Page 112 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty

Chadwick nodded to the messy desk we hadn’t cleaned up from last night’s meeting. Countless books lay open on cellular respiration, because we used our nightly handouts far too often as study sessions where we ignored the fact that studying for our future seemed pointless if we didn’t know we had one.

“You might wanna sit down, it’s a long story.”

I shook my head. “No one is sitting down, give us the short version,Anwir.” I used his first name purposefully to get it into his head that we didn’t see him as an authority person and rather as a foe, as he stood like this in our safe place.

I hated the way he nodded, so understanding and respectful of our mistrust. For obvious reasons, I preferred people I didn’t like to be rude arseholes, so it made it far more understandable why I disliked them.

“Asher and I were friends—brothers—when we studied here at Aquila. We came from different worlds. My parents were middle class, both worked nine-to-five jobs, and we still got by barely, living in the city. I received a scholarship for Aquila, which changed my life. Asher comes from a family of wealth. He got thrown into Aquila for his anger issues after destroying his previous teacher’s car with a baseball bat. I had dreams; he just wanted to escape this place. To be fair, I don’t know how we worked, but we did. We shared a room and stayed up most nights discovering the hidden gems of this place. One night, we stumbled upon a girl, Amita Khatri.” Chadwick’s mouth tilted up at the corners. “She was bold, incredibly rude and a loner. Andto Asher and me, she was the most beautiful girl on campus. It didn’t take long for the three of us to bond and embark on the adventure of solving the mysteries lying within these walls. The problem was, Asher and I both fell head over heels for the girl in our little circle.” Well… calling their friendship a triangle would fit better, but whatever. “It was a quiet fight for her heart, and in the end, it was me who got so deeply entangled in hers that my dear friend didn’t stand a chance. And as much as I felt sorry for him, I couldn’t push her away. Amita gave my life a reason beyond studying.”

“Amita Khatri was the name on the gravestone in the graveyard beyond the forest,” Jesse said, and I remembered the beautiful woman, who I had assumed to be around my age, talking to Asher and how desperate he had looked when she didn’t even bear to look at him.

Chadwick pushed off the table he had leaned on while he told us his life story with Kane and turned around before rubbing a hand over his face. He continued, “our friend Asher trusted us with his gift. He told us he was able to hear, see and talk to the dead. We laughed at him, but with time, it started to make more and more sense. And after we found the hideaway and read Minoru’s notes, we swore to help him find out who he truly was. But if we had known where this would lead us… maybe if I had never believed him and trusted in science instead of my gut, told him he was crazy—perhaps then Amita would have made it to eighteen.” Pain crossed his features, and either he was a fantastic actor, or he still suffered from the loss of the girl he allegedly loved.

“The pages ripped out of Minoru’s notes were copies of rituals and spells from the Book of Shadows. At first, it was funny. Asher could control flames and wind, all the elements. Like a really fancy party trick. He could even control the spirits beyond the veil to do as he said, like a game of Simon says.Simple stuff your grandmother thought was smart to write down.” He looked over at Naomi as if this had been her fault. “She did say that there were so many more rituals that needed months to be finalised. And she didn’t allow her to write them down. As soon as the paper was complete, the ink became invisible. They only belonged in a book as protected as the Book of Shadows. So, we searched for it. Asher craved more and more power. You could see it in his eyes that this power was eating him alive, and he was high on it. Amita and I started to become first worried and then scared of him. He wasn’t our friend anymore. He was slowly becoming mad. So we distanced ourselves from him. And maybe that had been the final blow, which pushed him to try and free the full immensity of what he was capable of. He wanted to break the curse. The curse laid upon the traitors of Asteria.” His gaze burned into mine as he looked between Doe and me.

Traitors of Asteria?

But before I could open my mouth, he continued to pace up and down as if we were in a classroom, and he was giving us a lecture.

“For over a decade, I’ve been studying the history of your families for every answer I can get to stop Kane from being able to prevent him from breaking the curse.”

“Hold on, the curse is laid upon Archer and me, on our bloodlines. Apparently, it makes us star-crossed lovers who are destined to long for one another, only for their love to end in tragedy and doom. Why would it be so awful to break this curse? And why does someone need to die for that?” Doe sniffled beside me, and I squeezed her hand, wanting her to internalise that this, Cassandra’s death, wasn’t her fault.

“Because breaking the curse won’t only free you, but also the power Malakai Kingstone and Abigail De Loughrey pined for, three hundred years ago. The anonymous founders of thisschool and the traitors of Asteria, cursed by Hecate herself to doom their bloodlines,” he explained. “Jesse’s ancestor, the first blessed in his bloodline, Gareth Berkshire, hid the answers in one of his games.”

I looked over at Jesse, whose eyes grew wide in realisation. “Gareth Berkshire invented a game calledThe Traitors of Asteriain seventeen twenty-eight. It was a card game like Crazy Eights, but with characters on the cards, almost like tarot, telling a story. Malakai and Abigail were the cards of ruin. The cursed folks. If you laid one of these cards, you’d basically won, since they were so strong in the game. But if you held both Malakai and Abigail in hand, you were out, because the cards didn’t harmonise. I always hated that game. It was nothing special, and these cards aren’t even in production anymore since they sold so poorly over the years.” Even in serious situations, Jesse couldn’t help but sound excited whenever games were mentioned.

Chadwick leaned against the table, crossing his arms in front of his broad chest. “Right. It took me three years to reach that point. And frankly, it wasn’t an easy game to read the hints Gareth left on the cards. Beginning with even being able to buy a full set online since production discontinued over fifty years ago. Because it was the instructions I needed to connect the dots, to figure out what breaking this curse will cause. Asher didn’t know—didn’t care. He craved this power without regret of consequences or ruin. He simply read that there was a curse to break to free his powers, and then apparently the spirit of James constructed him to lure a desperate soul to their end. He instructed him to play death himself, to prove his power.”

I cut him off, “that doesn’t make any sense. James’ spirit was free of any darkness tainting his soul in death. He denied that he killed Dottie and tried to help us find the Book of Shadows. Maybe it was how Mai’s grandmother said, and it hadn’t really been him that night.”

That was our clearest theory so far: that something—or someone—had possessed him to end the life of the girl he would have died for in another life. I couldn’t imagine him doing this crime with a clear mind.

“James Kingstone attended Aquila Hall because his family couldn’t bear his lies anymore. He was a pathological liar and had several psychotherapy interventions to resolve his problems, but due to his talent for speaking lies as if they were the truth, no one could be sure that these interventions helped,” Chadwick replied easily. “I have access to the archives of the school, where the student files go back almost a hundred years. So, Mister Kingstone, I’m unable to confirm anything because I’m not a part of one of the six families, nor was I born fifty years ago. I can only rhyme together what could have been the case here.”

Mai cleared her throat. “I apologise, I’m not really behind all this, can you summarise what’s the case right now?”

Chadwick gave her a tight smile. “No need to apologise, Miss Alderidge. I spoke a lot, and if we don’t all show up in the common room when the clock strikes nine, I’m certain we'll face consequences none of us want to face.”

Yeah, I’m sure he won’t be the one who’ll have to face anything.

He walked around the table to the blackboard hanging on the wall and grabbed a marker. The squeaking sound of the pen on the material echoed through the room until he stepped back, reading out loud what he had written on the board for all of us to memorise.

“If Asher Kane finds the Book of Shadows before us, he’ll break the curse laid upon you, freeing the full intensity of your star-given power,” he read, laying down the marker and turning to face us. “That could be—and I’m saying could, because I’m not certain—I believe you all know what yin and yang is about. Thebalance between the good and the bad in this world. The curse will cause an imbalance of power in this world, according to my theory.”

“And that’ll be bad… Why exactly? I couldn’t care less about Kane destroying himself because of overpowering. The only thing I care about is preventing having to attend a funeral during the summer. Because I understand that for the curse to be broken, Dorothee has to be sacrificed,” Naomi muttered from where she leaned against the still open door that led to the stairs underneath the library.

Jesse gasped as he stared at the blackboard behind Chadwick. “Hold on. I think I just connected the final dots on why Doe’s death is so important to break the curse!” Excitement rang in his voice.

“Can you stop sounding so enthusiastic when it comes to the reason for my possible death?” Doe asked, but the tone of these words sounded almost lifeless.

Jesse brushed her arm with his knuckles as he passed her to get to the board where he had connected every new bit of information with a red yarn. “Sorry, you know I don’t mean it that way, Dollie.” Grabbing the marker, he was carried away by whatever thought captured his mind at this moment.

I eyed Doe, whose focus lay on whatever our friend was writing, and by the looks of her haunted expression, I knew I wouldn’t let her leave me tonight.

“I remember that in the instructions ofThe Traitors of Asteria, there was a story written on the last two pages. My grandfather used to read it to me when I couldn’t sleep, and I hated it. I hated it because the story didn’t make sense and wasn’t as happy as my other bedtime stories.” He stepped back, taking the red yarn and a magnet, cutting the string to connect the point about Kingstone’s and De Loughrey’s curses beingstar-crossed over generations and the point he had just added to the board.

Lovers cursed to choose power over their happiness.

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