Page 42 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty (The Legacy of Aquila Hall #1)
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
ARCHER
My drink started to taste like life wasn’t so serious after all. The more I thought about how ridiculous my whole damn destiny was, the more I thought fuck longing , and just make her mine.
It was that easy.
It certainly wasn’t. Do as you please and risk her death, bastard.
The voice of sanity called from somewhere in the back of my mind, and I blinked away the haziness that had formed in the form of clouds in my head. And suddenly, I remembered why I kept my hands off alcoholic drinks. Because it felt like escapism from all the problems in my little pathetic life.
A memory flashed before my eyes as the voices of my classmates' boring conversation faded.
I was twelve. Having not even hit puberty yet when my eyes spotted the bottle of liquor on the kitchen counter.
My mother likes her smelly drinks. They help her relax. She clung to that black cup with such a firm grip, I used to wish she’d clung to me instead. When the staff left with the trays of finger food and glasses filled with drinks, I reached for the bottle and went up to my balcony. The champagne had tasted dry, and I remember how odd that feeling was because it was a liquid I consumed and liquids didn’t taste dry.
I’d drunk myself to oblivion that day, not aware of what the bitter drink I consumed really was. The only thing I knew was that I wanted a way out of my head. Silencing the voices I believed lived within.
“What are the police doing here?” Someone asked, pulling me out of my thoughts as I blinked the memory away.
I frowned at the police car that pulled up in the gateway of the school, followed by an ambulance. Everyone got up and out of their seats, confused, as Mrs Fanning walked over to our group with a tissue held to her nose.
“All students are required to go to the common hall and stay there until we say you’re allowed to go to your rooms,” she sniffled, and talking broke out.
A few younger and older students had already made their way inside.
“What’s going on?” Naomi asked in alarm.
It felt like my head was sobering up within seconds now as I tried to figure out what might have happened.
“I’m not in the position to tell you anything right now,” our teacher answered, looking down at the ground while tears ran freely down her face.
Something bad happened. I can feel it.
“When something happens that requires the police to be involved, you cannot expect us to remain calm,” someone cried in panic.
Mrs Fanning flinched. “There has been an accident. Now everyone, hurry inside, or you’ll be in detention for the rest of the school year!” She lost it, and I couldn't tell if her tears were now filled with rage or were full of sorrow.
Everyone grabbed their stuff and hurried inside, but I looked around for Doe. She wasn’t with us. Panic took hold of my heart as I spun in a circle, searching for the sight of her bright hair. I had been buried so deep inside my head that I hadn’t noticed her absence.
“Where is Doe?” My shaking voice was filled with panic. I think I’ve never felt panic like this before. I kept her safe. I always did. She was my responsibility to keep safe. I—I don’t know where she is.
Where’s my Doe?
Someone grabbed my shoulders and squeezed painfully. Nathaniel’s grey eyes drilled holes into me. “Breathe. You’re drunk and losing it, brother.”
Thunder rolled through the sky in a warning. I hit him in the chest, not wanting him to touch me, not wanting anyone’s hands on me until I knew she was safe. “Where’s she?”
I looked around again, noting that our classmates and the others had gone inside by now. She wasn’t here.
What if something has happened to her?
No. No. No.
“Archer, calm down!” Naomi demanded.
I shook my head, feeling the panic inside my chest crush my lungs and cut off my air. I couldn’t stomach the slightest thought of not knowing where she was and if she was safe.
My head started spinning, and a stinging sensation of pain shot through my chest. I clenched my shirt and gasped, my knees giving out underneath me.
Blinking, I looked through eyes that weren’t my own. Those eyes stared at an old photograph of Dottie and James that hung on an all-too-familiar wall.
Archer?
Her voice echoed in my head.
My soul snapped back into my own body. The voices of my friends calling my name, asking me if I was alright. But I could only think of one thing.
The hideaway.
Whatever just happened made me look through her eyes, and I know the location I just saw.
Jumping to my feet, I started to run.
Everything around me blurred. I knew where I had to be, and my body did the rest for me on autopilot.
The library. The bookshelf. The hidden door. The stairs and finally the key.
I pushed the door open and if I was a sane man, at this very moment, I would have gaped in shock at the man standing behind her. But my eyes entirely focused on the girl whose soul was bound to mine.
Dorothee’s eyes were swollen from all the tears that had fallen down her cheeks and onto her white dress, making the collar almost completely transparent. Her nose was red and her lips bloody because she chewed them until the skin broke when she couldn’t find another alternative to let free of the pain that lived inside her.
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 only minutes 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 gave him a reason to treat me the way he did.
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 just seen something 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’t see —”
“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 got enough 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 about him and 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.
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. And to 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 this school 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 called The Traitors of Asteria in 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. The balance 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 of The 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 being star-crossed over generations and the point he had just added to the board.
Lovers cursed to choose power over their happiness.
“Now, let me explain. The game tells the story about Abigail, resembling a star in the game, and Malakai, resembling the man in the moon. Two powerful beings ruling the night, while all other cards are rather nature–and light–based. Both are traitors, choosing power over their friendship with Gaia—I believe she’s there to resemble Hecate. The goddesses who blessed them with said powers, making them beings able to wander on Earth instead of resting in the night sky. After she discovered the betrayal, she cursed the two lovers to experience her pain over and over again. Bounding them to walk upon Earth and taking away their immortality they once owned. She explained that they could easily break this curse and return to their bodies up in the night sky, or own the power she did not offer them in the first place. Gaia told them that they had simply to end the other’s life with their own hands causing their soul to be destroyed and spend a lifetime grieving the other. Sacrifice the love your soul was entangled in for power. And if you don’t, you’ll become powerless for the rest of your life and your bloodlines will forever be cursed to carry your fate until someone dares to break it.”
“And how did the story end?” Nathaniel questioned.
Jesse shrugged unknowingly. “That’s where the story ends. But since their descendants are standing in a room with us right now, I assume that Malakai and Abigail did not choose power over love.”
Something in my chest tightened painfully as I asked the following question. “So the connection Doe and I feel, this ribbon wrapped around our souls binding us to the other, is all a part of this curse?”
Our eyes met and grief crossed hers for a moment. I couldn’t imagine not feeling this longing anymore. This feeling was the solid reason why I hadn’t given up just yet. It kept me steady and hopeful for a life worth living with her, even when I knew that wasn’t possible. Deep down, I built a new future, a new life, and it fully centred around Dorothee De Loughrey.
“Perhaps, but I’m very sure that whatever you might feel for another in this very moment is very real to you. My theory is that the string binding you was just for the solid purpose of bringing you close, to start longing for the other in the first place,” Jesse assured me as believably as he could.
And maybe he was right, but what if he wasn’t?
It would destroy me.
But at least, one thing was for sure. “I won’t choose power over Doe.”
“You won’t, but if Kane finds the book before us, he’ll have the power to make you,” Mai’s voice was so weak and trembling that every fibre of my being signalled me that this fate had already been sealed.