The Chain (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #3)(85)

Alex’s friends stared at him in confusion. “I have no idea why,” Alex shrugged.

“So… does this mean Spellshadow is back in the Head’s hands?” asked Jari.

Alex nodded. “I think it must—why would the guards have come back otherwise?”

“Do you think they’re okay?” wondered Ellabell sadly.

It was a question Alex couldn’t answer. He could only hope the students at Spellshadow were doing fine, or were in no worse state than they had been in before, though he imagined the Head must have implemented some new rules to try to prevent an uprising from happening again. What those new rules were, he shuddered to think.

“Whatever happens, we know they aren’t dead, and as long as they’re alive, there’s hope,” Alex stated, trying to give courage to the drained faces of his friends. “One person who isn’t going to be okay, however, is that prisoner. Do you know where they might have taken them?” He turned to Helena, certain she could shed some light on the matter.

“I don’t. I can find out, though.” Helena tilted her head thoughtfully. “Just leave it to me.”

The group looked up sharply as the door creaked, disturbing their hushed conversation. At the far end of the room, a stern-looking wizard had entered, his eyebrow raised as he saw the congregation gathered around Jari’s bed. With slow deliberation, he looked from his watch to them and back again, tutting loudly.

“Isn’t it time you were leaving? Visiting hours are long over,” he declared.

“Just five more minutes,” Jari pleaded, but the dour medical mage could not be swayed.

“Out—now!” he barked. The group said their swift farewells to Jari and scurried from the room with promises to come back tomorrow.

Though the others headed straight for their rooms, Alex waited until they weren’t looking and slipped away from the group at one of the hallway junctions, with other ideas on his mind. Aamir’s words about the tunnels had inspired him, bringing back memories of what the Gifting Ceremony entailed. With those recollections, a decision had come to him: he would use the cover of darkness to investigate the arena.

Alex had a sneaking suspicion that the black bottles, or whatever fancy glasswork the Stillwater folk used, might be stashed away beneath the amphitheater, at the end of the tunnel where the losers were hauled away. It made sense; Helena had told them that the Gifting Ceremony happened beneath the amphitheater, so Alex figured that had to be where they stored the stolen essence, in the same way that the antechamber attached to the room with manacles was where they stored the pulsing black bottles at Spellshadow.

The hallways mostly empty given the hour, he crept uninterrupted through the villa and out across the lakeshore, sticking as closely to the shadows as he could and making his way toward the vacant arena. As he walked along the eerie pearlescent shingle and up over the field toward the amphitheater, he felt a rush of dread. He became aware of the familiar sensation of eyes on him, making his skin feel hot and prickly. Someone was watching him.

Glancing back toward the villa, his eyes scanned the exterior, but he saw no one. Turning his head away, he instantly snapped it back, unsure whether he’d seen a flash of something in the top room of the abandoned tower at the far edge of the building, the exact place he had watched the Ascension Ceremony from. He squinted, trying to make out a shape in the window, but if there had been something there, it was gone now. Turning back, Alex tried to convince himself it was a figment of his imagination—he would have managed it, too, if he hadn’t been able to sense the burning heat of eyes upon him still.

Reaching the amphitheater, he slipped around the back, hoping it would block him from the sight of whoever seemed to be watching. Sneaking along the rear wall, trying to remain unseen, he was hoping for a back way in. It appeared he was out of luck. Then he happened upon a narrow side door in the masonry. He skirted along the far edge of the curving structure. Opening it with some force, Alex moved swiftly into the belly of the amphitheater. Initially, in the dim light, it was a disorienting place to be, with all the walls and corridors looking identical. But as he moved along the tunnels, he saw two rectangles of light in the distance that he suspected were the tunnel entrances—the ones the combatants used to come in and out of.

It was dark beneath the arena, but, after stumbling about for several minutes, he came across a long hallway of doors. He cursed loudly, the expletive echoing—he knew it would take him ages to find the right one, if it was even there. Walking along slowly, he hoped the right door would jump out at him, but they all stared blankly back, each looking exactly the same as the next.

Through some of the grates in the doors, he could see manacles dangling over grills in the floor. The rancid scent of blood and fear rushed into his nostrils, but he couldn’t see any doors hidden away in the walls beyond the grills. He searched the length of the corridor, but none of the rooms contained the bottles he was looking for. There were no antechambers in any of them, and certainly no stashed essence. Perhaps, he thought, the bottles were hidden in a secret cellar or behind a trick bookcase, which meant his search was an entirely pointless endeavor.

Frustrated, Alex moved away from the doors and chambers and headed back out into the balmy evening, wondering with irritation where the Headmistress was hiding her stolen treasure of life magic. A thought came to him, as he mused upon one place she might be keeping them: her office. It would be just like Alypia to keep them close at hand, where she could view them at her grim pleasure, delighting in so much suffering. If they were in Alypia’s office, he realized, they may as well be on the moon—the Head’s office had been hard enough to get into, but he imagined the Headmistress’s would be a truly mighty feat. It didn’t seem difficult to enter, but that was the beauty of Alypia’s restrictions—nothing was ever supposed to look like a barrier. He wasn’t even sure he could remember the way to her office, the directions fuzzy in his mind.