Page 50 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty (The Legacy of Aquila Hall #1)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

DOROTHEE

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Nathaniel asked, grabbing my arm to slow my jog into a walk. I looked up at him and nodded confidently.

“The maze is a replica of Jesse’s game. I’ve played it a thousand times with him, so I know where the centre is.” I suddenly missed the nights when it seemed like Jesse and I had no other issues but the stomach aches after we stuffed ourselves with biscuits and cookies, playing games and dancing to old music playing from his vinyls.

Nathaniel squeezed my arm before letting go. “I trust you, Doe.”

I smiled cheekily at him. “Imagine Nathaniel from nine months ago could hear you now.”

“He’d be baffled for sure,” he agreed, his mouth twitching as he almost smiled.

I looked around, grateful for the bright night we had. Our phones were inside the school, and the light from the fairy lights didn’t quite reach us here in the middle of the high maze.

Closing my eyes, I reminded myself of the turns we’d already taken and tried to envision the board in my mind.

“Left, two rights, past three junctions, and then right again,” I spoke aloud, already moving again.

“We have to hurry. The Aquila constellation is almost at its brightest point. It happens every fifty years. I’ve read about astronomers theorising what that phenomenon could be, but they’ve never discovered an explanation. From what I know, the curse is bound to the power of the stars in the Aquila constellation,” Anwir explained as our walk turned into a jog.

I looked up at the night sky, and if my life wasn’t at risk because of that light, I might have been mesmerised by the phenomenon of the stars.

I wish I could watch this with Archer.

“So the curse is only breakable when the stars shine brightest?” I asked, both fascinated and frightened as I looked over at Anwir.

We turned left, and the hedges of the maze began to separate slightly more.

“It’s a time span of eleven minutes before midnight, until the clock hits twelve, when the stars seem to almost explode with light.” He turned his gaze from the stars toward me. “It’s then that the curse has to be broken.”

My lips parted slightly. “During the eleven minutes.”

Just eleven minutes.

That’s basically nothing.

We suddenly came to a halt, the centre of the maze lying in front of us.

I felt my eyes widen at the stature that stood at the end of a stone altar, pointing a dagger to the heart of it.

The statue captured the beauty of an ethereal-looking woman in a mystical gown, star constellations chiseled all over her clothes. Her hair framed her innocent features in lucid curls, and a headpiece of an upside-down crescent moon lay upon her head. On her shoulder sat a bird—a quail, I believe.

“That’s beautiful,” Nathaniel said in awe.

“She is,” I agreed.

Anwir stepped closer to the statue, stroking his fingers over the woman’s cheek. “That’s Asteria. The goddess of fallen stars and nocturnal divisions. She was Hecate’s mother before Zeus chased her across the sky, forcing her to transform into a quail and flee into the sea, where she later became the island of Delos,” he explained, caressing the statue’s features. “Greek mythology is captivating, isn’t it? And it’s even more fascinating how your ancestors had their blessing and still craved more. They went as far as to betray a goddess by using the Aquila constellation, the constellation associated with the monster disguised as a hero—Zeus. They tried to strike a deal.”

I’ve never been much into mythology, but the sight of Asteria made me crave every tiny bit of knowledge there was about her. Her essence felt oddly dear to me.

“What deal?” Nathaniel asked, seemingly as captured by the story as I was.

Anwir drew his fingers to her collar and down her arm until he reached the hilt of the stone dagger. “To bless them all with power. Aquila Hall was supposed to be called Asteria Hall—a school for the cast-out ones, for the children of sorcery. Tragically, Malakai and Abigail’s dear friend, Hecate, refused to bless more bloodlines with the gift of the sight beyond death. Sorcery had its cost, and she couldn’t risk humanity selling their souls to the shadows for power. It would cause an imbalance. Hecate was so lonely for centuries until she heard their prayers. Taking human form, she befriended the seven. But her duties were calling her at the crossroads of death. She didn’t want to leave them behind. They had grown so dear to her. So, in the name of her mother Asteria, she blessed them with the power of the sight. While the seer’s abilities only grew, holding too much light for the power of darkness, the others saw death all around them. They were now able to cross the veil even in life, visiting Hecate whenever they liked. Over time, they started to learn that these abilities came with so much more because Hecate gave them a piece of her soul. They were capable of all of her abilities—in a manner, of course, including sorcery.”

Anwir dropped to his knees on the earth ground. He started knocking on the foot of the statue where Asteria kneeled. “ Stellae numquam volui vagari in terris ,” he said, reading the Latin engraving. “I never wanted the stars to roam the earth.”

With a thumb, the side of the foot fell open, revealing a wooden box with a pentacle carved into the lid. Anwir clicked open the closure and opened the old box. Inside was a thick book bound in brown leather.

The Book of Shadows.

I gasped, falling down beside him to run my hand over the hardcover. I could practically feel the power beaming from within it.

“But Malakai saw the opportunity in this. What if there could be a whole other species besides the mundane? They had years of learning to live with their abilities ahead of them and were already able to use them for a better life. Money ruled the world, and it was so much easier to achieve it with the help of magic. He could teach them the ways of sorcery. It was all an image he created in his head as the power pushed him to near madness, because the human mind wasn’t made to wield such force.”

He lifted the book out of the box that had kept it safe until it was ready to be found again. To my surprise, he flipped it open to the title page, where Book of Shadows was beautifully written in cursive letters.

“And what deal were they trying to handle?” They were thirsty for power, but what would Zeus have from this? “I mean, a god surely wouldn’t grant anyone power out of kindness,” I joked lightly, but Anwir didn’t even budge a smile.

“No, he certainly wouldn’t. But we’ll never find out because, during this time, three hundred years ago, Hecate’s hounds sensed the betrayal of their mistress, and she returned to earth’s grounds once more. She caught Malakai performing a ritual underneath the Aquila constellation, calling on their connection with the god of thunder to make him hear them with his wife, Abigail’s, help. She grew furious, sensing her mistake in trusting the humans with a spark of what’s hers. They didn’t listen to her and even attempted to ally with a man she despised for being a hubris—Zeus. So wrongly portrayed in mythology and their retellings,” he told us the tale, and even though I knew we should probably hurry and leave this place with the book as fast as possible, it felt like his words made my feet grow roots that bound me to the ground until I knew everything about the story behind the Legacy of Aquila Hall.

“She cursed them out of spite,” Nathaniel concluded, sounding as if he were in a trance himself.

Anwir flipped the page to where all of our surnames were listed in black ink. The page that could only be unlocked by the signature of our blood.

“She did. Hecate loved them like her brothers and sisters, but her fury got the best of her that night. She star-crossed Malakai and Abigail, and for that, she will never love again. They won’t be able to love either. May their bloodlines be forever doomed to longing that will end in nothing greater than ruin. May the power she granted them feel like a curse and never more like a gift. But every curse needs a cure.”

“Because of the balance of good and evil,” I muttered to myself, but Anwir must have heard it because he nodded.

“Exactly. She told them that one of the heirs of their bloodlines has to kill his one true love and suffer with the soul-aching grief for the lifetime of eternity. That not even death will grant them peace. Legend has it that the ritual to break the curse appeared in their beloved Book of Shadows . Every fifty years they’d have a chance to break their curse, but until then, may they suffer. Malakai and Abigail were doomed; they wouldn’t survive another fifty years. People back then weren’t able to grow so old. So, they agreed on going different paths, as the stars did everything in their power to part them already. All seven of them did, until someday when their sprouts could break their curse, and perhaps then they could claim the power they believed they deserved. Malakai sold the school to one of his closest friends and opened it as an elite school for the rich, until the time has come.”

I looked over at my friend who stood by my side in awe. “That’s why Umbra exists. The school was built to school people like us.”

“But since that never came to pass, Abram Boswell renovated the school right after its grand opening again, telling the world that the library needed far more storage, when he instead followed Malakai’s instructions and built the hideaway of tourmaline for his descendants to find and escape from evil in there,” Anwir explained, looking up at the sky. This weird trance I was in suddenly fell away. I blinked hard to regain some sense.

“We need to leave before Kane gets here,” I muttered, feeling oddly dizzy on my feet, like I’d drunk more than one glass of champagne. It was surely just the aching fear growing in my chest.

“What are you doing?” Nathaniel suddenly asked, and I frowned at him. It took me a minute to realise that he wasn’t talking to me, but to the man behind me. I turned, my lips popping open in confusion.

Anwir held his bleeding hand over the paper that could unlock the rituals hidden within these pages. He didn’t answer. He… grinned as his blood soaked into the paper and twisted away until it reached the name Kingstone . The nine letters lit up, mirroring the colour of his blood.

I inhaled sharply, trying to process what was happening.

Dottie wrote that you could only decipher the spell the books were bound to with the blood of one of the seven.

His blood unlocked the book by proving to it that he was of Kingstone blood.

Anwir was a Kingstone.

“How?” Speaking was physically draining as my body experienced the shock of what I was witnessing in this very moment. My palms grew damp, and my heart felt like it beat in my throat.

“Oh, sweet little Doe, I’m honoured at your state of shock. It proves that I did a phenomenal job in leading you all on the path of ruin with my lies, the riddles…” His tone was so dangerously laced with confidence that I took a step back, feeling Nathaniel take hold of my hand behind me.

“You—you wrote and placed the riddles where we would find them. That’s why Maisie’s grandmother was so confused when I mentioned them. She only wrote the one on the card.” My voice broke.

It was him.

All this time, the man wanting my death stood by my side, fooling me with the sort of affection I had always dreamed of as a child.

I had considered him to be close to how I imagined it was to have an older brother. And he smiled at me. Knowing that he craved my blood spilled on the altar beneath the stars.

Cruel didn’t even begin to encompass how he used my longing for acceptance and affection to his advantage.

Anwir gave me a smile that promised death. “I was James in the mirror, kid . An illusion created with the memory lingering in his bones and laced with words of mine. I was the voice leading you onto the path of doom. And the best part is that your great-grandmother even played into my cards with her diary. While the prophecy said that your ruin starts with love, it never stated that your lover has to be the one carving your heart out of your chest.” He flipped the pages directly toward the ones he needed without needing much search because he knew where the book had been the entire time. He just needed us to walk into his trap at the right moment. “Aquila stood highest; the beat of the night painfully quiet. The Kingstone heir holding her heart in the palm of his hand. When morning came at the break of dawn, the last De Loughrey Dynasty had fallen,” he read off the page.

The prophecy was stated wrong.

There were two heirs.

But it only needed one of them to ruin me.

“What a tragedy for you, and what luck to me that my mother birthed me with the intention of wanting to keep her child. Kingstone was the first name I ever wore. It’s a grey zone, technically, I am the heir bearing the same powers my cousin Archer does, because at the time he was born, I wasn’t a Kingstone anymore. I was a Chadwick. Our grandparents forced my mother to give me up for adoption when I was three weeks old. There was only ever supposed to be one heir from each family. That’s why death runs in our bloodlines, Dorothee. But no worries, the De Loughrey Dynasty will end with you.” He unbothered flipped the pages as Nathaniel tugged on my hand, dragging me with him out of the centre.

My legs started to move on their own as my head still tried to process what was happening.

“You have to tell me where we have to go. Gods, curse me for telling Jesse to fuck off whenever he tried to force me to play that stupid game with him,” Nathaniel cursed in anger.

My jaw felt locked, but somehow I managed to get my mouth to open and speak. “There,” I breathed, pulling Nathaniel around the left corner. We didn’t let go of our hands, and I wouldn’t do so any time sooner, fearing to lose another in the high hedges.

Right before we could cross another opening between the hedges, the path grew shut with roots shooting out of the ground. Nathaniel dragged me against him, away from the strong roots that were most likely capable of breaking a bone if you stood in their way.

I looked around, noting another gap appearing on the right. “He makes the maze move. It’s like the reset of the game.”

My friend sighed in frustration. “So we have no idea where we’re going.”

“No, we don’t,” I answered, dragging him with me through the gap, hoping for the eleven minutes to come to pass as fast as possible. But I had no clock with me, and right now, we were terribly screwed.

“Run, sweet Doe. I like the chase,” Anwir’s voice called over the hedges from afar.