Page 111 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty

My feet worked on their own and the next thing I felt were soft strands of ginger hair brushing the back of my hand while I had to maintain myself to not crush her broken frame in our embrace.

She clung to me with such an intensity that our souls could have as well melted together and made us one, so I’d never have to let go of her ever again.

“I’ve got you,” I whispered into her hair, inhaling the scent of her rosemary shampoo that made my knees weak as the adrenaline was fading.

I had her in my arms.

She was safe.

Dorothee wasn’t falling apart in my arms, she didn’t make a sound and I, through whatever bond melted us together onlyminutes ago, felt the numbness in her heart spread to my own like an illness.

“Oh holy mother Mary in Christ,” Jesse’s voice breathed a curse from behind me.

Doe and I broke apart, and she took a step back, brushing her tears off her cheek with the back of her hand. “It’s alright,” she assured our wide-eyed friends, who stared at the man standing behind her like a shadow.

Realisation hit me like a bus as the world started to spin around me at a normal speed again as soon as I was sure Doe was safe and sound. I put my guard back up, surely not letting him see this wounded version of myself, not even I knew. If he tried to blackmail or do worse to us, I want him to sense the warning in my posture and expression.

“Dorothee is right. I’m not here to bring harm to you in any form,” our school’s psychologist, Anwir Chadwick, promised in a soft reassuring tone which I didn’t believe for a second.

A man who belongs to the people who made us believe our minds were tricking us and all these terrors only ever existed in our heads. And perhaps I shouldn’t hate any of them because how could they believe us if they weren’t able to see the truth… but I did. My gut twisted every time I spoke with one of them or even heard their title.

They ruined me. They gavehima reason to treat me the wayhedid.

Now there he stood. In the middle of our hideaway. In the centre of the truth, people like him denied with every fibre of their being.

“What happened… and what is he doing here?” Mai asked quietly, clinging to Nathaniel’s arm as if she’d break down without his hold.

She looked pale in a way that told she’d justseensomething she didn’t want to see.

“Cassandra took her own life in the stairway of the girls’ dorms.” Doe ripped off the plaster without hesitation almost sounding completely numb. Her eyes didn’t meet any of ours, they just stared at the marble floor. Silent tears falling on her cheeks.

Maisie gasped in shock, covering her mouth with her hand. “I—I didn’tsee—”

“How could you? She didn’t mean anything to you.” Even though I knew she didn’t mean it, Doe’s voice sounded cold, emotionless.

She glanced at the man in his mid-twenties behind her before she continued in the same bland tone.“He made sure Kane didn’t see me when he stalked down the corridor to admire what he had done.”

Naomi inhaled sharply. “How could he be at fault if Cassandra… ended it?” While Naomi didn’t know the girl, the weight of her sudden death lay heavy on all of our shoulders.

Chadwick took a step toward us, rolling the sleeves of his shirt up, his eyebrows creased in anger. “Because the Kingstone and De Loughrey curse has to start with a sacrifice in the form of an innocent and pure soul wishing for death to take their pain away. It happened in nineteen seventy, two thousand-ten and today, on Beltane where the veil is thin enough for rage filled spirits to poison the target’s mind and lure them to their death.”

I stared at him in utter confusion. It was one thing that he stood inside our little cave filled with the secrets of this building… but not in a million years would I have even had the assumption that he knew about our world.About our curse.

Nathaniel stepped forward, pointing at Chadwick with a single finger that promised the full intensity of his anger if he was fooling us. “I don’t care who you are. If you’re fucking with us to gain some kind of point for us to be kicked off this academy and thrown into an asylum, I’ll kill you. My family gotenough money to make your death look like an accident and have us keep our place at this school. Because I’d rather commit a murder than risk any of us going back into these holes when we’re telling nothing but the truth.” His words were laced with venom, and I knew he meant every word he just said. Nathaniel always had something deadly about him.

Chadwick didn’t even budge. He looked too exhausted to show any kind of reaction. His dark eyes had almost lilac circles under them and his lips were dry and chapped, while his usually groomed hair looked like he hadn’t even tried to style it from the beginning. The white shirt that was normally tugged into his pants hung free and wrinkled chaotically.

“Calm down, kid, death is quite a dangerous promise.”

Nathaniel scoffed at him, “I assume you have read my file, so you’d be sure whether I would do it or not.”

Chadwick’s eyebrows rose and he shook his head. “Oh, I’m certain you’d be capable of getting any sort of threat out of your way, Mister McConnell. You wouldn’t be able to kill someone–perhaps hire someone who would do the deed for you, but I’m not here to have you threaten me or be afraid. I’m here because Dorothee was dangerously close to getting caught by Asher. And while I’m certain he guessed by now that you know about the world beyond the veil. You can’t let him find out that you’re searching for the Book of Shadows and, more importantly, know abouthimand his family. Asher Kane is the type of man you don’t want as your enemy.”

At the mention of the Book of Shadows I looked at Doe who turned her head away in embarrassment. She knew I disliked her trust in him and it showed. I didn’t get mad at her, I can’t even fathom what she’s going through right now.

All I longed for was to hold her until all our pain disappeared, but heavens forbid for us having it so easy.

“And how do you know so much about Kane and the world beyond the veil?” I asked, taking Doe’s hand in mine, I pulled her closer to us and away from him. Until I didn’t have a straight, believable answer, I’d be damned to let him lay a hand on her. Certainly, I’d be happy if he never laid a hand on her one way or the other ever again, but Doe enjoyed his company as a…friend. As strange and odd as it seemed. And I wasn’t controlling her.

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