The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(25)

“Natalie, stop!” he called.

“I am not in the mood for a lecture, Alex,” she said over her shoulder.

“We need to talk about this—” Alex began, grasping for her, but she tore her hand away.

“I am free to do as I please,” she snapped. “What is your problem?”

“When you start fraternizing with necromancers, you are my problem!” he hissed. He realized they hadn’t completely made up since the last argument they’d had, over Ellabell. “Need I remind you what happened last time you got involved with dark magic?”

Her eyes flashed with a look of sudden hurt, and Alex wondered if his words had hit too close to home. For a moment, she was silent, before the hurt transformed into an expression of defensiveness.

“That is rich, coming from you, Alex. How is your chest feeling, by the way?”

Natalie kept walking, and Alex struggled to keep up with her brisk pace.

“I don’t want to get into another argument with you, Natalie. We don’t have time to argue. I just want you to stay away from those mages—from people like that!” he said. “You have no idea what they’re capable of. And we’ve already been warned away from them. It’s like you go looking for trouble.” He shook his head in disbelief, but his words only seemed to aggravate Natalie’s defensiveness further.

“That is a little bit hypocritical, is it not?” she remarked tersely, just as they reached the wide, circular common room that led to their quarters in the tower above.

“I was only visiting with Vincent to talk about the barrier modules. You know that! I only spoke with him to help us.” He knew it was the barrier again, heightening his emotions, making them spike impulsively. Regardless, he didn’t think she’d buy it if he tried to explain. He had already overstepped the line.

“We should have never left Stillwater,” Natalie said softly. “We had so many opportunities to strengthen ourselves there—the books, the professors, Helena. Now, we have so little. You cannot blame me for trying to learn whatever I can, to improve our chances of survival.”

“We had no choice but to leave!” Alex insisted. “Stillwater House was a fantasy, Natalie. It didn’t exist—Alypia’s offer didn’t exist. Surely the fact that she keeps coming for us is proof enough of that?”

Natalie looked at him with quiet disappointment. “As much as you hated Alypia, her offer was genuine—it granted us a security we will never get again. Here, there is only running and hiding and fearing the smallest sound in case it is someone coming for us in the night, to kill us.” Natalie shook her head, biting her lip as if holding back tears. “I want to see my family again, Alex. I want to let them know I am okay, and continue protecting myself and others, and if that means learning a few things from a few unsavory characters, then so be it. I will do whatever it takes.”

“There’s a difference between doing something to survive and doing it because you enjoy it,” Alex replied, trying to push down the anger rising through his body.

This time, the look she gave him was one of pure determination. “You think you are a hero, yet you run from true power—you fear it. Heroes fear nothing.”

Alex opened his mouth to respond, but he wasn’t sure how. In the heat of the moment, he almost wanted to snap that he didn’t fear anything, but it would be a lie. Neither did he consider himself a hero. He was just a young person like her, trying to survive, trying to make sense of this crazy world, trying to get home.

His expression must have been simmering though, from the way Natalie was staring at him with a fearful glint in her widened eyes, though perhaps it was just the atmosphere playing tricks on him, making him see and feel things that didn’t exist.

Her expression made more sense as he glanced down at himself, seeing the crackle of his anti-magical aura beginning to edge through his skin, trying to defend against the onslaught of Natalie’s words.

He had to get away. Her words had intensified the crawl of rage beneath his skin, and it was overwhelming him. He turned and ran.

“Alex, come back! Don’t leave me like this!” she called.

Her voice faded away until he could no longer hear it. He couldn’t trust himself around any of them, with the barrier manipulating him the way it was. He wondered if it might also have something to do with Elias’s attempt at healing him, the shadow-man’s touch simply making things worse in the long-run, after a momentary relief. Alex felt he needed Vincent’s lesson more than ever to escape the pressure of it all, if only for a short while. He needed the claustrophobia and the anger and the skin-crawling sensation of the keep to pause. If he didn’t catch a break, he sensed he might lose his grip on reality for good. It was already slipping away from him.

He continued on his way to the tower room and reached it quickly. After retrieving two of the black bottles, Alex strode back through the corridors of Kingstone Keep, trying to take the edge off his anger, and soon found himself once again at Vincent’s cell.

Inside, it was unexpectedly spacious, with a large window cut into the far wall that made the room seem airy and bright. Vincent sat in a chair in the corner, a book open on his lap.

“Are you all right?” Vincent asked as Alex entered. “You look like you have a thousand demons whispering away in that head of yours, young Spellbreaker.”