Page 11 of The Black Key

Once to see it as it is. Twice to see it in your mind. Thrice to bend it to your will.

Unlike with my hair, this Augury is agony. I scream and clap my hands over my eyes. They boil in their sockets, burning like little balls of fire. Just when I don’t think I can bear it any longer, the pain stops. I stay hunched over for a moment, breathing heavily.

When I open my eyes, a stranger stares back at me in the mirror. A blond-haired, green-eyed stranger with my nose and chin. I quickly use the second Augury, Shape, to adjust the lines of my face. It hurts almost as much as my eyes, but at the end, my chin is a bit rounder, my forehead higher, my nose a little larger.

“Violet, are you—” Raven stops short in the doorway, gaping at me. “What did you do?”

“I’m going to the Jewel,” I say, walking past her and back downstairs to where Lucien is probably still losing it on the arcana.

Olive shrieks as I enter the living room. Indi drops the plate she’s drying. Sienna gapes. Sil looks shocked for a split second, but then I see the faintest hint of pride in her eyes.

“I told him,” she says, over Lucien’s voice, which is still coming through the arcana. “You’re too damned stubborn.”

“What’s happening?” he demands. “Why did she scream? Sil, answer me!”

“I’m going to the Jewel, Lucien,” I say. “I’ll get myself to the Duchess’s palace. I’ll watch over my sister until the Auction.”

Lucien starts laughing. In fact, he laughs for so long that Sil and I exchange a worried glance. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But this is too much, even for you. How long do you expect to stay free once the Duchess discovers you in her own palace? How do you plan to protect your sister when you are a captive yourself? Or maybe the Duchess will simply kill you for fun, now that she no longer requires your body to produce a child.”

“Lucien,” Sil says, clasping her hands together and resting her chin on them, “in any other circumstance I’d agree with you but . . . I don’t think there’s any way the Duchess will recognize her.”

“And why is that?”

“Because she looks freakishly like a different person.”

I didn’t realize Sienna had come in from the kitchen. She reaches out and gently takes a lock of my hair. “Color and Shape?” she asks me. I nod. “Did it hurt?”

I grimace.

Sienna grins. “Ash is going to flip his—”

“What do you mean, like a different person?” Lucien interrupts.

“I used the Auguries,” I say. “On myself.” Tears spring to my eyes and they sizzle with residual heat from the Augury. “Please, Lucien,” I say. “Help me. Help me help my sister.”

I remember my Reckoning Day, the last time I saw my family as a whole. How angry Hazel was with me, how she thought I’d forgotten her. She didn’t understand that I wasn’t allowed to write to her, that Southgate had rules.

I understand the rules of the Jewel. And I won’t let my sister think she’s been forgotten again.

Five

THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWS IS BROKEN ONLY BY THE loud thumping of my heart.

“Let me talk to Garnet about this,” Lucien says in a clipped tone. “Wait and don’t do anything rash.”

The arcana falls silent onto the floor. I pick it up and hold it with trembling fingers. “I can’t leave her there,” I say, sinking onto the couch. Raven sits beside me. “She’s all alone. I can’t . . .”

“I know,” Sil says, a softness in her voice.

We sit there for what feels like hours. The arcana never buzzes. Finally, I rouse myself.

“I’d better go see Ash,” I say. “He must be wondering where I am.”

I don’t think he’s going to take the news particularly well. Just as I stand, the arcana rises in the air.

“So,” Garnet says. “I hear you’re planning a covert operation.”

“Hazel’s in danger,” I say. “I have to be there. I have to do what I can.”