The Founders

Chapter 26

Kyra didn't leave her room for the entire weekend. She stayed, huddled up under layers of covers and blankets that Grace had probably nicked from other rooms, being spoon fed pea soup, or looking blankly out of the window.

The swelling around her neck had gradually faded into a necklace of spectacular purple, thanks to Grace rubbing a bruise paste on it every few hours. Grace had even managed to use basic magical first aid to heal her broken wrist, although it still felt a little weak.

Madame Pomphrey probably could have done a better job of it, as Grace had reminded Kyra, but Kyra refused to go. She couldn't face the thought of having to explain the circumstances to Madame Pomphrey; not when she didn't understand them herself.

It was the same with Oscar and Kat. Grace had told them that Kyra was feeling under the weather after the party, and then that she was catching up on homework. Oscar and Kat weren't the suspicious types, and they had accepted this easily enough. Kat even offered to help with the Transfiguration homework due Monday, which made Kyra feel guilty.

She had no idea how to string together what had happened to her with what, and who, had caused it. The whirring of her brain felt like spinning on a sickeningly dizzy carousel and trying to identify faces. There was just one face that kept materialising, no matter which way she spun it.

On Sunday morning, after over a day of letting herself be taken care of by Grace, of being silent and unresponsive, she sat up in bed. She explained the bare bones of what had happened to Grace, from her poisoned plants, to her necklace being stolen. Grace sat on the side of the bed and held one of her hands, lying clammy and cold on the covers.

When she had finished, Grace was gripping her hand hard. Kyra shifted, realising that she had been talking to the ceiling the entire time, and met Grace's eyes. There were tear tracks on her face. "I think that..." Kyra began with a rattling breath. "I think that there's only one - one person that it really could have been." She gave a bitter laugh that ended in a sob as she looked up at Grace. "Alexander."

Kyra squeezed Grace's hand once, and raised her other hand to where her chain used to be. "On the first night after we arrived, I went to check on my plants- the praesidio ones- and there was a person there, taking cuttings of it. They were tall, covered in a robe. I tried to stop them, but they ran off into the grounds. When I came back later that night, I was crossing the entrance hall when Alexander came in from the grounds. I sort of convinced myself it was nothing after. But he even knew exactly what praesidio plants do, when I asked him about it later. He was annoyed at me for it. And- that's not all."

Kyra looked up hesitantly at Grace. "He- he was the only one who knew that my necklace- the one I started wearing over the summer. It was my mother's but- but it was also Helga Hufflepuff's." She heard Grace suck in a breath.

"And you think that Alexander took it- because he knew that?" Grace was slightly bewildered.

Kyra shrugged her shoulders miserably. "It's just a bit too much of a coincidence, don't you think?" she asked, almost pleadingly, as if she wanted Grace to convince her otherwise. "I tell him about it- and a week later I'm strangled, and the necklace is gone. I don't know if that was why, or if it was because I was 'interfering', whatever that means, or both."

Kyra shook her head in bewilderment. "I don't know if it was planned or because I just happened to be there. But I do know that there are very few people in this school who would know what praesidio plants are, even fewer who know that I grow it in my greenhouse and practically none who know that my necklace used to belong to Hufflepuff- just him. And besides that, there's no one else who is better at DADA than him. And for what reason? He doesn't even seem to like it. And the times that there was someone in the greenhouse- he wasn't in the castle. At least, last night I couldn't see him in the party when I left." She made a noise of disgust and hit her head back against the headboard. "God, I'm so stupid."

Kyra stared at her hands. "I- he kept sucking me in. I let him. This is my fault." She felt disorientated, as if reality were titling sideways and she were desperately trying to cling to something solid. "What the fuck is even going on."

Grace stood up and climbed under the covers beside Kyra. They both stared up at the canopy.