Winter rubs their forearm. They turn to her, new tears forming. “I’m sorry, I don’t know more. If I’d only asked, maybe…”
“There’s so much all of us should’ve asked. Don’t put this secret on yourself. It was theirs to keep and… we have to navigate it together.”
There’s a long pause, and then Kaysa clears her throat. “Does anyone else have any more secrets to share? If so, I can’t take much more so just yell it out, chips on the table.” She taps the center of the marble, astride our half-finished plates and utensils, as if gesturing to where our secrets could go, plopped into the open, trying to lighten the mood.
I stare at my hands. My gut can’t take much more.
Lavinia bites her lip. Winter and Infinity lean into the wall, silent save for ragged, teary breaths.
Evander holds up a hand.
“There’s one more thing. And then we can rest. We’re going to need it. But, please, you need to hear this too.”
His voice is rough, drained, pleading. I lift my gaze, watching as his head hangs in the blunt hammock of his hands, his brow scrunching violently, and he pulls in yet another deep breath. When Evander speaks, the words come easier now, it seems, the weight of the rest of it out in the open.
“Auden, I lied to you when you asked where I went after we searched the study the night of Ursula’s murder.”
My lips drop open as I try to read his face for the answer, even as it comes.
I realize in that moment that I can’t read him. I don’t have any idea what he’ll say. This man is like a brother to me, but the past few minutes have put so much distance between the Evander I know and the one who lived the things he’s telling me… that he’s now a stranger, fuzzy and unknown, a blip, a mile away from where I sit.
“I didn’t come here to search her rooms first. That came second,” he admits.
No one else here knows that this conversation happened between us, but that doesn’t matter. It’s easy enough to follow. The lie ripped away and the truth exposed with each passing admission.
“The first thing I did when I was alone,” Evander says heavily, “was go to the place where I saw my father die. I knew there was a master relic there. He hadn’t been successful in completely extracting it before the security wards triggered. I went to the niche where I knew it was, opened it—and found it empty.”
My gut roils.
Of course—if Evander saw his father die, he saw him attempt to remove a master.
And we only have one master left.
Lavinia speaks first. “Are you saying there’s no Death Line relic? That someone already has it?”
“I don’t know. It could’ve been moved to another location by Ursula. Given how vague our clue is, who knows. All I know is that I didn’t find it. And I lied. Again.” Evander’s gaze meets mine, then skips to Winter across the room. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you right away.”
Another piece of crucial information saved back, shoved behind two bigger, more painful secrets. Still, I mean it when I say, “I forgive you.”
Winter echoes. And then we’re left with a vast and stretching silence until Kaysa’s subdued voice fills it. “But if we can’t find the fourth one, if it doesn’t exist… we can’t leave.”
Evander sighs. “Correct.”
The horror of that truth ripples around the room.
There’s a possibility we can’t punish Ursula’s murderer. There’s a possibility we can’t collect all four masters.
There’s a possibility that no matter what we do, we’re stuck here forever.
“Maybe she never meant for us to complete the tasks,” Lavinia says, the blush of her cheeks fading to stone white. “Maybe it was never possible all along.”
Infinity goes further. “Maybe it was punishment all along.” They lift their head to Winter. “Would she do that?”
“Honestly, now? I don’t know.”
I don’t know either.
Evander reads his watch. “We have twenty hours left to find out.”
In the silence that follows, Evander hoists himself up from his seat. Then, without a word, he removes the chain from his neck, flips my hand up to the light, and drops his heir’s key and the High Sorcerer’s ring into my palm. Both his hands then cup mine, forcing my fingers to close over the metal.
“Wear it, Auden.”
I shove it back. “Earn it, Evander.”
I fling my hands away, forcing him to hold on to the key he’s earned and the ring he wants. Dare him to drop it, toss it, or otherwise discard it.
But he can’t.
I knew it.
Evander’s big fist closes around the chain and pendants, then he backs away from the table and to the first door on the right—Ursula’s bedroom. He unlatches it and steps inside, but before he shuts himself away from us, he says one final thing, lobbed at us with barely any power left in his voice.
“I’m sorry.”