Page 67 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty

I looked around to search for Gwyneth, but she was completely gone, and the candles had flickered out. Gwyn hadn’t meant to kill me. She had done the exact thing Dottie had asked of her: to push me onto the right path. If she had not pushed me into the lake and shown me her demise, I am uncertain if the others would have considered it necessary to include me in all of this.

She had been pulling the strings to get us this far.

To get me to the diary.

The second I felt steady on my feet again, I walked over to the row where the answer lay hidden beneath. Focusing on what I had seen, I knocked on the floor and smiled as I found the hollow space beneath it. Lifting the wood, I sighed in relief.

One step closer to saving us.

I opened the box and pulled out the diary and the ivory necklace, leaving the tiara back for Gwyneth, before I closed everything up again.

I didn't mind that the diary and jewellery were cold on my fingers. All I could feel at this moment was relief at what I had managed. I pushed to my feet and turned to face my friends with a triumphant grin.

“We did it,” I announced, holding up the necklace mentioned in the riddle. “Jewels melted ivory.”

While Naomi was admiring the treasure in my hands, Maisie took me in and her gaze slipped behind me. Her eyes widened in amazement.

“My grandmother wasn’t referring to the cards. She was referring to you. You’reThe Star.”

Naomi looked at our friend in confusion before she followed her gaze to me and, just like Maisie, her eyes started to gleam. “Jesse will be so disappointed when I tell him we figured out the riddle without him,” she mumbled, grinning, and I turned around to look at the coloured window glass they kept looking at.

The artwork wasn’t special to me the first time I had entered these grounds because all I saw were eight stars in a weird constellation.

One giant golden star in the middle and six white stars on either side of it, while one lonely star shone on the bottom left.

“You mirrored the image on the card when you were kneeling on one knee, picking up the book while the sunrise shone through the glass and revealed the truth,” Maisie explained, completely captivated by the image. “She couldn’t tell, so she spoke in riddles, and now whenever she mentionsThe Star, we know it’s you she’s talking about. My grandmother is a genius.”

The smile didn’t leave my lips from the adrenaline kick this triumph had given me as I glanced down at the jewellery in my hand. “I think Dottie wanted me to find the diary and hid it with the necklace so Mairead could write the riddle without mentioning the real treasure it held,” I said, brushing my thumb over the leather-bound book, and for the first time, I noticed the daisy wheels that were carved into the cover.

The same symbols Maisie’s grandmother had drawn on the back of the tarot card where our first hint had been written, and suddenly, it hit me where I had seen it before.

The De Loughrey family tomb.

When I was seven, Nana took me to her weekly visit to the graves at the cemetery where her sisters and my grandfather had been laid to rest. I remember asking Nan about the circles that carved the entire stone on either side of the tomb.

“You call it daisy wheels.”

“Like my favourite flowers?”

“Yes, my little darling. Our family has been fond of the symbol for centuries. It’s a mark to protect us from the evil that might steal our peace away.”

Our conversation flashed before my eyes, as if it had been just yesterday that I started drawing the endless circles everywhere, until my mother scowled at me to stop this nonsense.

“We should get back to school. Breakfast started fifteen minutes ago, and if we don’t appear there in twenty, we’ll end up with a month of detention, and they will most likely inform our parents.” Naomi drew my attention, and usually, I should have panicked at that. Knowing that my mother would make the call with Nana the reason for my relapse. But I could feel nothing but relief right now, and truthfully, all I wanted to do right now was to find a place to hide and spend the entire day reading words that had been written fifty years ago.

“Let’s go, then,” I said as some sense hit me at last.

Now that lightwas making it easier to find a way out of the woods and back to Aquila, we were much faster than before.

“We’ll tell the boys during breakfast and meet tonight in the hideaway to find out why Dottie’s diary was so important for us to find,” Naomi announced while we trotted towards the back of the academy.

On our way back, I explained everything I saw in Gwyneth’s memory in detail, too scared I might forget it even happened by the time we will all get together tonight. My mind was still woozy from tiredness and whatever power I let Gwyn have over me to pull me into her memories.

Maisie had helped me to put on the necklace Dottie had once received from James. I just wore it to avoid losing it, but I liked the feeling of it hanging next to my tourmaline, right above my heart.

I kept brushing my thumb over the crystal held in place by ivory, thinking about the second phrase of the riddle.

Gift of peace, born in rivalry.

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