Chapter 6 - Hyacinth
Standing in the dark room with all the members of the council glaring at me menacingly is making my blood run with icy terror.
But it’s quickly being replaced by red-hot anger.
It takes a little while for the words being exchanged to make sense to me. But once they do, betrayal slams into my chest with the force of a runaway train.
They knew? My friends knew, and they didn’t tell me?
“Wait!” I almost yell. “Trina, did you know about this?”
Every head in the room swivels to look at me, and I realize I’d dropped out of the conversation for a bit. Now I’ve interrupted a discussion that might not have been about me.
I don’t care. I didn’t ask to be here. They can accommodate me a little.
“Hyacinth,” Trina says apologetically. “It wasn’t worth telling. Saying that the ritual could have been a false positive is understating it—the results weren’t anywhere near conclusive.”
“But you knew it was me,” I protest. “You guys were arguing about it—and this ‘council’ was in support of bringing me here.”
“But we weren’t,” Sadie says firmly. “The ritual couldn’t have been more vague. Besides, Hyacinth, what did you expect us to do? We couldn’t risk exposing the supernatural world or disrupting your life, especially when we had no evidence it was going to help.”
I want to retort, but a slow wave of numbness trickles through me as I realize the truth of her words.
What were they going to do? Tell me that, possibly, maybe, I was named in a magic spell to marry a werewolf, but I shouldn’t worry about it because it’s probably nothing?
Trying to imagine my reaction to that happening in real life almost makes me laugh out loud. Eventually, I just shake my head, waving a hand at Sadie.
“Okay,” I say. “I take your point.”
The silence in the room seems to deepen, and I realize the whole council is still looking at me.
“Now that the human has finished speaking,” Darla says acidly, “we should move on with the next steps. What will be required to break this union?”
“We can’t do that,” Sadie says. “Not yet, anyway. If Hyacinth is the wrong person, that energy will begin to leak out into the rest of the pack. It will become very clear that her energy is holding us back, not helping, and it will be easier to break the bond then.”
“How will this manifest?” Neville asks hesitantly, as if he already knows the answer. “What signs will we see?”
Sadie looks away, a little awkwardly. “The effects of the sickness might worsen.”
“Excuse me?” Darla mutters. “More of us will die—just because Shane made a hasty decision?”
“I’m afraid so,” Sadie says. “But there’s no other way to sever the bond.”
“Do it right fucking now!” Darla yells. Through her anger, I can see desperation and fear.
She looks really sick. Like, almost at death’s door. I hate this situation, but I feel sympathy for these people.
“If we do it right now, the ripple effect will be felt through every single pack,” Sadie states.
“At this point, it doesn’t matter if Hyacinth is the right person or the wrong one—it will be catastrophic to the magical framework we already have in place.
The worst part is, if she is the right one, and we sever the tie, I really believe all the wolves will die. ”
“All of us?” Faye whispers.
Sadie nods. “I’m discovering more about the curse every day. The true love bond is what breaks it, and we’re so close now. We only have this final piece left in the puzzle. To cut it, if it’s real, it negates all the other spells. The risk is just too high.”
Darla turns to look at me, and her eyes are full of fury. I can tell she wants to say something hateful, but her eyes fill with tears, and eventually she just looks away.
These people are scared. Really scared.
Shane sighs, and I look over to see him rubbing his temples. For the first time, I wonder if he’s affected by the sickness, too, and if he’s in pain.
I never thought of that. I was so busy worrying about myself, I didn’t even pay attention to Shane. He went to so much effort this morning to take care of me, too.
Shane notices me watching him and smiles. It’s a small one, and not very warm, but something in his eyes makes my anger melt away.
I can’t believe that he’s a bad person. Even if he did something terrible to me, he’s living under conditions I can’t even imagine. He might have felt he had no choice.
And what would I do if I had to watch my family dying right before my eyes?
Shane gently takes my hand, giving it a squeeze, and I let him. I’m not quite ready to squeeze back, but I do want to comfort him and help in any way I can.
My need to go back to the bakery seems pretty selfish in the face of every single werewolf dying. I’ve spent my whole life hoping the supernatural world is real—how can I just let it die because I’ll have to make a sacrifice?
“Moving on,” Neville says, his voice rasping through his throat. “Since you brought it up, Sadie, let’s go back to talking about the curse itself.”
I realize that I must have dropped out for a while and missed part of the meeting. It makes me determined to stay engaged in the conversation and stop thinking about myself for a while.
I’m still scared and angry. But I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.
“As you know, I’ve been doing extensive research on the manor,” Sadie says. “And I’ve been staying here a lot. I need to ask all of you—have any of you left the manor since the beginning? Since I came here with Rhys?”
The council members look at each other, exchanging a few words and shrugging. Eventually, Thorne speaks up.
“It appears not, Sadie. Even more disturbing, none of us noticed until now. I haven’t been home in months.”
“Or me,” his partner says. “I told my sister to look after the house. I can’t even remember how long ago that was.”
“Are we trapped here?” Darla gasps, horrified.
“Have you tried to leave?” Sadie asks.
Darla visibly pales, and I can see panic flooding through her. She looks over at the door in terror, as if she’s afraid to try it in case it’s true and won’t be able to leave, no matter how hard she tries.
“Are we trapped here?” Neville asks.
“It’s not like you would notice,” Darla says harshly. “It’s been your dream come true to live out here, going through these moldy old books.”
“That’s true,” Neville says, ignoring her tone. “But I’m still very disturbed that I didn’t even notice this.”
“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. The energy 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.
Lynette had a secret, something Darian didn’t know. This is what broke their trust. Finding out this secret is how we break the curse.