Page 36 of The Lies We Conjure
Wren smirks. “Was that supposed to be Auden?”
“You know it was. You just didn’t get the line right when you did your impression five minutes ago.” She’s annoyed but doesn’t argue.“The point is the Blackgates are witches. If they’re witches,we’re witches. The kind who do eyeball-sucking, murdering magic—with these things. Relics, not master relics, just regular ones.” The foot swings in exclamation, a little furry pendulum. “The more we know about what they can do and how they use them, the better we can protect ourselves with their reputation, even if we can’t actually do a single thing.”
Wren flicks her bracelet. “It would be cool if it weren’t so utterly disgusting. Doing magicthroughdead things? I mean—ew.”
“It’s just an educated guess. One we need to confirm,” I say, though the skunk story and the wayeveryoneglanced at us before Ursula’s body was covered are pretty good hints along with the “Death Line” moniker attached to the Blackgate name. “We need to know as much by morning as possible.”
“Morning, when somebody might notice the magical Band-Aid covering the dead driver?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Okay.” Wren slips off the counter to the tile, stomps into her heels, and looks to me for direction, repeating her earlier question. “Where do we start?”
Ursula’s office would be ideal—she probably had the most top-secret information close at hand—but it’s also probably still full of Hegemonys. Judging by the way things went tonight, they hadlotsto discuss.
I raise a brow. “You think this place has a library?”
“Oh, I’m betting it has at least three.” Wren straightens the waist of her dress, which has meandered. “Probably all haunted.”
“As long as the ghosts don’t report back to the witches what we’re actually looking up, it’ll appear we’re doing our research for the master relic scavenger hunt.”
I turn off all the faucets in succession. Without the rush of water, the silence is suddenly deafening.
I grab my sister’s hand. “Let’s go figure out what we’re dealing with.”
PART TWOTHEMAGIC
CHAPTER13
AUDEN
Ursula told me my role at the year’s turn. The day before I was to return to school after the winter holiday. More than six months ago now.
I’d come into Ursula’s study and shut the door as requested. She was speaking before I’d even completed my approach across the stately room.
“My boy,” she said from behind her grand desk, and I knew then that this was a serious matter because private affection was involved. The silt-gray light of a cloudy morning streaming in the diamond-paned windows only put a point on it. It was as if she’d summoned the dreariness herself. And maybe she had.
Ursula gestured to the set of guest chairs before her. I always sat in the one to the right. That day wasn’t one for trying something new. I lowered myself to the bespoke brocade cushion and the moment I was still again, Ursula began, nearly impatient.
“I will be dead and gone sooner than I would like.”
My gut twisting, I nodded. There was no sense in contradicting her with platitudes and overconfident reassurance. Both were lies. My grandmother was a powerful woman closer to a hundred than most humans would ever see. Her husband had been dead as long as I’d been alive. Her children nearly ten of my seventeen years. She’d lived with death my whole life, a constant companion. One we couldn’t ignore. One that wouldn’t be ignored.
Ursula leaned forward, her eyes as bright as lit matches at midnight. The blaze in the hearth achieved exactly nothing except providing warmth and a low current of power to the High Sorcerer. Every room in Hegemony Manor had a flue for just that reason. Fire was a powerful and pervasive element.
“Auden, when I am gone, you will be the executor to my last will and testament.”
This was where someone else would demur and plea, “Ursula, are you sure?”
I didn’t. Still, she explained, as if I’d asked.
“Evander is the one most loyal to the Hegemony name. Winter is the one most loyal to the Hegemony family.”
This was true. Evander would tattoo the name across his face if Ursula wouldn’t behead him for being so embarrassingly brash. And Winter would do anything for her family, including ditching every responsibility we had to anyone beyond our blood.
“You, however, are loyal to who the Hegemonysare. That is an important distinction.”
It was.
