The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)(66)

Alex didn’t bring it up again, but as they ate, Jari seemed to have an air of passive-aggression about him, skewering a buttered potato on the end of his fork and biting savagely into it as Alex asked how they were both doing. Alex was frustrated by Jari, but refused to let his friend see. At least Natalie had tried to explain why they had kept the cellar training from him, but Jari seemed set on brushing off any guilt he might have felt, not caring about Alex’s feelings. Alex tried to talk to Natalie instead, but Natalie was too tired to really speak. He knew she had been in another of her brutal lessons with Renmark, and it had clearly left her on the brink of exhaustion. Even lifting a forkful of mashed potato to her mouth left her hands shaking.

So, they ate in almost complete silence, peppered by snippets of small talk and the clink and scrape of cutlery on ceramic.

“Alex Webber?” a voice asked. Alex turned to see a boy beside him, small in stature, with reddish-brown hair. It was the new boy, Felipe Cortez.

“Yes?” said Alex, frowning.

“Please come with me. Professor Escher would like to see you right away,” he explained nervously, brushing an anxious hand through his hair.

“Me?” asked Alex, his heart in his throat.

The boy nodded. “Yes, right away. Follow me.”

A wave of dread crashed over Alex as he stood to follow the boy. Casting a worried glance back at his two friends did nothing to still his nerves: their faces were as pale and horrified as he imagined his to be. Paranoia piggybacked on the rush of dread. Alex wondered if it had come—if this was the moment he had been fearing.

Had he finally been found out? He had been cocky, allowing himself to be reassured that he had gotten away with breaking into the Head’s quarters and firing a blockade of dense ice at Professor Escher. He had been arrogant, thinking he could keep his secret forever, within the walls of the manor. He had allowed himself to be fooled, when there was, in truth, no place to hide in the manor.

He followed the messenger through a labyrinth of hallways, heading toward a part of the manor Alex wasn’t familiar with. Gray ivy hung in clumps from the stone walls, snaking down and creeping out across the floor, where it reached up to brush against Alex’s leg as he walked through the corridors. It prickled him like a nettle, a cold sting against his anti-magic. He didn’t recognize any of the doorways or portraits that hung in this section of the building, but Felipe seemed sure of his route as he scurried on ahead.

Eventually, they reached a broad set of double doors that stood ominously at the very end of a long, wide corridor. They were made of thick, varnished oak with two black iron knockers roaring out from the center of each, sculpted into the shape of a lion and a unicorn, though the unicorn was not the type seen in fairytales. Its mouth was open wide in a scream as it bared its teeth, the eyes narrowed and savage beneath a brutal spike that served as its horn. Alex felt as if the lion might snap his hand off if he lifted the great circular weight that dangled from its fanged jaws.

“I’ll leave you here,” insisted the boy as he tore off in the direction he had just come.

Breathing deeply, Alex steadied his nerves, picked up the bottom curve of the iron rung, and knocked it hard against the dense oak. The impact thundered around Alex, echoing up the hallway behind him. The lion glowered down at him with burning black eyes.

“Enter,” called a voice from within.

Heaving against the hefty door, Alex pushed the unicorn side open and stepped into a large, empty room with a single table and two chairs in the center. Above the room hung a beautiful chandelier, half-covered with a dustsheet, the crystals glinting in the torchlight and casting shattered silver petals of radiance onto the black marble floor. It was polished to a high shine, reflecting the artwork of the ceiling. Alex’s breath was taken away by the beauty of it; whoever had painted it had been a virtuoso. Scenes of battle lay splayed out in minute detail across the whole length and breadth of the ceiling—armor-clad warriors on the backs of savage unicorn warhorses hurling golden spears and wielding sharp-edged blades of pure magic at crooked figures dressed in flowing gowns of crimson and white. Dragons and Thunderbirds soared in a technicolor of scales and feathers, breathing bursts of fire and rippling bolts of jagged lightning down upon the armored knights.

Alex wondered if the room had once been a ballroom or a great dining hall of some kind. It certainly looked grand enough, with suits of ancient armor rusting on the walls and twisted marble statues, god-like in their poses, flanking the room.

Two huge portraits hung on each of the four walls. On two sides, Alex felt watched by the eyes of stony-faced old men with white hair, staring out over the top of golden pince-nez, their expressions haughty and proud. On the third wall, two ancient crones peered out from glassy blue eyes, wearing golden bands across their foreheads, their gray hair twisted up into an elaborate style above it. On the fourth, two much younger individuals watched Alex. A man of around thirty with autumnal hair and golden eyes looked out upon the black marble and glittering chandeliers, a small smile upon his lips. In the painted waves of his hair, a silver band was just visible, intertwined with his lustrous locks. Beside him on the wall, in the next portrait along, a young woman watched Alex with sparkling gray eyes, her flaxen hair so long that it disappeared into the frame of the image. A silvery twist of a tiara wove in and out of her flowing hair, glinting with the delicate touch of jewels.

Alex wondered who they were, these special figures.