“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 breakthe curse appeared in their belovedBook 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 twistedaway until it reached the nameKingstone. 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 leadingyou 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 Nathanielaround 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.
