Page 120 of The Lies We Conjure
If I could physically gape, I would.
“Since the night my Marcos was murdered, I’ve searched for it. Two years ago, I located it. Last year, I short-circuited the security wards—the same ones that killed Ursula’s children—and gained control ofmymaster.”
A year. A whole year.
“The first Blackgate to hold it since Salem.” A smile streaks across Marsyas’s lips, fast and furious. Her dark eyes twinkle with mischievousness familiar from the day I met her but missing in every interaction since. “But not the only Blackgate to hold it.”
At first, I’m confused—she’s sent her granddaughters off, yet the relic is right here. But then Marsyas opens the bag, and to my shock, retrieves the contents with her bare hands.
Her small fist is closed as she withdraws it, rotating her balled fingers until they open and reveal the Death Line master in her palm.
No, not a relic—relics. A handful of bone shards, weak as white smoke and brittle.
They look like chalk gone damp and dried. Like nothing useful. Yet Marsyas marvels at the pieces as if they’re the keys to the universe itself.
“These are the Bones of Ribe, my dear Ruby,” Marsyas announces in a soft voice, gently prodding at a larger piece, turning it over before moving on to the next, inspecting them all. “They’re what’s left of witches burned at the stake for simply existing. For being too loud, too talented, too much. They are us and we are them, and they will be the end of the Four Lines.”
Her eyes flash up and they’re the sun, burning and bright and deadly to anyone brash enough to approach.
“Death magic already benefits from amplification by relics. A dead body is best, fresh death amplifies our abilities like solar power, but it’s quiteuncouthto leave a trail of corpses wherever we go. Not too good for our reputation, I’m afraid.” She waggles her silver eyebrows. “But even with a lifetime of knowing that relics are like a live wire to my power, I was still shocked at what my master allows me to do. Would you like to see?”
Marsyas holds a piece of bone up, pearlescent.
“I don’t know why I’m even asking—of course you do. Not that you could say no anyway, of course. A bug, stuck in amber, you are. I’ll have to fix that for you, but not yet.”
The last thing I want her to do is free me. That will make it all the easier for her to destroy me.
“This little bone shard has amplified my powers in ways I’m still learning a year later. Perhaps you wondered how I arrived here with my granddaughters? Did you guess through the relic? It was so kind of Luna to ensure our driver stayed without a shroud, and even better that the Hegemony brats happened to squirrel him away in a private, secluded location within the manor. The root cellar truly was a perfect place for my needs.”
She’d always planned to murder the driver.
Bile sloshes in my immobile gut.
“Yes, my dear. If you wondered why I killed him, though I had the keys, why I left him in such a state without even trying to cover up my tracks, well, the reasoning was threefold. First, he wouldn’t try to stop me when I left; second, it would squarely put the blame for Ursula’s death on my shoulders, which would be a problem, given my nonexistent state; and third, and this is the most important, he could let me in.”
Let her in? How? Magic, of course, but what? She used his spirit somehow? His body? Wait—I don’t want to know. All that matters is that she’s here and that is a huge problem.
Pleased with herself, she holds up the relic, absolutely beaming.
“If this one magical amplifier can allow me to do magic beyond my wildest dreams, it must truly be something what all four masters held as one can do.” Marsyas shakes her head. “Ursula, it turns out, was just the latest in a line of misers squatting on a treasure trove of power and never using it. I plan to use it.”
I try and fail to swallow away the fear balling in my throat at the determination in her words, her face, even the air around her, shimmering and shifting like it can no longer hold her on this plane. Instead of dissipating, the fear within balloons in my chest, my heart kicking up, my lungs smashed out of usefulness, as I watch Marsyas carefully return all but one thumb-sized piece to the little bag.
After cinching the others carefully away, Marsyas holds the shard of relic reverently in her palm, as if presenting it to the sky.
Then, with a flash of tea-stained teeth and a viper-quick grip, the old witch clasps the bone in one tight fist, and charges it in the air. That vibration of magic I swear I saw when she held the master shimmers out from her palm, magic itself so powerful it can be seen by the naked,normaleye. Black as a starless, fathomless night.
And it’s aimed at Wren.
Panic claws out of my body and into the morning, my voice shouting uselessly behind my shroud. I toss myself against my prison, trying to bust free, stop her, shout at her, do anything at all beyond standing here like a fucking statue as Marsyas aims the full weight of master-amplified Death magic at my little sister.
The obsidian mass arcs up, up, up, ready to rain down on Wren. To pour over her head like acid rain made of shimmering, shivering mountain air leaden with Death magic and spite.
I don’t know if Marsyas can break Ursula’s spell with that extra power—battering ram, ice pick, chemical reaction that dissolves the starlight and leaves Wren raw and vulnerable. I don’t—
The glittering spell drops like a lead balloon, smacking not into Wren, but the Cerises at her feet.
It explodes, and their shrouded bodies are instantly covered in a buffering, blurry haze.
