Page 113 of Divine Oaths

He looked pained when he spoke, terribly so. “I have something to tell you. And I know that you’ll hate me for it.”

I shook my head.

There were enough secrets at Westfield, and holding on to all of them and myself was like keeping sand from slipping through my fingertips.

“I’ll try to understand,” I said finally.

I held out my hand and he took it, tracing lines against my palm and the lace glove.

“I wanted to tell you, but… I didn’t know how. And what you said in the swamp about how childish I was being when you were all sacrificing so much for me—it really stuck with me. I can’t keep asking so much of you. It’s unforgivable.”

“You’re scaring me,” I admitted. “Just say it and let me decide. Okay?”

Kasem was silent for a long moment, and when he finally spoke, he couldn’t meet my gaze.

“When you were asking about the accidents on campus and the connection to the curse,” he began, “I spoke of Nathan dying in the woodshop. But there was another accident linked to the curse. One that I caused.” He glanced up at me, his expression imbued with pain and regret.

“Your audition to Westfield,” he said. “I started the fire.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Smile, and be a villain

IT TOOK A MOMENT FOR me to understand what he meant. As Kasem spoke, it occurred to me that I hadn’t remembered much about the aftermath of the fire. Nor, I soon learned, did I know what had caused it.

Birthday candles.

“It was the night before his twenty-first birthday,” Kasem explained. “We thought he’d made it. My brother, the perfect golden boy of our family, had beat the odds. He’d graduated from Westfield. And now, in less than twenty-four hours, he was going to inherit the estate that every single one of our forefathers had died trying to claim. The board of trustees wanted him at the performance. If he was going to inherit Westfield, they said, he needed to attend things like auditions. This one was special. A superstar, a child musical prodigy, was going to perform. They already wanted her as a student. She would be the youngest, at fourteen, and her celebrity would help Westfield’s prestige.”

I was trembling before I could stop myself. Kasem reached for me, but I pushed him away.

“I’m sorry, Sianna.”

I shook my head, swallowing against the burn in my throat.

He was the reason for the fire. He was the reason my parents and so many others had died that day.

“Do you want me to leave?” he whispered. “You won’t have to see me again. When the curse has its way, I hope you’ll feel avenged.”

In that moment I hated him, more than I had ever hated anyone or anything until that point.

“Don’t make this about yourself. Don’t you dare!” I screamed.

He wrapped his hands around my wrist, gently, making sure to avoid touching my burnt fingertips. Not because he was afraid of what I would see in his past, but because he knew in that moment that if my visions overtook me, I’d drown in the past, suffocate from the grief he was responsible for.

“I’m selfish,” he whispered. “I’ve never pretended to be anything but that. There’s no explanation that can make what happened right. I know that. I’ve lived with it ever since that night.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, my tears consuming me. “You took them away from me. You took everything. And my powers, I never wanted them. I never wanted to be like her.”

Kasem held me even as I screamed and cried and fought every part of me that wanted to sink back into him.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, my tear-stained lashes brushing against his skin. And my heart, as wild and raging as it was, steadied at the warmth of his touch—treacherously, I was drawn to him.

“Tell me everything,” I whispered.

“Are you sure?”

“You want me to hate you,” I said. “And in this moment, I do. But Luke was right. If you and this school keep burying the past, then we all become victim to it.”