Page 90 of The Lies We Conjure
“Because that’s like giving in to terrorists,” Lavinia bites out, joining my fight.
Winter doubles down. “If we give in, we’re alive.”
“And he’s in control of our magic,” I point out. “To control the lines is to control all of us.”
“So? Why is that so bad?” Winter practically shouts, gaining steam as the rest of us go still. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, my cousin actually arguing for surrender. “He’s trying to avenge a perceived wrong. Why on earth would he accept that power and then try to be anything but a good leader? He’s trying to undo the damage Napoleon did. The way he’s going about it is wrong but maybe the end result is both inevitable and not that bad.”
“Win, did you not hear anything I’ve said?” Hex scoffs and blinks at all of us with incredulous eyes. “I’m the fucking heir to the Cerise name, I wouldn’t be sitting here if I wasn’t scared shitless for whathewill do—in the context of the game, in the context of power. This is the man who turned in Marcos Blackgate,” Hex reiterates with a grand sweeping gesture in the direction of the man’sdaughters. “He will say and do anything, no matter what happens to anyone else involved. Family or not. Friend or not. Everyone is disposable to Hector Cerise.”
Lavinia gasps and her voice is so raw her accent flattens into nothing at all. “He… Hector turned in…”
She doesn’t finish but she doesn’t have to. The horror of it all crawls across her face, perhaps a memory locked tightly away washing forward in a tide of blood. Ursula did the deed, but Hector pulled the trigger.
“Ursula wanted someone to punish,” Ada confirms before drawing the final dagger and stabbing the Blackgates in the heart, “Papa made it happen.”
Kaysa shoots to her feet, stop-sign hand in the air. “Hold up. Wait. You’re saying that your dad is the reason our dad was…”
“Convicted of magically influencing the Hegemony scions and compelling them to attempt to bypass master relic security only to blow themselves up in the process?” Hex asks, steadying himself against the sideboard,anotherpour of scotch in one hand as he finger-guns her with the other. “Yeeeeep.”
“But… how… why?”
Hex’s cheeks immediately darken.
“They all knew about it. Everyone of that generation was in on it. Our parents, Erasmus and Sorcha, Marcos and Athena. Every last one of them. They wanted to bust up the lines and decentralize control of the masters. They thought no person should have so much power. But rather than overthrow Ursula, they tried to go around her. Ran into the security curses put upon the masters and blew themselves sky high.BOOM.”
Evander plunks his glass too hard on the sideboard. “Everyone was in on it? That’s just a rumor.”
Hex’s grin gets sadder and meaner with each new variation.
“Nah, it’s the truth. Ursula was mad enough to take out the rest of that generation and she would’ve done it too if Papa hadn’t served up Marcos on a platter. Death magic was always the black sheep. And it was better him than anyone else.”
“His daughters disagree with you,” Kaysa says, coldly.
“I know.” Hex shrugs. “Blood on our hands, even if it’s not as visible as the blood on Ursula’s. Can’t blame her for wanting closure after losing her kids like that.”
Next to me, Lavinia is trembling. She’s trying to hide it, hands jammed into a double grip of the marble table edge, but both arms are shivering up to her shoulders.
I swallow thickly. “We don’t need to talk about this anymore.”
“Why not?”
Hex takes a step and wobbles like he’s got a low-grade concussion. He thinks better of it and thunks back against the sideboard, sending Evander’s chip bag slumping into the baubles and glasses. He ignores it. “Look, everything changed that night. Everything. Not when your parents died. No, when punishment was doled out. Everything changed.”
“You girls left.” Hex tosses a hand at the trembling Blackgates beside me. “Our parents and Infinity’s parents walked away scot-free. But it just as easily could’ve been us. You don’t think Luna didn’t think that? That it could’ve been Erasmus instead? And Marsyas—she kept showing up with a fucking smile on her face to make small talk with the woman who killed her son because if she didn’t, it wouldn’t just be the end of her but the end of her family.” He waves at the Blackgate girls like they’ve boarded a train and are leaving the station. “This was ten years coming. And if Ursula didn’t see the signs, she was blind as a bat.”
Winter has had enough. Arms crossed and palms wrapped round her elbows, she approaches him.
“Hex, I think you need to go back to your room.”
“When we’re just clearing the air? That’s unfair, Win.”
He pushes off the sideboard again, body too loose, steps a slide. She catches him under the arms and sweeps him into her vacated chair at the table. Hex blinks at the table as Winter hands him her fork.
“You just shotgunned a couple of ounces of straight liquor and clearly haven’t eaten anything.” She points at her own barely touched plate of wagyu. “Finish this for me. Now.”
Slowly, he nods, and obediently takes a bite, swallows, and says, “I love you.”
“That’s your problem,” she barks back. “Eat.”
