Page 71 of The Lies We Conjure
“Fine. Yes. I was looking for that too. Happy? I don’t see why you have to be so smug about me trying to do something to help all of us get out of here and keep our family’s legacy intact.”
The undertone is unmistakable. Considering my error with the Blackgates, I have no leg on which to stand to criticize him.
I smile in the face of his stony admission. “And I don’t see why you felt the need to keep that to yourself. You could’ve told us this morning; you could’ve told us when Winter asked you directly if you had a secret. You had the past hour to tell me of your search, and, I’m assuming, failure, because you’re not lording your discovery over the rest of us in a bid to prove your worthiness.”
Evander looks like he wants to run through a brick wall. Instead, he has me to go through.
“I didn’t find anything, so it wasn’t worth sharing.”
He pointedly shoves around me, up the stair-step rock.
“I think that’s worth sharing in and of itself. What if someone took whatever High Sorcerer’s manual she had prepared for you?” His pace speeds up. I speed up with him. “That seems pretty noteworthy to me.”
“It is, but it didn’t happen.”
“How—”
Now he’s the one who stops, whirling on me and blocking the rest of the trail, pines leaning close on both sides. Evander’s voice pitches low, and he taps the collar of his jersey, the chain below. “Auden, it’s in the ring.”
I gape at him.
“The knowledge?”
“Yes. I’m sure of it. I… I don’t know what I was thinking—it was probably exhaustion or shock, or all of it. But I realized after we found the first one this morning that it wouldn’t be safe to write down instructions to the next High Sorcerer. And there’s one thing that ties every High Sorcerer together, whether they’ve been properly trained or whether they were called upon late, a younger heir—”
“Like Ursula.”
He nods. “Like Ursula. She wasn’t the oathed heir. Her brother was. Matthias went through the training, took the ring from their mother when her time as High Sorcerer was done. He didn’t yet havechildren of his own and died two years into service. Her mother was dead by then, her brother was dead, the only way to pass along knowledge was through written correspondence—which we didn’t find; which I didn’t find—or the one thing they have in common.”
He pats his chest again. The tangle of ring and key bump out from the sweat-wicking material.
“Okay, that’s a fair assumption.” I draw a deep breath—pine and sunshine and rustling mountain air filling my senses as well as my lungs. “Are you thinking that whoever cleared out Ursula’s office—and perhaps her suite—didn’t know that?”
“Either they think there’s something in her paperwork that’s useful, or they assumed—correctly—that we would also search the office, and then freak out when we didn’t find anything.”
“Also correct,” I agree, my frustration lifting now that we’re getting somewhere. I’m still pissed I had to drag it out of him, but perhaps he’ll see enough value in talking it through to not avoid doing so next time. “And if they were trying to get a rise out of us, perhaps they assumed you didn’t know about any magic within the ring to relay information.” Wait. “Didn’t Hector suggest Luna should hold the ring rather than you?”
“He sure did.” Evander’s hand drops from his chest. “It was Mercy Hegemony who first bound the masters to the ring, but that doesn’t mean the other High Families don’t know its secrets beyond being tethered to—”
The snap of a twig shuts his mouth.
Magic sparks in my fingertips, a shield spell gathering there, at the ready. I have no doubt Evander has done the same. We can’t use magic against each other, but we can use it to defend ourselves. We turn.
And there, twenty feet away, are Lavinia and Kaysa Blackgate.
“Um, sorry to interrupt,” Lavinia says, an apologetic grimace softening. She’s got a firm grip on her sister’s wrist, her body planted between Kaysa and the pair of us, awkward and leaning, a hurried posture she’s trying to make look natural. The Death magic relics at her wrists sway, a marker of the sudden movement we didn’t see.
Kaysa shoots us a more convincing grin. “We weren’t eavesdropping, I swear.”
Lavinia shuts her eyes with a sigh. If she weren’t holding so tightly to her sister, I’m fairly certain she’d pinch the bridge of her nose. Instead, she says, “We finished searching Horace’s Last Stand, and thought we’d search the Pool. But it looks as if you might have already done so?”
“We did, and found nothing,” I confirm.
“Are you sure you searched Horace’s Last Stand thoroughly?” Evander asks.
Now I’m the one who wants to pinch the bridge of my nose.
Fantastic opening gambit to starting a much-needed conversation with them.
