The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(34)

“I’m glad he taught me how,” Alex said defensively.

“Yes, as well you might be, but it has brought a whole lot of trouble my way,” she sighed. “Always fixing everyone else’s mess.”

“It’s good to see you haven’t lost your compassionate side,” Alex said mockingly, feeling angry at the stout, toady woman before him, who was making little attempt at empathy for his loss.

She stared down her nose at Alex. “Kindly remove yourself from your high horse, Alex. It doesn’t suit you,” she remarked curtly. “You see, the thing about necromancy, especially the way you see the spirit world, is you only get a snippet of the whole story. You make assumptions and fill in the gaps of what you don’t see, and you know what happens when you assume, don’t you?”

Alex frowned. “What?”

“It makes an ass out of you and me,” she quipped. “So, let’s agree not to assume anything, yes?”

“I don’t think witnessing a murder is an assumption,” he said tightly.

She sighed. “Okay, you’re clearly not in a cooperative mood, so how about you just listen for a while? You might learn that everything is not always as it seems,” she said, an unexpected touch of sadness in her voice.

It was a lesson Alex was already more than familiar with. Nothing was ever as it seemed, Elias included. He did not need a lecture on perception.

But he shrugged anyway. “I’m all ears.”

“Things didn’t happen exactly as you believe they did,” she began.

“How do you know?” Alex cut in, wondering what the relationship was between Siren Mave and Elias.

“Elias and I are not so dissimilar, as much as I hate to admit it—we are branches of the same tree, if you’ll excuse my flowery language,” she explained. “Our purpose here is the same.”

Alex tilted his head. “Purpose?”

She nodded. “At the time of your father’s death, we were both entrusted with the protection of the last Spellbreaker. He and I are… guardians of sorts, for lack of a better word. Mm, I wish I could think of a better word,” she muttered. “Anyway, Elias came into this ‘business,’ if you like, voluntarily. I, however, was drawn out of the void by the royals, when the imbalance was created in our world and they didn’t know how to fix what had been done, with the mists of the Great Evil coming for their kind. Silly name, if you ask me—not very original,” she remarked. “Still, they created me from the void. Like I said, always fixing other people’s problems.”

Alex took a moment to let Siren Mave’s words sink in. If what she was saying was true, then she had been aware of Elias for a long while. Perhaps she already knew Elias had been visiting him on the sly, feeding him information. What intrigued him more, however, was the idea of her being created by the royals—she seemed real enough, but did that mean she wasn’t flesh and bone, like he was? He had to wonder what she was forged from, if not the usual materials.

“How did Elias become what you are?” he asked, trying to understand.

She gave him a withering look. “He is not what I am. Do I look like a formless wisp to you? No, we serve the same purpose, but he created himself, as a guardian, to avoid a worse fate. Some might say it was a bold move; I would say it was… Well, it’s not for young ears like yours. The thing is, something must have happened during the metamorphosis, meaning he did not come out as solid as he might have liked. He’s come to love it, mind you—I know he finds a sick sort of pleasure in his mistiness, always sneaking in shadows and slipping from place to place, snooping where he’s not welcome. I lost count of the times I used to catch him hiding in Esmerelda’s chambers and had to shoo him out,” she said, her face puckering in distaste. “I digress—Elias was new to it all, still learning the ropes of seeking out hope for mage-kind, when the news came that a Spellbreaker had been sensed. It had been a long time since there was a confirmed sighting of one of you, and it was big news.”

“Looks like you didn’t do a very good job of keeping my father safe,” he remarked drily.

“Are we assuming things again?” she challenged.

“Just making an observation.”

“We were doing a perfectly good job, I’ll have you know, but I will admit—and I am not prone to doing so—we made a slight error in judgment. We thought we were safe, and we weren’t,” she explained, her tone regretful. “There were other mages who sought to capture and use the last Spellbreaker for their own purposes, driven by personal vengeance and hatred.”

Alex thought of the hooded figure with the twisted mouth he had seen in the trees, and wondered if the Head had been behind the plan that saw his father evaporated into a black mist. Perhaps Elias had been working as a double agent the whole time, with Siren Mave believing him to be on her side, when in reality he had been working to kill Alexei.

“It forced our hand when we saw that someone had started to trail your father—someone working for an underground organization of mages, disgruntled with the king and his rule. It was Elias’s job to watch your father, that day in the park. I told him to summon me if anything happened, but he didn’t—I think he was trying to prove his worth. I hadn’t been the most supportive of mentors, and I think it got to him—again, that is my fault. Enjoy these admissions of failure, as I will not be repeating them,” she remarked. “Ultimately, he failed, but I promise you he was trying to save your father.”