Page 110 of The Lies We Conjure
“We don’t want an explanation for your lies,” Hex snaps. “You lied, your sister lied, and you’re fucking murderers. Part of some sort of Death Line initiation. Killing people for fun, making relics out of their bones? That sounds about right.”
This is it. I’ve made it to the last resort. I have everything to lose now and nothing to gain except the slimmest hope of survival. Wren’s words from our first night echo in my mind. No longer out of the question.
So we’ll just tell them.
I squeeze my eyes closed and shout the truth at the top of my lungs.
“Weareliars!”
As the echo dies to no response, my eyes flash open.
“Weare.That’s the truth.”
I’m pleading, all my panic and fear and shame flooding forth. I grasp for Auden’s attention and sympathy and find it blank in the shadow of Evander’s bulky frame. I sink to my knees before them. Draw in a deep breath. When I speak, my voice is a fraying rasp.
“We are liars.But we aren’t lying about what you think we’re lying about.”
The faces before me are closed off. Dead.
Hex scoffs first.
“Oh, give me a break.” Every inch of him is mean and uninterested in any word coming out of my mouth. “There is literally nothing you can say that I would believe with my parents under that shroud, dead of Death magic—”
“We’re not the Blackgate girls! We’re imposters!”
CHAPTER33
AUDEN
“What?” A gasp barely hisses out of my lips, entirely engulfed by Evander’s fierce,“Excuse me?”
The girl I’d known as Lavinia draws in a stiff breath, her whole body shivering on the inhale.
“I’m not Lavinia Blackgate, and she’s not Kaysa Blackgate.”
I stare as she begs us to understand, voice brimming with pleading, hope—and bald shame. There’s not a trace of that mildly British accent we’ve come to know—that I’ve come to very much like—the past two days.
“We’re not Blackgates at all. Not even witches.”
There’s a long beat of silence.
I hear her words, her new voice, but I’m searching her face for signs that it can’t be true. The dark hair, the dark eyes—fathomlessly deep and sparkling with tears. The delicate swoop of her nose, the pinking of her cheeks, and the swift way she initiates a smile. The dimple that appears like a shooting star. It’s all there.
I took the suggestion and saw exactly what I’d wanted the moment she arrived.
I never second-guessed. Not about this.
“Give me a break.” Winter skewers her with a certain expression of righteous disdain honed and perfected as tennis team captain, head prefect, Hegemony. Human beings want to be in her good graces—it’s a survival technique as much as it is the path of least resistance. Winter Hegemony is never someone you want to disappoint. “This isn’t a soap opera. You weren’t switched at birth.”
The girl who is not Lavinia presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. When they come away, her right one is smudged with the ashen proof of her lies.
“My name is Ruby—that’s why I failed the test just now. Every truth I told registered as a lie because I was addressed as Lavinia.”
Her tone is calm, direct, and shaking with fear. She gestures with a shaking, ash-stained hand at the girl encased in Ursula’s magic.
“This is Wren. We’re a pair of local sisters that Marsyas recruited to pretend to be her granddaughters for this party. She paid us—two thousand up front, and she promised another two thousand afterward—for what we thought was four hours of pretending to be Lavinia and Kaysa. It… obviously turned into more than that.”
Evander sighs heavily. We would have learned this yesterday if he’d used Kaysa’s name in his truth spell. Or if either girl had felt they could trust us enough to tell us.
