The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)(64)

Despite the slight relaxation of the restrictions, Alex still couldn’t help fearing the dark-clad figure, with his eerie mask and commanding voice. There was something deeply disturbing about Professor Escher, as if there was something not quite human lurking below the surface, shrouded from view by cloaks and hoods and masks. Alex wasn’t sure he could trust a man who hid himself.

Natalie had been absent, too, much to Alex’s disappointment. His worry for her increased daily, as she was showing no signs of slowing down in her studies. Rather than use the extra free time to relax, Natalie had thrown herself into more sessions with Renmark, emerging at dinnertime with sweat beading on her forehead, her clothes soaked through, and her hands trembling from sheer exertion. Alex tried to encourage her to take it easy, but she would simply wolf down as much as food as she could and then disappear again, chattering from time to time about something exciting Renmark was going to teach her from a book students were rarely allowed to see. Each time Alex mentioned life magic, she shrugged it off with the same practiced lines that she wasn’t stupid enough to dabble in such things. It grew less and less easy to believe.

Giving up on his stew, Alex got up and left the mess hall, heading through the echoing hallways toward the front of the manor. He needed a break from the stifling indoors, and the cellar was calling. Perhaps he’d shatter another bottle of Fields of Sorrow, he thought grimly as he stepped out into the crisp sunshine. He’d had enough of the library, searching endlessly through the stacks for censored books that had been taken from their rightful places. Recently, he had even moved on to fiction books, in the hope that they might shed some light on havens and ‘great evils’ and voids, but they proved as fruitless as the gaps in the shelves.

It was a warm day, the sun bright on his face as it sat hazily in the middle of an azure sky. A few pale clouds moved slowly across the steady blue, wispy and almost translucent. Alex smiled, noting that even the gardens looked more beautiful beneath the sunshine’s golden glow. Though they were crooked and warped, the rich light lent the skeletal trees and raggedy bushes a bright sheen, and danced across the waxy gray leaves of the ivy that clung to the walls and crumbling ruins.

Pulling up the cellar’s trapdoor , Alex was met by a gust of roasting hot air. Worrying that he had left the torches lit the last time he was there, he jumped down into the vault beneath and stood with surprise as he saw that the room below was already occupied. There were five pairs of students in the middle of a duel, with Jari standing at the far end of the cellar barking out orders. Natalie stood beside one set of duelers with her arms behind her back, watching them perform an intricate spell Alex had never seen before, involving a mist that seemed to cling to the eyes of the opponent, making it hard for them to see. The pair beside them were practicing a spell that seemed to take control of the opponent, using their magic against them with varying degrees of success.

They all stopped and turned as Alex brushed the dirt from his clothes, narrowing his eyes at the scene before him.

A thought rushed coldly into Alex’s mind. He wondered if this was what they had been doing all along, on those days when the two of them had been impossible to find. He felt as if the air had been knocked out of him as he leveled his gaze toward his friends, waiting for an explanation that didn’t come.

Natalie’s mouth went wide in shock at the sight of him standing there, her expression molding into one of guilt. Jari, meanwhile, seemed to shrug off Alex’s sudden presence, ignoring him with a determined expression as he barked further orders, trying to regain the duelers’ attention.

Alex couldn’t help the hurt and confusion that rose up through his veins. They had kept this from him, and he didn’t know why. He almost climbed straight back up the ladder and out into the gardens, but Natalie moved toward him.

“Alex, please wait,” she insisted.

The other students glanced at each other awkwardly, as if they could feel the tension in the room. One of them turned to Jari, asking if they should go, but Jari shook his head.

“No, you have to stay. You have to prepare to fight,” he explained tersely.

Alex felt frustration pulse through him, wondering again why his friends had kept this secret from him and why Jari did not seem to care. He wondered desolately if it was because they thought he was useless. After all, Jari hadn’t seen him use the blockade or the fog the other night, what with being too busy dragging Ellabell to safety and running on ahead. Then there was Natalie, who was so busy with her own extracurricular sessions that Alex hadn’t had the chance to talk to her about the notebook and his vastly improving skills as a Spellbreaker. They hadn’t given him the opportunity to prove what he was now capable of, because they simply hadn’t been around. There had been so many occasions lately when he had needed them and wanted their advice, and they just hadn’t been there. But then, when Jari had come begging for his help, Alex had stepped up to the plate, despite the dangers. There was an imbalance, and Alex was becoming painfully aware of it, feeling the fracture of their group in the tense atmosphere, making him bitter and bewildered.

“I should go,” whispered Alex. He turned to climb back up the ladder and out into the sunshine. The hazy glow had lost its joy, the twisted trees and wretched shrubs no longer taking any beauty from the sun’s rays.

Natalie came up behind him, grasping him by the arm. “Alex, you must wait. Let me explain,” she pleaded, her voice earnest.