Gentry seemed unbothered by the interruption and continued with his explanation. “The trials leading up to Alice’s disappearance were later referred to as the Tempest Trials—named after Lord Stanton, who brought forth the formal accusations.”
“This Lord of Stanton, what was his full name?” I asked, my voice a little too sharp. In my mind, the picture of Alice and her sister Margery was still vivid.
Gentry didn’t miss a beat. “Alban Tempest, the Second. His son, Alban the Third was newly married to Alice’s twin sister, Margery, or Maggie in most of the texts. There’s not much written about her directly, though, which always struck me as odd.”
I froze, sinking back into my chair as the room tilted off-kilter. Air thinned around me, stretched taut like skin over bone. Someone said my name—once, then again—but it came from far away, dulled as if spoken beneath water.
I shot to my feet before my mind could catch up, legs already moving.
The café blurred behind me. I pushed through the door into cold air that slapped against my face. City sounds muffled to a distant murmur. Ahead, the river waited, glass-still, reflecting the colorless sky. Wind brushed against my cheek. Everything else had fallen away. Just the roar of my heartbeat remained, pulsing through my ribs echoing a warning.
Everything I thought I knew about myself, about the curse… it all felt like it was slipping away, twisted in a knot I couldn’t untangle.
If Alban Tempest was my descendant—and he had accused his own family—then what did that mean for me? If Alice really was the beginning, that meant I’d been cursed by my own blood.
I couldn’t breathe.
The door to the café chimed as it closed behind me, and I heard someones voice, faint, as though they were far off, calling my name. I blew out a breath, loud and shaky, and then called over my shoulder, my voice cracking, “I just need a second, Grim.”
“Astoria…” Gentry startled me, as he leaned over the railing next to me, his body a dark silhouette against the pale sky.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I just needed some air,” I said, facing him.
Gentry blinked, concern flickering across his face as he took a small step forward. His hand twitched at his side, “Are you okay?” he asked, voice careful, scarcely louder than the clink of silverware and the hiss of the espresso machine behind us.
Lying, I nodded yes. I took a moment to study him, trying to piece together the kind of life he must lead. The elbow patches on his sweater, worn and frayed, were a giveaway that he had a fondness for books—perhaps he spent hours lost in obscure bookstores, pulling down dusty volumes, meticulously turning pages that others had long since forgotten.
There was a quiet rebellion in his scuffed sneakers and the way his glasses sat too large for his face, yet it suited him in a charming, unassuming way. A youthful contrast to his position as one of Oxford's youngest professors.
“They were twins?”
“Identical,” he confirmed, tone absent, the information already well-worn in his mind. “But while Alice’s name appears in nearly every account… Maggie fades after the marriage. It’s almost like she vanished into the margins.”
Alice and Margery were strikingly alike in Fate’s drawing. I swallowed hard before asking the question that had beengnawing at me. “Were the other women related? The other accused? You mentioned them briefly in your research.”
But Feo had not mentioned the other women, I’d only known about them after reading the short article Gentry wrote.
“No,” he answered, rubbing his hands together as though to warm them. “That’s one of the most curious aspects of the Tempest trials. There are accounts suggesting that Agatha was very close to Maggie and Alice, but the others—Colette, Agnes, Isbel, Godiva, and Matilda—were never mentioned again. Not a single charge has survived in the documents, just their names, and the verdict. Guilty. If I hadn’t come across their names in the records I wouldn’t have known about them at all.”
That was strange. In his article he’d mentioned the seven women, and how they’d all been hanged in the town square. So what was it about Alice that seemed to make her the focus?
I took a slow breath, trying to steady the riot in my mind.
“Did you know that Lord Stanton’s son, Alban, married Margery only a year before the trials?” Gentry blew warm breath into his hands. “Odd timing, if you ask me.”
“No…” I replied slowly, already feeling the thread pull tighter around me.
“Can I ask something?” His tone shifted, more tentative now. “Is this… some sort of lineage thing? You’re not just here for academic curiosity.”
I offered a tight smile, trying to keep the weight out of my voice. “Something like that.”
He gave a short laugh, like he thought he was being clever. “You do kind of look like them, you know.” He held up his phone—two sketched faces, almost mirror images of my own. “These came from the Stanton estate archives. Lord Stanton’s father kept meticulous records, like he was building a case before the town ever formally accused anyone.”
His eyes flicked back to mine. “Are Alban and Margery your ancestors?”
I nodded, slowly.
Gentry’s expression shifted, the levity fading. “That… makes sense. Because Alice, she disappeared before the trial ever took place. There were rumors she fled the town, or that she turned on the others. Some even claimed she—”
