Page 55 of The Lies We Conjure
“Oh right.”
As Wren gives up on the desk, I turn back to the strange border between what appears to be bare paper and the pearlescent sheen—it’s like where a frozen puddle meets its melty edges, the line of delineation a haze. Before thinking twice, I rub my thumb across it.
“… and knew Callum was gone…”
I yelp and drop the book.
“Was that…?” Wren gasps.
“Ursula’s voice?” I confirm. She’d said those words. “Yeah.”
Fingers shaking a little, I kneel to retrieve the slim ledger. I’d dropped it face down, and when I pick it up and turn it back over, two gleaming pages stare back. Bracing myself a little, I tap my forefinger on the shiny part.
Again, Ursula’s voice blares up from the page.
“… the wards were intact, something that Ulysses would’ve known.”
Wren is kneeling now too, lower lip snagged between her teeth as her hazel eyes flare wide. “It’s almost like she did a magical voice memo or something. Maybe go to the beginning?”
“Good idea.”
I place the book on the thick rug between us, and thumb back carefully until I find the first page on which the strange gleam appears. On the page next to it, Ursula’s entry celebrates the spring equinox.
The next date, March 21, is scribbled at the top. Below it, words are scratched out with thick, deep scratches of quill. Then the gleam begins.
Starting at the left-most edge, I touch my index finger to the shimmering page and drag it across like a new reader following sentence after sentence across a chapter book page. There’s a delay, some muffled noise and settling for a second or two at the beginning, then yet again the words of High Sorcerer Ursula Hegemony rise into the room.
“… This is the voice of Ursula Elvire Muscatel Hegemony, High Sorcerer of the Four Lines. There has been an accident. No—no, an attack.”
There’s a pause and Wren and I exchange a glance—though Ursula’s voice is now familiar to both of us, what’s not is the tone. Rather than the gravitas and confidence we’d heard in life and after her death, here she sounds exhausted. Shaken. Like she’s been crying.
“I have opted to record my voice because… honestly, my fingers are not working properly at the moment.” There’s a deep swallow, a long exhalation of trembling breath. “I must regret to enter into the Four Lines records that my children, the oathed heir Ulysses, Lana, and Callum, are gone.”
Gooseflesh prickles my arms.
My finger skips to the next page and Ursula’s voice picks up again.
“The following is a timeline I have put together from the evidence and circumstances around the discovery of their bodies in various locations upon the grounds of the Hegemony Estate. For reasons that will become apparent, I will not go into detail about the location of where each of my children was found. I will state for the record that Ulysses, the oathed heir, was found first, followed by Callum, then Lana, and that the evidence suggests they all died in the same manner.”
Ursula’s voice is clipped and professional, even as it seems worn to nearly nothing. Her sense of duty hangs in the air like humidity at the beach.
“It appears,” she continues, “that on the morning of March twenty-first, the three of them were…coercedinto attempting to find and destroy the master relics hidden upon the grounds of the Hegemony estate. As directed by Four Lines decree, the locationsof the master relics are known only to me, the High Sorcerer, and each one is guarded by lethal security wards in addition to the secrecy surrounding their locations.”
Ursula had mentioned the disabling of the security wards in her last will and testament. I’d figured they just deterred theft or detection… not that they werelethal.
I truly shouldn’t be surprised.
“The security wards were intact, something that Ulysses would’ve known as oathed heir from his years of training under my aegis. Per accordance with custom, he did not know the location of the master relics, nor their composition. However, it appears that with outside influence, Ulysses, Lana, and Callum were able to locate three of the four master relics, and performed a coordinated spell in an attempt to bypass the wards and retrieve the master relics. The spell did not work, and the security wards activated.” There’s a deep, tremulous inhale. “The security wards for all four master relics detonated, killing my three children instantly.”
Oh. God.
My heart plummets, nausea churning in choppy waves against my sternum. Wren’s chin bobs as she wipes a hand across her face, catching a fat tear before it dribbles down her cheek.
“At exactly tenA.M.this morning, the High Sorcerer’s ring alerted me to a trip in the wards. First, I summoned the nanny on staff to escort my grandchildren to a predetermined safe space within the manor. Next, I summoned my children to search the grounds for intruders while I, alone, inspected the security of each master relic. My children did not answer.”
Ursula’s voice breaks, and now there’s something hot and hard in my throat.
“I learned very quickly why they had not responded. Ulysses was nearest, found seven minutes after the trip in the wards.At first, I believed he had perhaps come across the would-be thief and was injured in a fight. But when I tried life-saving measures, I realized what had occurred. My eldest son was dead by the wards meant to keep his inheritance safe.”
