Page 37 of Cursed Beasts

What made my father think I was the person for this job?

I know I was missing a lot of information, but it still felt like he left me here on purpose, as if he didn’t want the spell to be broken.

My father always did things for a particular reason. He wasn’t one to half ass a job, especially if he was being paid. We had a reputation to uphold, and he wouldn’t risk it with one stupid decision. My father was calculating in every decision he made, he was usually a few steps ahead of everyone else. There had to be a reason he sent me.

A soft knock made me turn around to see Mr. Potter coming through the wall.

“Good morning, Katarina,” he said cheerfully, laying my tray of food down on the bed.

“Hello, Mr. Potter,” I responded, not in the mood for conversation, but I still wanted to be nice to the man who kept me fed, with clean clothes, and made sure I always had hot bath water.

“Are you not feeling well?” he asked, as I looked out the window.

“I’m fine,” I said, swinging my legs back and forth, spotting a light wolf roaming the perimeter. Was that Lucien?

“You don’t sound fine, dear.” He sighed. “Could it be because you couldn’t find a way out of this?”

I stilled when he called me out, not expecting for him to be so bold, but he was a ghost, so I guess he had nothing to lose.

“I’m just trying to figure out what the hell is going on,” I snapped, my frustration getting the best of me. “I get dropped off with no warning, expected to break a curse, when I don’t even know how?”

“Do you think they wanted to be cursed?” he snapped back at me. “It was your family who put us in this situation, it was—”

“That was two hundred years ago!” I yelled. “Why am I being punished for the fuck-ups of my ancestors? It’s not like I’ve had a warm welcome either. They dragged me out of my bed, leaving me tied up for the whole day! How do you know they didn’t deserve to be cursed?”

“No one deserves to be put through two hundred years of living one hour a day. You don’t know what that does to their minds and having to put up with you Belladonnas who think the world owes them something when, in fact, you’re just a worthless race of witches. You’ve always thought you were superior, but your ancestors knew who was the strongest and crippled our race.”

Mr. Potter left without another word, leaving me stunned. If what he said was true, it wouldn’t surprise me. My family was power hungry. They craved power like an addict looking for their next hit, no matter what they had to do to get it.

When my sisters and I became of age, they held a party for us, showing us off like we were poodles at a fucking competition. Only the wealthiest, most powerful witches were allowed to bid for us. We were bringing in the next generation of Belladonnas.

Our family took no one’s last name. Anyone who married into our family took our name, Caston took the Belladonna name, and he fucking used it to his advantage any chance he got.

All these unanswered questions clawed at my sanity. The only way I was going to get some answers was to break the spell, or at least find out what brought the spell on. Mr. Potter said they didn’t know what had brought on the spell, but I had a feeling that was bullshit. They had to know.

The breakfast Mr. Potter brought up to me smelled delicious. It would be stupid of me to let it go to waste, plus who knew if he would bring me anymore food after what had just happened.

Picking up the fork, I dug into the food that was absolutely divine. Mr. Potter was an excellent cook, but with nothing to do for roughly two hundred years, I guess he had perfected this skill.

Once I finished my meal, I almost went back to bed, lacking the motivation to do anything. Getting up from my bed, I got dressed in something comfortable again. I wanted to be prepared just in case I had to run away from them again.

I reorganized my bag with my notebooks, pens and some Post-its, keeping it light, so it didn’t weigh me down. My watch said it was a few minutes before three, but I didn’t wait. I needed all the time I could get in the library.

The hallway was empty when I opened the door to listen for any noise. After a moment, it didn’t sound like any of them were close by, so I stepped out of the room and into the hallway.

I needed to practice walking as silently as possible, since they had impeccable hearing. Finding the library was easier this time. The sheer size of the library was astonishing, but it also made me wonder how someone could accumulate so many books. It was like every bookworm's dream.

Too bad they didn’t have a good smutty romance section. Whitney, Wander and Willow would look pretty damn good on these shelves.

Walking a little further into the library than I did yesterday, I enjoyed looking through all the titles, seeing if I recognized any of them. Most of these titles I had never heard of, but occasionally I would spot an author like Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

Some books looked to be in pristine shape, making me wonder who started this library or if they had collected this over the hundreds of years they had been here.

As I perused for a bit longer, I recognized titles like Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

The time was going by too quickly as I looked for a section that had grimoires or supernatural texts. When I reached the back of the library, I had found what I was looking for.

I thought our collection of books and texts was impressive. We literally had nothing on this. Books I had only dreamed of having time to look at were here in plain sight. Running my hand over a row of books, I immediately felt a moment of serenity as I closed my eyes.

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