Page 98 of The Lies We Conjure
Recognition cracks across Winter’s face like a jag of lightning splitting a tree. We’d all heard it then, when receiving our keys. The same succinct discussion of our loyalties.
Evander—loyal to the Hegemony name.
Winter—loyal to the Hegemony family.
Me—loyal to who the Hegemonys are.
“My loyalty wasn’t a good quality in this instance, she said, because the Four Lines expected my faithfulness to be to them, not only to my line.” Evander sucks in a steadying breath. “It was her concern that as a candidate, this quality could, under the right conditions, create a myopia within me that may invite a similar reign to Napoleon Cerise.”
A flat buzzing blooms in my ears. Static. Confusion.
“Wait,” Winter calls out, blanched. “Ursula suggested you would want toendthe other lines?”
Evander shakes his head. “No, she just said that being a High Sorcerer with choices for an heir, she was being judicious. And given the three of us, Auden and his loyalty to the Hegemony position within the Four Lines made him the best candidate.”
My lungs expand, but the air doesn’t seem to reach my brain. “What did you tell her to change her mind?”
Evander swallows. Resets.
“I told her that if she didn’t make me her oathed heir, I would tell everyone that she executed Marcos Blackgate to cover up what really happened to our parents. Hex was telling the truth. That entire generation was working together to retrieve the master relics and release the lines.”
I exhale, stilted. “How do you know this rumor is true?”
For a quiet beat, Evander examines his hands, folded tightly atop the marble. Then, he raises his gaze to mine.
“I watched my father die.”
A sob rips out of Winter a moment before her hands fly to her mouth. The Blackgates are smooshed together, nearly clinging to each other in surprise. In my periphery, Infinity silently backs into the nearest wall.
“You what?” I choke.
Evander’s whole face is so red it’s nearly purple. “I saw them finalize their plan the night before. They were going to retrieve the relics at once and disband them from the High Sorcerer’s ring. It was a coordinated act of rebellion—one they miscalculated. Instead of successfully untethering the lines from the master relics and Ursula and all the baggage that comes with this whole unusual, unbreakable family, they died.”
Tears prick in Evander’s green eyes. Still, he lowers his shoulders and plows on with the unbelievable.
“I told Ursula that I saw my father die. Watched the security wards explode around him, burn his flesh.” His hands are shaking now, twined together and trembling. “That I had eavesdropped on their meetings. That I knew it was being led by my father and aunt and uncle, not the other heirs. They were part of it, they had all agreed, but our parents, her children, were doing the dirty work because they thought that was the best thing to do to make things better for all of us going forward. They didn’t believe someone should hold so much power. And they suffered for it.”
Evander pivots to the Blackgate girls, shrinking in on themselves like dying irises. “I think Ursula knew it; I think she knew exactly what happened but she couldn’t let that stand. And she had to punish someone, to avenge their death, to maintain her iron fist, to send a message to the generation of heirs who coordinated this.”
“And Hector Cerise handed her Marcos Blackgate on a platter…” I finish, quietly.
Evander nods, and my own thought, our own Hegemony edict, echoes in my brain.
All rumors are assumed to be lies until proven true.
“Hector knew if he put forward another name, Ursula would run with it,” Evander says, still nodding, as if it’ll make the words land hard enough that we won’t question them. “And she did.”
Winter swipes at the tears that have spilled, fury pinching her features as burnished patches, raw and wet, pebble atop her cheekbones. “Instead of interrogating herself about why an entiregeneration of heirs would want to dismantle the lines, she shut them up by killing a man before his daughters’ eyes—that’s what you’re saying?”
Evander draws in a shaky breath but rather than saying more, he simply nods.
Winter’s shoulders quake as she scrambles to wrap herself in a hug, and falls heavily against her seatback, the whole chair shuddering and tipping for a precarious moment.
“Why is this worth protecting?Why?Why are we protecting it?” Her voice breaks and her arms fly out, air quotes wrapped around the next words along with her rage. “Thisunusual, unbreakable familyis nothing but an excuse. To chain human beings to a tradition that would rather kill its own than see it questioned.”
Winter’s looking at me, the one who is loyal to who we are. To the Four Lines. And I don’t have a single thing to say. My heart feels hollow as I process what she’s arguing, the fury, the truth.
Ursula used her power and position to kill a man who’d watched his friends die. A man who’d had a role identical to his friends who weren’t accused. All of them grieving, one of them made scapegoat. All to keep the Four Lines going in the face of the fact that an entire generation gambled and lost trying to rip ourunusual, unbreakablefamily apart.
