Chapter 27

27

EVANGELINE

L ater that night, we were all gathered in the least formal of Gabriel's multiple living rooms. Marcus had showed up with a large bag of takeout from the place below my apartment, and Isabella had arrived a few minutes later, her hands tucked into the pockets of her bulky leather jacket. Although I had been desperately grateful to see my friends, introductions had been a little awkward—Marcus tended to be off-putting around new people.

Luckily, Lissa had stepped in and smoothed things over, greeting Isabella like she was an old friend and doing her best to put everyone at ease. Weirdly, Theo also stepped up, offering to take Isabella's jacket, muttering quiet compliments about her taste in patches and pins. Gwendoline had watched from where she lounged on one of the sofas, not bothering to hide the fact that she was eyeing up the newcomers.

I still wasn't able to shake the sour feeling that rose up in the back of my throat every time I thought about just how different Gwendoline and I were. Hell. I'd even considered getting changed, trying to make myself look more put-together, but I had decided against it. The thought of her knowing she'd gotten to me that much was enough of a deterrent, but there was also the stinging worry that even if I tried to tidy myself up, I'd fail and somehow wind up more potion-spattered than before.

Luckily, I'd managed to get nearly a full hour to myself before the others arrived. I wasn't relaxed, exactly, but I wasn't wound tightly enough to snap any more. Now, we were settled in with cooling bowls of half-eaten noodles for the witches and mugs of synth-blood for the vampires. Gabriel was the only one standing, looking especially lean and grim as the light of the small fire burning merrily in the grate danced over him.

"We located the third piece last night," Gabriel was saying. "It was in my father's possession. We have to assume that we can't trust anyone who's working with him. Some of his servants may still be willing to slip me information, but every bit of that will need to be taken with a grain of salt. In terms of courtly gossip, Gwendoline, that's where you come in. If you hear about anything suspicious, any power struggles that might put my father off balance, anything more damning than someone wearing an unflattering outfit to a minor gala, I want you to notify us immediately."

"Would your mother be able to give us information about what Roland's up to?" Lissa asked.

"No," Gabriel said shortly. "My mother is no longer a member of that household."

Most of the other vampires looked worried but not all that surprised. I glanced at Gwendoline, who was watching Gabriel with an unreadable expression. Gabriel didn't make eye contact with any of them and stared into the fire instead.

"Iskra has been playing this game longer than any of us have been alive," Gwendoline said. She spoke with the sort of calm certainty that made you expect the world to bend back on itself to make whatever she said come true. "She's sharp, ruthless, and extremely capable. Your father doesn't have a chance of finding her. Especially," she added, checking her nails in the firelight, "if a series of conflicting rumors were to start circulating throughout his circles as to where she might be hiding."

"You'd do that?" Gabriel asked softly.

Gwendoline gave him a sharp, beautiful smile over the top of her glass. "It's been ages since I got to organize a proper whisper campaign. It'll be fun."

I sort of wished I hadn't gotten so fluent in reading Gabriel's facial expressions. The sheer gratitude on his face was hard to watch.

"We already have a lead on the fourth piece of the array," I blurted out. Every pair of eyes in the room swiveled to me. Every pair, that is, except Gabriel's. "With every piece of the ascendancy array we've found, I've gotten more and more powerful," I said. "And I've gotten a stronger connection to the other pieces. With the first piece, I had to be pretty much right on top of it, and, well, I can already feel the final piece out there somewhere. It's kind of, like… somewhere over that way." I gestured vaguely in the direction where I could feel the faint pull of the artifact coming from.

"Have you connected any of the fragments?" Marcus asked. He had his vape in his hand, but he hadn't turned it on, just raised it to his lips occasionally to worry it with his teeth. He wasn't usually a nervous fidgeter. If he'd been a suspect I was trying to get intel out of, I would've taken that as a sign that he was about to crack and give me what I was looking for.

I shook my head. "While the ascendancy array is still in pieces, it's more of a known entity. I don't know what'll happen when they're put together, and I figured it made the most sense to put the whole thing together at once. Plus, we know we're not the only ones after this thing, and I get the feeling that combining the pieces is going to be pretty hard to ignore for anyone who can feel magic nearby. I don't want to send off a flare saying, ‘Hey, we're right here. Please come rob us.'"

Marcus nodded thoughtfully. The firelight reflected off the lenses of his glasses, hiding his eyes.

"Touching it is…" I trailed off, shaking my head. "It's like nothing I've ever felt. It feels like I'm sticking my hands directly into a massive well of energy, and all that magic is flowing through me. It's amazing, but honestly, it's also scary as hell. It's completely overwhelming, I've barely been able to channel it. If someone else got their hands on that…"

"Evangeline, I think perhaps we should take a moment to talk in private," Marcus said. His whole quirky uncle routine had fallen away completely, leaving him sounding serious and impossibly old. Instead of the man who cracked silly jokes and pretended he didn't understand how technology worked, I was suddenly faced with a man who had lost countless loved ones, and seen empires rise and fall over the course of his life.

"In private? Why?" I asked. Anxiety spiked in the pit of my stomach. I couldn't remember the last time Marcus looked so serious.

He shifted uneasily in his chair. "I have information that's relevant, but it's of a… somewhat personal nature," he told me. "I think you may want to process it without any additional eyes on you."

"Is it something I'm going to have to tell these guys?" I asked, waving a hand at the people around us. Marcus shrugged. Isabella and the vampires watched, their attempts at pretending not to pay attention ranging from Oscar-worthy—Vic—to nonexistent—Gwendoline.

"That is entirely up to you," he said.

"Real helpful," I muttered.

I weighed my options. If it was bad enough to make Marcus serious, then it must have been a big deal. If we talked about it in private, but it was important to the work we were doing, and I had to listen to him tell the others… At least if I had them in the room when he told me, I would be able to turn to them for support. "Look, just tell me, okay? If we're keeping everyone on the same page, we might as well do it properly."

Marcus looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. "As you wish." He heaved a sigh and rubbed at his temple, then began. "Some time ago, I knew a very powerful pair of witches. They found out they were being hunted." He spoke quietly but intensely, his eyes firmly on mine. I leaned forward in my seat. "Another witch, desperate for power, intended to take theirs from them and kill them both, along with their young child.

"They knew that they had too much to lose to go on the attack, and so they threw everything they could into their defenses. They prepared to face the dark witch, but knew that if they lost, the consequences would be disastrous. Not just for them, but for all of us. In an effort to protect the magical world, they began to work on making their own version of an ancient artifact that would allow them to store their magic, keeping it locked away until it could be accessed by the right person. The two of them were not only powerful but immensely skilled and dedicated. It took them some time, but they managed to create an ascendancy array—something that hadn't been accomplished for hundreds of years."

I couldn't look away from Marcus. We might as well have been the only two people in the world. He couldn't possibly be saying what I thought he was saying, right?

Marcus removed his glasses. Without them, his eyes looked smaller, sadder. There were two little pink marks on his nose from the pads of his glasses, the sort of tiny detail that my mind always latched onto when I was on the brink of free-fall.

"Their names were Miranda and Ewan Argent. They were incredible," he told me softly. "They built up wards and safeguards for their daughter, so that if anything happened to them, she would be sent away somewhere safe. She was only a toddler at the time, and they knew she would adapt to her new life. Every other drop of magic they had, they put into the array. It was still a risk, of course. If the pieces of the artifact fell into the wrong hands, they could be used as a weapon, but it was still the safest route. The ascendancy array's true power would be locked away, inaccessible until it was found by the only person who could use it.

"Miranda was an exceptional inventor, and Ewan understood magical theory unlike anyone I've ever met. Their greatest innovation with their version of the ascendancy array was figuring out how to seal the true potential of the device so that only their heir could truly channel their power. They made sure that their magic would be kept safe until their daughter was ready to claim it."

I was leaning forward in my chair, elbows on my knees, and hands clenched together into a white-knuckled tangle.

"They were my parents," I said hollowly. "You knew they were my parents this whole time?"

"We're going to give you two the room," Gabriel said, stepping forward and brushing a hand against my shoulder.

"But—" Lissa began with a petulant tone, and Gabriel cut her off.

"Now," he said with steel in his voice.

Isabella and the vampires filed out quickly. Gabriel went last, and I heard him hesitating at the door, but I couldn't bring myself to look away from Marcus.

"I wasn't sure," Marcus said. "Miranda and Ewan were very dear to me, but with lifespans like ours, friendships are different. I had been in Europe for fifty or so years when I got word of what had happened. I never got the chance to meet you when you were a baby. I sometimes think that if I had been there, if they had been able to get in touch with me…" He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "As soon as I got word of what they were facing, I returned, but I was too late. They were gone. So were you."

"You were trying to find me," I said. My voice sounded distant and flat. "That was why you were traveling around? My apprenticeship was never about me, it was about my parents."

"No," Marcus said. "Well, yes. Just… I looked for you, of course I did, but your parents were too smart to leave any hint as to where they had sent you. I searched for years, and as much as it pains me to admit it, eventually I gave up. I had always been somewhat nomadic, but I felt particularly untethered. I wandered from place to place, intending to avoid attachment."

He sighed and rubbed his face. "I had failed two of my dearest friends in a way that could have led to the end of magic as we know it. I had failed their child. I felt… poisonous. Like I had outlived my usefulness."

"Then, why the fuck did you decide to teach me?" I asked.

Marcus smiled ruefully. "I had heard about a rather excellent hotpot place in your town," he explained. "I wanted to try it out—you know how partial I am to a good dramatic dining experience. As soon as I drove into town, I could feel your magic. Wild, untrained. Confused. Lost."

I winced, thinking back to the first moments where my magic had manifested. During my first ever experience with PMS, I'd accidentally destroyed half of my science classroom, and had done something to the neighbor's hedges that made them start eating small birds.

"I had been…" Marcus huffed out a laugh as he put his glasses back on. "I had been moping. For an entire decade, I'd been punishing myself instead of trying to do better. I didn't train you because of who your parents were, Evangeline. I trained you because I didn't want you to feel as lost as I did. And, selfishly, it felt like a second chance—an opportunity to make up for my past failings by being there for a young magic user who needed help."

"When did you figure it out?" I asked. "When did you realize who I was?"

"I suspected it when you began looking for the array," Marcus told me. "There was other things I could explain away—you have some resemblance to them, of course, but back when we knew each other, glamours were all the rage, and they changed their physical appearances regularly. I didn't know which traits were their real ones. But… the look in your eye when you got the case… it reminded me so much of your mother, and then…" He shook his head. "There were only so many things that I could brush off as coincidences."

"You should have told me," I said. It should have come out angrier, but I was just so goddamn tired. Too much was hitting me in quick succession, and I was just completely overwhelmed, trying to doggy paddle to dry land as wave after wave of bullshit crashed over me.

"I should have. But, in all honesty, I hoped I was wrong."

I stared at him, and his mouth twisted.

"The witch," he continued. "She's still on the hunt. Still looking for powerful magic to take for her own. If you take on the power your parents left for you?—"

"Then she'll come for me next."

"I care for you very deeply, Evangeline," Marcus said. "I never had any children of my own. You're a remarkable young woman, and it's been a privilege to watch you grow. I have to admit that I am truly worried about what will happen when you unite the pieces of the ascendancy array and come into your own."

He reached out a wrinkled hand for mine, but I stood up, out of reach.

"If she tries to come for me, she'd better be prepared for one hell of a fight."