Chapter 32
C HAPTER 32
RUBY
At first, I don’t understand what I’m seeing. It’s like a Renaissance painting, and there’s too much going on all at once to comprehend at a glance.
Wren, wrapped in shiny, solid air. She’s partially twisted, as if she was trying to bolt when Ursula’s spell registered what she’d done and caught her in a blinding flash and immediate stillness.
Hector and Sanguine are on the ground a body length away. They lie in a collective victim’s shroud, blood like stained glass seeping out from under them, saturating the terra-cotta star-shaped tiles to wet, shiny black.
Hex and Ada are crumpled together, as pinned to the sight as they are to each other’s arms. Distantly, I wish I could hold Wren like that as my mind muddles through the reality of this. Instead, it’s Auden on the other end of my grip as I clamp down with all my fear at what this means.
What this looks like.
It looks like Wren killed them and was caught by Ursula’s spell.
All impossible, except it’s right there.
“Breathe” is all Auden says as he leads me away from the railing and to the stairs.
I realize then that I’m not actually drawing in air, or blinking, my vision going blurry through sudden tears. The muscles in my legs fire reluctantly, stuttering, jerky movements carrying me down to garden level only with the direction and support of Auden’s steady hand.
This close, the method of murder is obvious.
Unlike with Luna, we can see it all. Hector’s throat is slit vertically, from the well between his clavicles all the way through the palate, and around the corner of his chin to his lips, fish-mouthed and gaping, his tongue and windpipe no longer there.
Sanguine is harder to parse, given that she lies behind him, but her head has lolled away awkwardly, and it’s easy to imagine her wounds are the same. Thick, viscous blood stains her beautiful face from the bridge of her nose down to the sharp curve of her chin, as if she feasted on a heart and fell asleep satisfied.
Death magic.
Blackgate magic.
The weight of attention pulls me away from the stunning sight. I lift my head to accusations bare on the twins’ faces. Shades of the same painted on the faces of Evander, Infinity, Winter. I fear what I might see in Auden’s expression.
The summer air goes down ice cold as I try to draw in enough breath to defend Wren.
“She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. We’re not—” I fumble.
But there’s no way to explain what’s before me without sharing a secret that might make things a hundred times worse.
No, I can’t say that now.
The truth of my predicament makes the panic rise faster in my gut. I tighten my grip on Auden, a lifeline in this madness that is the only thing keeping me from sinking in this terrible moment, but it won’t save me. I know that.
Hex is flush with anger, his cheeks as warmly red as his tone is frigid. “It very much looks like she did. Do you see their faces?” Bald anguish swells in every word. “God, look at them! Just look! Look what she did to them!”
I am looking. I’m just not understanding.
There is no one here who can do this.
Except a Blackgate.
My throat is dry, though my words sound as if they’ve been pulled from a soggy river bottom. “She didn’t do this—I didn’t do this…”
“Look in her hands,” Ada charges in a wail, her whole body taut as a bow. When I met Ada, I thought she was the epitome of soft and feminine. Now, every sharp point of hers is aimed at me. “What does that look like to you?”
I didn’t notice it before.
Wren is turning to run, but only her feet look prepared for a mad dash because her hands are cupped together. Not clasped, but nearly touching, as if she was trying to pass something from one to the other. Squatting down and peering up, the drip of a silver chain dangles from her left hand, the fingers above it opening. Even with inches of magical static between her palm and the rest of us on the outside, it’s clear what it is.
“The Elemental master?” Evander asks. “It should be in the study safe—”
“Well, it’s not !” Ada shouts. “The Blood master is in my papa’s right hand.”
Ada’s pin-straight body collapses into the strength of her brother’s at the drop of “my papa’s,” her blue eyes waves in a hurricane. “She was collecting all of the relics so that when the Death master was found, she would have control of all four and claim the title of High Sorcerer.”
That’s not how it would work. She’d need Ursula’s ring, I think dully. But it doesn’t matter. Anything I say will only make it worse.
Hex rubs Ada’s back as she heaves in huge gulps of air. Infinity stares at the bodies, ramrod straight. Winter wraps herself in her own strong arms like she did when her grandmother died, her whole body shaking. Auden’s breathing is shallow, his grip turning cold around mine. Evander is deathly still.
They wait for me as I stumble for something acceptable to say and fail.
“What? No. No, she wouldn’t. She’d never…”
“She did .” Hex looms closer, his sister holding tight. “There’s no other explanation. Your sister murdered my parents in cold blood when they fought back. And the spell had enough juice left to trap her before she could take the Blood relic.”
The hurt in Hex’s voice slices through my heart. We’d just witnessed his parents’ cruelty and the lengths they’d go regarding their children, their peers, to get what they want. But his parents were still his parents.
And now they’re gone.
It means nothing that I know that pain intimately, dulls nothing. It doesn’t take away from what they believe my sister has done.
Auden is still cradling my hand, but I’m the one with all the grip, his softening as reality sets in. I’m the one clinging. I wonder how long he’ll let me.
Wren’s terrified face is the whole of my vision.
I have to fight for her. I can’t rely on denial. I need a defense.
“No, look, she’s turning away from them. If she wanted the Blood relic, she would be reaching down to get it—”
“Down from where they fell after she killed them?” Hex seethes.
Killed.
The metallic stench of blood coats the back of my throat.
“Or,” Ada argues, eyes narrowing, “she finally did something so heinous that it triggered Ursula’s spell, she felt the magic rising, and bolted, knowing she was finally caught, hours after murdering Luna.”
“No, no, she would never—”
“How do you know ?” Hex demands. “Were you with her the whole time?”
“I—we were asleep.”
Auden and me. Not Wren and me.
But Hex reads that “we” as sisters, together.
“No, you were asleep.” Hex’s features sharpen to a knifepoint. He’s still looming, his entire body tilted toward mine, his shadow a shroud of its own. “Or so you say—how do we know you weren’t here with her when this happened? Just like a Blackgate to sleep tight after watching two people die.”
“Or by producing the spell that killed them,” Ada spits, her blond hair wild, a lion’s mane, as she bares her teeth. “Did you do it, Lavinia? Did you do it and let your sister take the fall?”
“No. No—”
“The spell doesn’t work like that,” Infinity cuts in, to my surprise and relief. “But it did work. Which means it wasn’t Kaysa who killed them, or it would have frozen her before she stole the master. Both would have activated the spell. They’re equal offenses.”
“Stealing a master and killing our parents are not equal!” Ada explodes, shouting at the sky. The mountains echo back her anguish.
Auden signals with the hand that isn’t my anchor, placating and pleading. “And we don’t know that it works like that. If Kaysa used her magic against them and stole the master in sequence, it’s possible she performed both offenses before Ursula’s spell kicked in. It’s unclear.”
I should be offended that he’s not on my side, that he thinks my sister could and would do such a thing. But he’s trying to be logical, to think things through. Buying time like he did with the magic on his driveway, making space between passionate response and reason.
But she can’t have killed him.
My panicked brain grasps for answers. Nothing crystallizes in my mind but more questions.
Why does Wren have the Elemental master? The Blood master would make more sense in this situation where absolutely everything is upside down.
I grip Auden’s hand harder, but it’s like clutching a piece of ice, as if it’s disappearing with each passing moment. He’s slipping through my fingertips.
“No, no, please, you have this all wrong.” My stupid accent wobbles. A sob rises in my chest and wheezes into this impossible morning. “We want nothing to do with the relics, with the title, with power. We just want to go home.”
Though I’ve insisted this before, now it’s the wrong thing to say.
Hex advances with intent and rage now, barely restrained violence in the cut of his shoulders, his stride, the sneer carved on his trembling mouth. Ada isn’t an anchor, weighing him down, but a twin engine, dangerous and cutting beside him. “You know who can’t go home? Our parents!”
His anguish cracks something in Infinity, who turns to me too, their previous defense of my sister vanishing as a new wave of heartbreak crashes over their elegant features. “My grandmama.”
Winter places a hand on Infinity’s elbow, her whole face a shadow, stern as stone as her blue eyes flicker like flame. “Ursula. And the goddamn driver.”
None of them can go home.
My heart stops beating. I’m sure of it. Panic icing it out, suspending it the same way Wren is held, still and stoic. The blood within me slows to a standstill, my lungs clench like a fist. A surge of numbness spreads up my legs. I tilt and vaguely realize I might pass out.
And then… Auden’s grip returns, and his fingers encircle my own.
He’s there. He’s here.
“Perhaps it’s possible to break the spell?” Auden’s voice is measured and calm, gentle with its request. “We could question Kaysa about what happened. A day from now, when the spell would lift, is too late. We need to know what happened now.”
God. Yes. “A truth spell, if we have to.” My voice is a desperate rasp. “She’ll submit.”
The twins take another collective lunging step forward. This time, its Ada’s anguish cracking like a whip in the air. “We don’t need a fucking truth spell! We can all plainly see what happened here!”
“I know what it looks like, but we won’t truly know with certainty what happened unless we ask her. You said it yourself that your father would do anything to be High Sorcerer; what if he tried to kill her and it was self-defense?” I angle at Infinity, but they shirk away. I don’t blame them, wild desperation is the worst kind. “We’ll figure this out. It can’t be what it looks like. We’ll find out what really happened—”
“If we free her, we can punish her,” Ada cuts me off, her fury coiling into serpentine coolness.
My frozen heart seizes.
Then the threat gets worse.
“I bet I could execute her through Ursula’s magical barrier,” Hex announces, venom in every word as he stares at Wren like she truly is an ice sculpture and if he strikes in just the right place, she’ll shatter into a million pieces that he’ll crunch under his feet. “I have all day to figure out how.”
Tears cloud my eyes now, my dry throat catching as I scream at the pair of them. “You will not kill my sister!”
Hex rounds on me, his large, athletic body suddenly part of this equation. Marsyas’s file flashes in my mind—a football linebacker. He has plenty of practice plowing humans much larger than me into the ground. “I will personally kill your sister if she murdered my parents! She took them from us, and I will not hesitate to take her from you in return, Lavinia.”
And suddenly I see another path, dark and dangerous but the only option to shift us away. Treacherous as it is, I can’t have Hex thinking of murdering my sister for one more moment. The longer that idea sits with him, the more likely it is to happen.
“Submit me to a truth spell! Hex, Ada, you do it—ask me whatever the hell you want. As many questions as you want. Please.”
Ada bares her teeth—that last word was a mistake.
“That’s a waste of time,” Ada growls.
Evander steps forward, hands waving like a white flag. “No, no, we need answers. I’ll do it.”
Hex scoffs. “ Your test again? Obviously, because Kaysa passed your stupid fireball yesterday, it’s no good.”
Evander rakes a hand through his short dark hair. “Then you do it. Lavinia is willing. Yes, this looks like Death Line magic. But Kaysa also has my relic in her hands, and that does not compute to me. I need to know where she got it, and how she managed to kill them too. And Hector is holding the Blood relic. What was happening here?” He turns to Infinity. “Do you know where the Celestial master is?”
They don’t hesitate. “In my suite’s safe.”
“What do you want to bet it’s actually missing?” Ada quirks a delicate brow. “Look at that shape against the outline of her tights. It could definitely be a vial.”
It’s more likely the butter knife I foisted upon her for self-defense. But, honestly, given the evidence happening here, all I know is that Wren didn’t kill Hector and Sanguine. The rest?… I truly have no clue what my sister was doing, thinking, trying to achieve.
Her impulsivity is on display. Again. And I’m left as her only defense.
My heart heaves.
God, Wren.
“We should check for it, after we do the truth spell,” Evander says. “Auden, bring Lavinia to me.”
“No—no. I’ll do it.” Hex jumps into motion. “We can’t have another failure.”
Evander scowls. “If you’re up to it.”
“Of course I’m up to it,” Hex snaps. His ring already removed from his finger, Hex twists the blade so that it shines like a rose thorn, short and sharp. He’s wearing a white T-shirt with his tracksuit pants, tiger-stripe tattoos exposed. “Lavinia, your palm.”
“Three questions,” Auden says, directing me toward Hex.
“She said as many as I want.”
“We both know truth spells are better with a concentrated effort,” Auden answers. “Too broad or too many answers and the results aren’t reliable. No matter what line of magic is doing the spell. Five would be more than enough.”
Hex bares his teeth. “Six.”
Auden glances at me. “Fine.”
Then, with a small squeeze, he lets go of my hand.
Stepping forward, I focus on Wren, on her panicked expression, the startled wideness to her eyes. My sister, who treats every interaction like a moment on stage, something not totally real and with consequences finally catching up to her as she literally tried to run away.
You aren’t the only capable one, I remember her saying. I got us into this, I can get us out.
She tried. I feel in my bones that’s what this is. And now I’m the one who has to make sure she can walk away.
I reveal my palm.
Ada, Winter, Evander, Infinity, and Auden crowd in around the pair of us. Wren is my guidepost in the sliver of space between Hex and Auden.
Hex slices a two-inch gash down the second tattoo from his elbow, the seam of skin beading crimson. He drags it across my palm, leaving a smeared stain fresh and wet. Then, cupping the underside of my hand in his own palm, Hex runs the knifepoint of his ring down the line in my palm that arcs between the thumb and forefinger.
The life line, my brain supplies.
My blood wells up, seeps into the plane of his, and a sudden, fuzzy warmth flushes throughout my whole body.
It’s as if every drop in my veins has been lit like crude oil atop saltwater, burning and burning despite the inhospitable environment. I can’t move, I can’t blink, all energy in my body seems to pool on my tongue. I instantly know it will move upon its own volition through the next six questions.
And when Hex asks the first question, panic sets in as, too late, I remember something specific about Blood Line truth spells.
“Lavinia, what happened to Hector and Sanguine Cerise?”
They start every open-ended question with a name. Because it’s a measure of the truth.
But it’s not with me.
Still, there’s no stopping the magic, and my mouth forms words I don’t recognize until they tumble into the crisp air of a mountain morning. “I don’t know.”
The blood in my palm curdles to ash.
Hex’s expression goes cold. Ada gasps. The Hegemonys are still. Infinity gnaws a thumbnail.
The types of results weren’t explained in detail, but they don’t need to be. I answered truthfully, but because my name is not Lavinia, I failed the first question.
I want to draw myself out. To wipe away the ashen blood and go another route, any other route.
But I can’t pull away. I’m committed to this spell, under its influence until it’s finished.
Hex asks his second question. “Lavinia, where were you when your sister killed the Cerises?”
“Nowhere.”
It’s the truth—because she didn’t murder them. She couldn’t have. Even an answer of “in the sewing room with Auden, asleep” would’ve been a lie.
She did not kill them. She could not kill them. Because we’re not Death witches.
I will the blood to run crimson, to omit the first part of the question and stick to the truth. Instead, shivers from the seam in my hand and mounds into more black, the ash duplicating, featherlight in my palm.
Fuck.
Hex’s fingers flex around my knuckles, where he cups my palm.
“Lavinia, are you, your sister, or your grandmother responsible for killing Luna?”
It’s a yes-or-no question rather than an open-ended one.
Yet my “no” results in ashes. I’m not Lavinia. That lie continues to skew the results. And it will, as long as it’s part of the question.
Infinity sinks to a squat, head buried against the tops of their knees and bracketed by their arms. Winter places a soft palm on their shoulders as they begin to quake.
I’m truly panicking now.
My mind races in a way my body can’t, plunging through the lines of this deadly maze, looking for a way out, daylight, any way to stop this. I want to yell that I’m not lying, that I never would’ve hurt Luna, that my sister wouldn’t have. But I can only stand here, braced for the next question.
“Lavinia, are you, your sister, or your grandmother responsible for killing Ursula?”
“No.”
The ashes mound higher, now the size of a juicy black plum, the color of sleep and full to bursting in my palm.
Auden shifts, his shoulders giving me more of a view of Wren’s helpless form. Winter continues to comfort Infinity. Evander’s whole presence is solid, hard, unforgiving on my right side.
“Lavinia, what are your instructions from Marsyas in regard to obtaining all four master relics?”
“I wasn’t instructed to do so.”
The ashes tower now, threatening to overtake my hand, larger than both my fists combined. Around me, everything has gone still.
One final question.
“Lavinia, why are you lying to us?”
Tears escape my unblinking eyes now, rolling down my cheeks as I answer in an unerring, unfeeling voice.
“I’m not lying.”
The ashes grow so tall they spill over. Rather than falling to the ground, they cling to my wrist, slide down the back of my hand, stopping where Hex’s skin meets mine.
I’m stained black. Guilty.
Hex releases my hand, and I hold it there, proof of my misdeeds obsidian in the shiplap light, the roof line of Hegemony Manor painted with the white light of this new day.
The final day we needed to survive.
The day they know we lied.
My voice comes back to me, my own.
“No, please. No. There’s been a misunderstanding.” I round on Auden. “Give me a different one. Give me yours. I—please, I need another chance.”
Evander steps in front of Auden, blocking him from my pleas. “You don’t get another chance. Don’t ask him. Don’t ask me. Don’t ask any of us, Lavinia.”
His words are a door slammed in my face. Every single one of them is closed off and distant. I nearly feel as if I’m under Ursula’s statue spell, and yet I’m alive and blinking. Begging.
“I’ll do it.” At first I don’t know what Winter means, but then she flexes her fingers. “It’s worth imprisoning her while we find the final master.”
“Imprison her?” Ada bares her teeth, and cuffs Winter’s shoulder. “We should just punish her outright. Kaysa too. They killed Ursula. Luna. Our parents. Clear as day. We make them pay penance, then we find that relic and get out of here.”
I throw my hands up, and my words come out cracked and broken, weak and uneven. “Wait, no, please. Please, I can explain!”
“We don’t want an explanation for your lies,” Hex snaps. “You lied, your sister lied, and you’re fucking murderers. Part of some sort of Death Line initiation. Killing people for fun, making relics out of their bones? That sounds about right.”
This is it. I’ve made it to the last resort. I have everything to lose now and nothing to gain except the slimmest hope of survival. Wren’s words from our first night echo in my mind. No longer out of the question.
So we’ll just tell them.
I squeeze my eyes closed and shout the truth at the top of my lungs.
“We are liars!”
As the echo dies to no response, my eyes flash open.
“We are. That’s the truth.”
I’m pleading, all my panic and fear and shame flooding forth. I grasp for Auden’s attention and sympathy and find it blank in the shadow of Evander’s bulky frame. I sink to my knees before them. Draw in a deep breath. When I speak, my voice is a fraying rasp.
“ We are liars. But we aren’t lying about what you think we’re lying about.”
The faces before me are closed off. Dead.
Hex scoffs first.
“Oh, give me a break.” Every inch of him is mean and unin terested in any word coming out of my mouth. “There is literally nothing you can say that I would believe with my parents under that shroud, dead of Death magic—”
“We’re not the Blackgate girls! We’re imposters!”