“Did we go to the celebrations?” Faye asks quietly. “I can’t remember.”
“We can’t, either,” Rhys says. “We discussed it last night and talked to other pack members. No one knows if any of you have left the manor in all this time.”
“Fuck,” Neville whispers. “Sadie, what does this mean?”
“You’re trapped here, just like Lynette was,” she says. “But with magic, not brute force. Darian fortified this place to lock her inside. It was her prison. All of you are trapped with a simple spell that keeps you in a mental loop. Every time you think about leaving, you forget about it and continue that mental cycle.”
“Break it!” Darla screams. “Break the spell right now!”
“I can’t,” Sadie says. “It’s Lynette’s spell, and it’s part of the curse. She wanted the elders of each pack trapped here, just like she was. She was extremely powerful. Far stronger than me.”
“Then how come she got trapped here?” Thorne demands. “Couldn’t she just blast the door down?”
“Magic doesn’t work like that,” Sadie says. “And this is complicated. Darian and Lynette built this house together. They planned to live in it as a family. Something happened, and Darian locked her up in here until she…”
“What?” Faye asks. “Until she what?”
“Until she died,” Sadie says. “I think some of you already knew that.”
An uncomfortable silence falls, and I get the feeling the council knows more about this history than they’re letting on.
Lynette Croft and Darian Cole. I’ve read about them in the history books. Powerful landowners in the area, until Lynette disappeared and Darian inherited it all.
“Wait,” Darla chokes out, as if her throat is so worn out, she can’t shout anymore. “Are we going to die here, too?”
“If the curse isn’t broken, then yes,” Sadie answers.
Immediately, all of them turn to look at me again. The power of their combined gaze makes me cling to Shane’s hand.
They can’t hurt me, not if they want the spell broken. But what if I can’t break it? What will they do to me?
“There’s no point looking at Hyacinth like that,” Sadie says. “She doesn’t know anything about this. We won’t know anything for some time.”
“And we just can’t leave?” Faye asks. “We recovered somewhat after your marriage to Rhys—so did Sylvie and Thorne. Why are we still trapped?”
“I’m working on it,” Sadie says, her face grim. “But Lynette’s curse was set to destroy every single wolf in the area. She was in terrible pain, cut off from Darian, betrayed, and robbed of everything that mattered to her.”
“He must have had a good reason for locking her up,” Darla snaps.
Sadie stays calm, refusing to take the bait. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out. I’ve been cross-referencing historical sources and searching through the manor for clues. I’ve found a few letters she wrote that she obviously couldn’t send. It makes me wonder if there are others who did get through. She might have had a contact on the outside.”
“Is that relevant?” Sylvie asks.
Sadie shakes her head. “I don’t know. All I know at this point is that Darian locked her up. I don’t even have direct evidence that they were romantically involved, but I have to assume they were.”
A faint tingle of recognition runs down my spine as I remember reading something in the old books about this.
I’ve done so much reading, it’s hard to separate fact from fiction. But I honestly think some of Lynette’s letters are in the library.
“Will breaking the curse fix everything?” Neville asks. “If Hyacinth is the right person, will this final union break the curse and free us all?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie says. “All I have to go on is my own experiences with the spell. When the magic was flowing through me, I knew beyond a doubt that love would cure us all. I have to trust that. I’m scared now that we might be wasting precious time—but unfortunately, time is the only thing that will tell us if we’re going in the right direction or not.”
Darla wipes her cheeks discreetly, trying to hide the tears trickling from her eyes. She looks furtively at the door, and the hopelessness emanating from her feels palpable to me. Theenergy of the room darkens as well, growing heavy as if a storm is about to break right above our heads.
The spirit of Lynette craves the pain and destruction of the wolves, I realize, the truth crystallizing in my mind.But she also needs healing. She is desperate for it. This curse is built on a lack of love—and a desire for truth.
Even though this could be the beginning of magic awakening in me, I don’t say anything. For all I know, I’m just making things up to make sense of the situation, and I don’t want to make it worse than it already is. I listen halfheartedly as the meeting wraps up, my mind already beginning to race ahead, trying to sift facts from fiction in all the books I’ve read.
