Chapter 34
C HAPTER 34
RUBY
My prison is pure gold and shimmering like water on my skin. It’s a thin layer, as smooth and complete as ice, yet as warm as a freshly drawn bath.
It’s the strangest feeling—and that’s saying something, considering the last several days.
It’s like I’m underwater with the sound turned on. The pressure of it doesn’t miss a single inch of me, encased as I am, yet I’m able to breathe, blink, listen.
I hear the witches as they determine and divide up their targets.
I’m able to catalog every unsaid word telegraphed on exhausted features.
Auden’s frustration overtaking the hurt in his poet’s heart at my betrayal.
Evander’s single-minded authority, ready to end this hell by any means necessary.
Winter’s resentment at this process, this task, her rage over who’s been lost and the reason why.
Infinity’s resignation, their internal struggle to disengage warring with the need to see this through.
Hex and Ada’s double helix of hurt, shock, horror, and the will to force an outcome that both honors and defies the blood in their veins.
I watch as they make plans, and turn their backs on us to execute them, wondering if they’ll be successful in finding the Death master relic. If I’m truly safe or a sitting duck. If Wren is catching everything in the same way I am, or if the magic of her spell has her completely neutralized—a bee displayed in amber, no synapses firing, a true state of physical and mental suspension.
Then, they’re gone.
All around the garden, the dying topiaries and hedges rustle with a wind I can’t feel but know by heart after a lifetime of living in the Rocky Mountains.
Wren and I are alone.
Until we’re not.
“I thought they’d never leave.”
It’s a curse as much as it is a sigh of relief, meant for the speaker and no one else. A low, raspy voice, one I haven’t heard in two days. One I hadn’t expected to hear again.
Marsyas.
My periphery isn’t enough, only giving me the barest hint of movement over my shoulder, a person materializing from beyond the kitchen service entrance below the terrace. Moving, swathed in endless black, checking all the corners and edges for the six remaining witches.
There’s more movement—someone with her. My vision blurs so much it seems as if there are four of them, not three, but I know it is because I know exactly who it is by her side.
Her real granddaughters.
I crane myself and push the edges of my vision to lay eyes on them. I need to see these girls in the flesh, to see them for what they are—monsters like their grandmother. I don’t know how they’re here, but I know why they are.
Revenge.
Pure and plain, and always the motivation from the start.
“You think they look like us? Really? These were the ones you picked? Seriously, Nona?”
They come into view, and it’s the taller of the pair asking these questions. They’re delivered in an accented scoff, a nimble quirk to her lips as she ribs Marsyas.
Lavinia Blackgate—the real one, in the flesh.
Like Marsyas, she’s dressed in body-skimming black and a variety of Death magic relics. Like me, she has sable hair that cascades, dark eyes with long, heavy lashes that probably made her look like a doll as a child. Still, she’s paler in that English rose sort of way, taller by at least an inch that’s all leg, and apparently kind of a jackass.
“My nose looks nothing like that.”
It’s true—her features are refined and delicate where mine are, well, not.
“And that one’s fringe is criminally excessive—is her forehead atrocious under all that hair?” Lavinia clucks her tongue and bites her lip, flummoxed. “I can’t believe they didn’t call them out as imposters on the spot.”
“Memory is a wild beast,” Marsyas answers with a dismissive wave, bracelets swinging. “Hard to chase, hard to tame, and never what you’re expecting when you pin it down. As long as there’s some distance to it, a memory is exactly what a good suggestion says it is.”
At this, Lavinia sheds her feigned outrage and replaces it with a little smirk of endearment. “Honestly, Nona, convincing them these girls were us is a masterful achievement in itself. Don’t you agree, Kay?”
“Oh yeah,” the younger one insists.
That’s all she says, end of story. Wren certainly did not nail this girl’s personality. Furthermore, the true “Kay” has long layers that are more auburn in person than in the picture Marsyas showed us. To be fair, her eyes are a similar shade of hazel to Wren’s, but rounder in a way that makes her look younger than sixteen. And though they’re the same height, she’s built more like Marsyas, soft around the edges of her hairpin curves.
In that moment, with all three Blackgates ogling at me, lips curved in matching expressions equally joyous and terrible, I realize it’s true what Marsyas said.
Blackgates always smile.
And it’s terrifying in this context.
They’re here to finish what they started with Ursula’s death.
Marsyas is finished with this subject. “How much time?” she asks without further direction or address.
“Hex and Ada are two hundred meters from the main house and working slowly. Evander and Auden are too busy arguing to work quickly,” Lavinia answers, then she pointedly looks to her sister, handing off the verbal baton of this report.
“Winter and Infinity are installed at the cemetery. It’s half a kilometer from this location.”
Marsyas accepts this information with a small frown. “Not a lot of buffer room, but enough.” She waves at the girls, shooing them. “Go. We must move quickly and silently. Stick to the plan.”
Then she sends them off with a phrase that I know in my gut is the way the Blackgates truly see themselves and their reputation. It’s not about the “Blackgate smile”—it’s about what’s underneath. “Be ready, be careful, be ruthless.”
There’s more movement, and I’m trying so hard to watch that my skin goes clammy with concentration.
What are they doing? Where are they going? What is the plan?
In answer, all I get are near-silent footsteps and then Marsyas solidifies from the edges of my vision.
The Blackgate matriarch is both the same as ever and not at all.
Midnight fabric from head to toe, but rather than whimsical, every inch is tactical—she came for a fight. Marsyas’s silver hair is coiled into a tight bun now instead of a stately chignon. But that’s where she begins to veer into the version who abandoned us—her vanity clawing its way in.
She’s wearing the plum lipstick she wore to dinner Saturday night, her face made up in another round of heavy foundation and powders so fragrant I can nearly taste them, though my senses are obscured by my golden cage. Her jewelry has been replaced with relics matching the energy of the rabbits’ feet bracelets she still wears. Taxidermic white cat paws (with claws extended) hug her earlobes, and a choker fashioned from a string of tiny skulls—birds, maybe?—wraps the crepe-like skin of her throat. The knife slash of an X marking her as an oathed heir peeks over the neckline of her shirt, the scar silvered, puckered, unmistakable if you know where to look.
Seemingly satisfied with the state of things, she veers in my di rection and rounds upon me. Her Blackgate smile is in place, wide and terrible, the mischievousness in her dark eyes teetering away from ornery and toward vicious.
“I suppose though I am a witch, I am not a clairvoyant, I see.” Birdlike, Marsyas tilts her head at me, examining. “I was sure you’d both be dead by now.”
A pointer finger prods at the sunlight encasement over my body. I can feel the pressure as well as I can hear her—it’s really a barrier more than a blanket. Stiff as a cast against my skin, but slim as a coat of shortening greasing a cake pan. Marsyas smiles when she sees the flinch in my eyes as her fingertips make contact—she must know I can feel it as much as she knows I can hear it.
The old witch seems pleased about both.
“Sunlight for you, pressurized air for her,” she muses. “Why would that be?”
Marsyas inspects Wren’s face, prods at her prison. She doesn’t miss the item in her hands, her turning body, the expression of panic, and fear frozen in her eyes. She catalogs all of it and tucks it away in an expression that conveys both annoyance and respect.
And that’s when I realize… while this is Marsyas’s first time seeing Wren like this up close, it’s not her first encounter.
No, she triggered it.
Marsyas is being more than facetious, she’s being cruel—because she knows exactly what happened and I don’t.
“Yes, I know you can hear me. Infinity is a talented witch, but a young one, and while this is a solid effort, it’s not quite as secure as what Luna could’ve cooked up. Too bad, that one.”
Marsyas rounds Wren and approaches me like a piece of art in a museum. Then, as if she knows it’s off-limits and doesn’t care, she reaches out and brushes two plump fingertips down the side of my face.
“It’s truly extraordinary. You’re immobile, yes, but I can see every thought in that pretty head of yours scrolling across your eyes like goddamn closed-captioning. You hold nothing back, Ruby.” Something sharper than pure delight brightens her expression. “I don’t know how they didn’t see it before you flat-out told them what you’d done.”
Whatever she sees now—my disgust at her touch, my surprise at what she’s suggested as far as her front-row seat to my truth spell, and my terror at what she did to the witches who’ve died in the last day—induces that smile of hers she wielded when convincing us of her plight more than a week ago. The deep, cavernous expression that feels like falling to my death. Pitching over the edge and into the black beyond.
Marsyas’s obvious pleasure only grows.
She pats me on the cheek now, like I’m a small child.
The veil of sunlight does absolutely nothing to keep my skin from crawling.
“Yes, Ruby, I killed Hector and Sanguine. And I would’ve killed Wren here too if she hadn’t snatched the Elemental master straight out of Sanguine’s hands and triggered what I gather is a spell of Ursula’s design.”
This woman was going to kill my sister.
She certainly would have without Ursula’s spell. Without the opportunity to break it so clearly and quickly by holding a master without permission.
I don’t know how the Elemental master came into the equation of what happened here—if Hector or Sanguine had stolen it, they would be alive in imprisoning air instead of dead in shrouds.
All the unknowns and ifs and buts add up to my sister, my impulsive, bullheaded, big-hearted sister being alive.
This should be a relief. Wren is safe from the designs of this woman, who would discard both of us. Instead, pure, icy panic hardens around every organ in my body. My head throbs, my lungs shudder, my heart slows to frozen, my gut is a stone.
That smile flickers—it remains, but for the barest of moments, a frown flashed across her thin, plum-painted lips.
“Well, I should tell you I would’ve appreciated a heads-up from Luna when we last saw each other.” Her gaze skirts the solarium. “But given the circumstances, I’m sure she wasn’t keen on warning me that there would be a side of confusion with the paranoia I hoped to stoke with her death, because the murderer should’ve been ensnared in this selfsame spell. The old bird knew exactly what she was doing until it was the last thing she did.”
Luna was leaving us a hint.
She knew we’d be baffled by a victim’s shroud but no trapped murderer. And yet it wasn’t until much later that we realized we’d been infiltrated.
Marsyas sighs.
“And then this little one—I knew she was clever,” the Blackgate matriarch says, with an almost appreciative expression on her face as she examines my sister. “It’s my failure that I didn’t anticipate what was coming when, instead of running from me, she stole the Elemental master out of Sanguine’s hands. She called Ursula’s magic by breaking a set rule, and created a shield for herself. Ingenious, really. Kept her alive. But, if what I just witnessed is any indication, she also nearly knocked you girls off the board. A little later than I’d anticipated, but both of you have most certainly exceeded my expectations.”
It doesn’t sound like a compliment.
“How long will she be this way? Twelve hours? A day?” If Marsyas can read the answer in my eyes, she still waves it off. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose, because all of this will be over very soon.”
She manages to make the last part sound both ominous and like a promise.
I wonder how long I can keep her talking. I’m not truly an active participant, but talking at me seems to be enjoyable for her ego, to say the least. If I can distract her long enough, it’s possible Auden or Evander will take a break from their work inside the mansion to catch the extra figure on the lawn. Or perhaps the twins will work their way across the ley line and back here, to where it runs beneath the table, thrumming with an energy I can’t feel.
I want them to be here, but at the same time, it’s obvious this woman is a powder keg. And unless they come in ready to defuse her, they’re walking into an explosion.
And then, Marsyas moves away from me and rocks the thin foundation I’ve built about the truths of magic.
She retrieves something from within the stretchy confines of her clothes, and crouches over Ursula’s shroud with intention, purpose. The girls had their orders. This one was hers.
There’s a sound like the back of a spoon striking a boiled egg. A muted shattering.
At the edge of my vision, Marsyas’s form blurs in motion and I can just make out a large divot in Ursula’s earthen shroud where her hands came to rest. More clear is the wrathful expression on Marsyas’s face.
She strides over to stand in front of me, lips locked in a perturbed line, brows drawn together, fury in her dark eyes as color rises in her cheeks beside flaring nostrils.
“Who has the ring, my dear?”
This is one thing I do know. And if Marsyas can actually read me like a book, it’s a dangerous truth for both Evander as the holder of the ring and Auden, who’s currently at his side, somewhere inside Hegemony Manor.
I draw in a thin breath and put every molecule of my being into a blankness to my eyes. To my mind.
The Blackgate matriarch watches me, darkening.
After what feels like an eternity, Marsyas runs a lazy hand across the rabbit’s foot relic at her wrist.
“You know what, Ruby? I don’t need you to tell me, I don’t need you to attempt a lie. All I need is to summon my unbreakable, unusual family . I don’t even need you for that.” Marsyas winks. “But I have more work to do before I’m ready to pick a fight.”
A fight. An inevitability and yet… I’m suddenly unmoored.
No, no, no.
The witches—the kids—left have lost so much, they shouldn’t have to fight anymore. Not with their magic, their words, their wills.
Marsyas retrieves something—a small drawstring bag with the same neat lettering I’ve seen three times before. My eyes water as I try to read the silver imprinted upon the side, but I know exactly what it is.
The final master relic.