Page 115 of Divine Oaths

Jojo had said the same words, but the opposite. That it had been Kasem who would have done anything to inherit the estate. But hearing both their stories now, I understood. Jojo had been projecting his own desire for Westfield onto Kasem.

It explained the intensity of Jojo’s hatred for the school, even when we’d first befriended each other. Whereas for Kasem, as much as he claimed to have no interest in Westfield, he cared about its students. To him, inheriting Westfield and dismantling the board of trustees and the conservatorship was his sole priority. Even as he assimilated into their world, he rebelled against it with his whole being, while Jojo had wanted to be accepted by them.

Jojo had wanted the inheritance but was forced to relinquish it. And Kasem had never wanted it, but it was now his to bear.

“Jojo would rather have died than pass the curse along,” Kasem said. “In the aftermath of the fire, when I woke with the mark of the curse, it was then that I realized the true cost of the ritual. It was tangible, painful, destructive. A life for life. Blood for blood. The deaths that night were the price of the ritual of disinheritance.”

“So what does it mean now?” I asked. “Will the curse revert back to him if you aren’t able to inherit Westfield?”

“If I live past my twenty-first birthday and inherit Westfield, he’ll never be able to return to the university grounds. But if I die by the hands of the curse, he’ll be able to remain at Westfield but will never inherit it. The new job is probably the Board’s way of grooming him for whatever position they’ll offer him once I’m gone.”

Every piece of me wanted to scream, to hurt him and Jojo for what they’d taken from me because of the curse, because of their attempts to escape its hold. But I couldn’t. Even as I hated them, I knew the truth: They were victims too, cursed to die every generation because of an inheritance, a history, a future that had been stolen from them.

Pain cut through Kasem’s expression, churning like embers in his soft brown eyes.

He took my hand, unclipped the button at the base of the glove.

“Can I show you the rest?” he asked.

I nodded despite myself.

Warmth sparked in me as he kissed the back of my hand and then slipped the glove off. With my fingers laced through his, I focused on his touch, on him here in the present, even as flashes of his past emerged in a vision: Kasem at fifteen, watching flames engulf the world on the heels of the ritual. A life for a life. The two brothers had swapped destinies and all of the lives lost in the fire were the price they would pay.

I hadn’t wept about the fire in years, but hearing it now, seeing the vision of that day again through Kasem’s memory, I couldn’t stop crying. It was excruciating. And what’s worse was knowing that my loss was tied to them.

“What do you see?” he asked, softly, gently.

“The fire. The flames. Death. Everywhere.”

I kept going, desperate to charge on.

“You went to all of the funerals. My parents’. The ones for the other students auditioning who’d been in the audience and died. You attended all of them.”

The vision jumped forward, on and on, and Kasem told his story as it unfolded in my mind.

“I had to grow up fast after that. We all did,” he said, acknowledging how my own life had irrevocably changed after the fire. “But I had the Westfield estate bequeathed to me after Jojo was forced to sign some papers rescinding his right to the inheritance. I’d always been on track to start college early. Our parents had planned that in case Jojo died young because of the curse. And I didn’t mind it back then. All those tutors, all that studying. It let me escape from everything else.

“But do you know what it’s like being fifteen and surrounded by adults, having to perform like them and act like them, when all you wanted was for your parents to look at you and tell you that you’re enough? I think, in those five years, I crammed all of these experiences into my youth, because I knew I wouldn’t have long to live.”

The vision flashed forward to Kasem at Westfield as a student, fifteen and rebellious, angry and lost; a young boy in a world of adults, desperate to prove his worth, to be accepted in a place where no one else looked like him. I watched him argue with a board of grown men and women about extending a scholarship for a young musician, as well as creating a remembrance fund for those who died in the fire. They’d mocked and shunned him, but Kasem crafted handwritten letters to those affected by the fire anyway.

I’d received his first letter and the many that followed. And as news about the letters spread, the Board had no choice but to follow through with his demands. The money they’d used as funding had come from his own allowances.

Time passed, and later that year, Kasem found himself on Westfield’s swampy grounds. He’d been hazed by Sigma, stripped and bound in the swampy vestiges as the silver wraith lurked. He’d climbed a tree, crawled into its safety, weeping and calling for his parents and a brother who had long since abandoned him.

When Sigma welcomed him into their brotherhood, as false as it was, it had been the only form of protection or safety he’d ever known, even as they’d treated him as a prop. He was a fifteen-year-old undergraduate, partying and drinking like the adults, engaging in pseudo-intellectual discussions due to the unmitigated need to prove himself. As a child in an adult world, even an academic one, Kasem had become a spectacle, deprived of the youthful innocence every child was entitled to.

It’d been like that for me too. In the music circles I’d been in, the performances, the daytime TV circuit, the industry parties. At thirteen, I’d been exposed to a world that had no room or protections for a child. For a long time, I’d thought I couldn’t relate to people my age. I’d wanted so badly to prove that I wasn’t the child that the adults in the entertainment industry often teased me for being. Yet in the same breath, as they were fixated on my innocent youthfulness, so too did they rob me of it.

The vision jumped yet again, to Kasem at Center City Mall, browsing the pawnshop with Pete and Jay, offering me money in exchange for my help. When he’d approached the front desk, he’d wanted to confess his role that night and beg for my forgiveness, but he hadn’t known how, hadn’t thought he’d had any right to it.

“I’ve never been jealous of my brother before,” Kasem said. “Not over the estate. Not for anything. I’d already accepted the curse and what it meant. I’d given up on myself just as he and everyone else had given up on me. That’s why I went to the pawnshop that day. It wasn’t because I wanted you to save me or to break the curse. And it wasn’t to use you or out of spite for my brother, like Jojo believes.”

Kasem swallowed. “It was because I didn’t want to keep being that burden who brought him back to Westfield—even if it meant I’d try and bribe him to keep him away. I was ready to die. I wanted to know how it would happen so I could face it. All of our lives we’ve been holding on to this, and I thought maybe if I proved to him that taking the job and being part of the Board wouldn’t break this cycle, he’d finally be free of Westfield. And if I’d died that night in the alleyway, Sianna, you wouldn’t be suffering as you are now with your powers. You and my brother would be happy. But I took his destiny. I took everything from him. And yet it’s not enough.”

The cool wetness of tears dampened Kasem’s lashes, falling against my cheeks.

“I thought I was ready for death,” he said. “I thought I could let go, but I can’t. I want to be with you. I want to hear your voice every day. I want to be the reason for your smile, to laugh with you and hold you, and paint landscapes and still life paintings while you play piano. I want to do right by every single person who’s died because of the curse and Westfield. And I want to do right by you and my brother. But I can’t. I’m sorry.”