Page 134 of The Lies We Conjure
“I’m old but you don’t have to repeat yourself. My mind’s as sharp as a knife.”
Before the fall of the last word, Marsyas’s hand whips out and snatches the butter knife from Wren’s grasp.
“No!” I cry in the same moment Evander flings an arm out, an unseen shield shooting out to cover my sister’s shocked form.
But when the knife comes down, it isn’t aimed at Wren.
Or Evander.
Or anyone else in our group.
Marsyas aims the knife at herself.
With one violent slash, she drags the weak serrations of the blade across the width of her throat.
Despite the dull tool, the awkward angle, the slim opportunity, Marsyas hits her mark.
A wave of gasps, averted eyes, and pivoting bodies ripples through us as blood spurts from the wound in a jittering spray. Marsyas flops backward too fast, too heavy for Evander’s hold on her single arm. Hex lunges forward, blood streaking down his own makeshift shield as he casts it aside to latch onto her opposite side and get her into a more controlled fall to the terra-cotta.
When Marsyas is on the ground, her eyes are wide, dark, glassy. Unseeing. Her body shudders violently as Hex wrenches the knife from her grasp and sends it skidding away, under the table. Then, she goes still. Evander and Hex sit back on their heels. Hands drop away from shocked mouths.
In a blink it becomes clear that the time to save Marsyas from herself has passed.
In that quiet, there’s apop,like air releasing under pressure.
Then a lightning bolt of magic crackles in the air around us. I may not be able to see magic, not like the witches, but I can register the aftereffects.
The tiles beneath our feet reshape, reform, smooth and whole.
Verdant green zips through the garden grounds, from the topiary to the lawn, to the dead rose bushes and hedges lining the edges,each plant and blade and bloom acting as a brush, soaking up a fresh coat of paint.
There’s a groan and sigh as every crack and fissure in the foundation, floors, and walls of Hegemony Manor seal and smooth.
A rustle as two waiters stir from their quarantined sleep; the murmur of a man pulling himself up from behind the bar beside the tearoom entrance.
The creak and sweep of the gates of Hegemony Manor yawn open.
Ursula’s final tasks, her last spell, fulfilled.
The murderer has been punished. All the relics collected.
Wren backs up and slots in beside me, her hand slipping into mine. I squeeze my own sister’s pinky as a new stillness settles over us like a blanket. Just one moment of calm. There is no assembled army of Death witches outside, waiting to pounce.
There’s nothing but the spell lifting. Totally. Fully. Comple—we’re going to make it out.
But not before the magic has its way with Marsyas Blackgate.
Like Ursula, she ages rapidly, her corpse shriveling as the years pile on. She didn’t enchant herself to look as young as Ursula, but still, the effect is stunning. Like watching a caterpillar emerge as a butterfly at warp speed.
Then, when the last of her true age is etched into mottled skin, Marsyas’s soul’s truth shimmers into place.
It’s the same ghostly brilliance of Ursula’s, the same dour expression on the smoky bust of Marsyas’s face despite the perennial upturn to the corners of her mouth that made it always look like she was smiling even when at her most furious.
I’ve witnessed this before, yet I still fear some sort of magical trick, some sort of illusion made to appear like the soul’s truth to deceive us into a momentary lapse of complacency.
But when it speaks in that wry, raspy voice, I know Marsyas Blackgate is truly dead.
“I, Marsyas Lavinia Blackgate, matriarch of the Death Line,commit that this is my soul’s truth, bare for any and all living creatures to witness.”
