Page 108 of The Lies We Conjure
“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.
