Page 89 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty

I’d been forced to shake hands with at least fifty of his partners, all of whom told me they were pleased to finally meet the heir to the Kingstone empire.

My face rarely appeared in public, but that night had rewarded me with a cover story on some brainless magazine.

A soft knock sounded on my door, and I closed my closet before heading for it. As far as I knew, Doe wouldn’t arrive until late afternoon, she had a longer ride ahead of her than I did, so I wasn’t in a hurry to answer.

If this was Chadwick asking how I was feeling, I was going to lose it. What had happened before the holidays was a slip-up—a one-time thing.

Unlocking it, I opened the door, and to my surprise, it wasn’t a teacher but a red-headed girl standing there.

She had her hand raised, ready to knock a second time.

Doe lowered it and smiled warmly at me. “I thought you might have been joking, and I’d wait for you like a fool until the holidays were over.”

I leaned lazily against the door frame. “When have you ever seen me joking?”

She thought for a moment, nibbling lightly on her bottom lip as she always did when concentrating. “You’ve got a point. Still, I wasn’t sure if you’d really come.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

Doe walked past me without bothering to ask if she could come in. Waiting a moment, I pushed off the door frame and closed the door behind her. She looked around like she’d never seen a boy’s room before, and if she hadn’t, this must have been utterly disappointing. My room was the epitome of boring. I liked it clean and minimalistic. Too many things would drive me mad.

“Did you know a room mirrors the person it belongs to?” she asked, looking at the single painting I’d hung above my bed when I was fourteen. “But yours is so empty of life.”

I admired her from the side as she tilted her head at the copy of the old Renaissance painting framed in gold. She’d cut her hair. When she left for the holidays, the tips almost reached her ribs; now they fell loosely to the middle of her chest. Tiny braids formed a crown at the back of her head, and at that moment, it seemed impossible to me that anyone who passed her wouldn’t think she was the most beautiful person they’d ever seen.

It was odd for me too because I had never admired anyone as often or as long as her.

“Maybe I just like it clean and tidy.”

She turned to me, her expression thoughtful. “No, I think you, Archer, just haven’t found yourself yet.”

I took a step closer, narrowing my gaze slightly. “So, you’re saying a person needs a chaotic and colourful room to have a personality?” I teased, and she rolled her eyes.

“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just fascinating that even Nathaniel’s room shows more life than yours. If I didn’t know better, I’d say no one lived here.”

Shrugging, I glanced from her to the painting on the wall. “I never really wanted to move to Aquila. I was twelve when the school accepted me, and I was determined and enraged at my mother for betraying me like that. She always promised she wouldn’t send me away, but in the end, she did. I think I never fully unpacked or bothered to personalise anything in here because I didn’t expect to stay.”

“You thought your mum would come back and take you home?” she asked, sadness crossing her features at the thought of a younger version of me waiting for my mother. But that wasn’t how it went.

“No, I just didn’t expect to…stay. Some part of me believed this was finally it—my mother abandoned me, and I was alone. So why bother?”

Silence hung between us, and I could feel her eyes on me, but mine were fixed on the painting on the wall. The portrait of a woman lying between the stars and the night sky, pearls bound around her hand, swaying through her satin-white dress and the heavens.

I remembered Naomi once telling me she’d have expected me to frameThe Last Supperrather than a random painting of a lady bathing in stars.

“How did you get past those feelings?” Doe asked hesitantly. I turned to look at the girl beside me, her gaze still fixed on me.

“Mai had been attending this school for six months by the time my mother heard of Aquila Hall. Mai ran me around in circles, kept me company, she just kept me busy. Then I met a rude arsehole of a boy. I quickly realised I grew fond of his company—since we were two sides of the same coin. I was forced to sit beside a boy in English Literature who couldn’t shut up for the life of him. One day, he challenged me to a game of chess with the words,It’s okay if you don’t want to—you’ve already lost anyway.I thought he was bluffing, so I gave it a go. Suddenly, I was meeting up with him three times a week, hoping to prove him wrong, to make him lose to me. One afternoon, a girl with a poisonous bite joined us. Her arrogance was so unbearable I couldn’t stand her. She stuck to the chess-loving boy like they were glued together, and with time, she grew on me, like an annoying little sister.”

It was hard for me to understand my own thoughts and feelings. I believed my friends gave me so much, but I couldn’t give them anything in return, and that made me spiral. Maybe some part of me wanted to belong somewhere, and that’s why I liked their company. But that wasn’t the truth.

“Your friends saved you,” Doe whispered.

She was right.

They were family to me. While I struggled with the pain of emptiness, I’d completely forgotten what had kept me going during that time—at least until now. When I’d been left alone, these people found me, and we forged a bond that couldn’t be denied or broken.

Family doesn’t end with blood, and my friends proved that to me. They saved me long before the wish I’d made upon a falling star was granted.

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