The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)(39)

Professor Gaze swirled the ball in a figure eight, the energy leaving a glowing echo in its wake, like waving sparklers on the Fourth of July. The whole classroom was enraptured as she compressed the magic with a loud hiss, sputtering it out without so much as a wink or a gesture or a twitch.

As Gaze gave a kooky little bow, Natalie flashed Alex a look of excitement that screamed envy. Alex chuckled, though he felt the familiar creep of worry beneath his skin. Whenever Natalie witnessed intense power, Alex saw a concerning hunger in her eyes that he did not like one bit. Natalie was already proving herself to be a formidable Mage, but it did not seem to be enough; her hunger was unyielding.

It was all she could talk about as they left the classroom and headed to dinner. Alex listened as she whispered of Gaze’s abilities, her dark brown eyes glittering almost manically as she spoke of what they had witnessed, wondering how it was done and how she might gain the same skills. He had to bite his tongue, wanting to remark that it had most likely been the years of incarceration that had brought Gaze those skills. It was uncomfortable to watch his friend get so hyped up over powerful magic.

In the end, he could listen to no more. He got up and made his excuses to head to the dormitories. Jari asked if Alex wanted him to come too, but Alex shook his head, telling Jari to enjoy the extra bit of free time. Their evening class with Lintz had been cancelled, giving them an extra hour to themselves. Alex decided he would use the time proactively, instead of having the early night he had previously planned to indulge in.

In the quiet stillness of the dormitory, Alex pushed Aamir’s old bed back against one wall, opening up the space a bit. Encouraged by Gaze’s daily words to him, he stood in the center of the wider space and attempted to recall Gaze’s shielding spell. As it came flooding back, he began to invert the instructions.

First, he created a ball of silver and black between the palms of his hands and slowly let the anti-magic slip back into his body, a tendril at a time, instead of flowing outward in spirals. Next, instead of sucking the energy in to form the concave shield around him, he exploded the anti-magic out through his skin.

He felt a rush of cold around him as the shield surged forward, creating more of a barrage than a dome, which slammed hard against the far wall in an eruption of silver and white flakes. Useful, Alex thought, but not quite a shield.

Undeterred, he tried again and again, slamming barrage after barrage into the far wall until it glistened with melted ice.

It didn’t seem to be working. He racked his brain for the part he was missing. Then, it dawned on him: he had to hold the barrage in place to make it a shield. With magic, it was a pull and hold motion, so with his anti-magic, perhaps it would work if he pushed and held.

He forged the ball once more and let the icy tendrils snake up through his arms, before releasing them back outward. Quickly, he held the anti-magic in place by clenching his hands inward and down, instead of turning them up and opening them as if surrendering, like he had seen the magical students do. It held steady, becoming a tangible shield in the air before him, rippling and thrumming with overlapping silver and black as he kept it there. Without an opponent attacking him, he wasn’t sure if the shield would hold up in a fight, but it felt good in his hands—a strong defense against anything that might want to harm him.

Excited by the progress he had made, he clapped his palms together, the shield disappearing in a flurry of snow around him. Flakes landed on his skin, but he did not feel their cold.

Silently, he thought of Gaze’s words. He could do this. He did have the ability. He had just needed some encouragement.





Chapter 15





Alex lay back on his bed, devouring the book on Great Battles Elias had given him. It was full to the brim with intense conflicts and heroic battles that read like the most nail-biting action novels, and yet they were non-fiction; they had actually happened, often to Alex’s disbelief. It told of vast numbers charging across battlefields as gold and white met black and silver, as sparks flew and the very air trembled amid the vibrations of clashing energies. It told of Spellbreakers riding through the skies on the backs of mythical winged beasts as the Mage cavalry thundered along the earth, churning up mud and dirt as they sent bolts upward toward the wings of the griffons and Thunderbirds who flew overhead, trying to bring them down to fight at ground level.

There were great warriors in both armies, sometimes locked in single combat—a fight to the bitter end, with only one destined to walk away. Some of the fiercest warriors on both sides were terrifying women who fought more ferociously, more boldly than many of their male counterparts. These formidable women called themselves the Howling Valkyries on the Spellbreakers’ side and the Gilded Vipers on the Mages’ side, and they roared and screamed as they stormed into battle, their powers piercing the air. It made Alex shiver to think of the sound they must have made, curdling the blood of any warrior who heard it.

The image of one Spellbreaker in particular, Kira the Merciless, stuck in his mind because of how the book described her on the battlefield. A savage woman, more demon than Breaker, her eyes burning red as she gazed down upon the sea of blood she had drained from the bodies of two thousand men, struck down by her hand. She stood atop her mountain of flesh and bone and lifted her godless face to the sky, screaming loud for all to hear as she pounded the armor plate on her chest, the sound inciting fear in all who heard. There was no part of her person that was not drenched in the blood and ash of others. In her hands, she held up great clusters of glowing red fronds, far more frightening than any spilt blood, for they were the souls of the departed, their life magic torn from within them and held aloft by Kira’s dark energy. It is said her eyes burnt bright red for all the souls she had stolen.