The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(69)

Alex pressed his hands on the table. “Then we let her.”

The group turned to look at him in unison, their mouths open wide in surprise.

“I beg your pardon?” Lintz spluttered.

“We let her come through,” he repeated. “I think we’ve been looking at this all wrong. It was something that came to me when I was with Caius—”

Lintz and Demeter froze. “You met Caius?” they chorused.

“Turns out he’s not a bad guy,” Jari chimed in.

“Though the jury here is still out,” Aamir added.

“Not a bad guy?” Lintz looked entirely confused.

“I spent some time with him after I went in search of Ellabell. He saved her… He’s on our side, and he hates the royals. The violence is an act, to keep control over the prison as non-invasively as possible,” Alex explained rapidly. “But this idea that I had, while I was with him—we let Alypia come through, and when she comes looking for me, which she inevitably will, we ambush her. Then, we trap her here at Kingstone and steal her portal.”

“Why would we want to do that?” Natalie asked.

“It’s killing two birds with one stone,” Alex replied. “You know what Julius said. The royals are going to keep extracting more and more essence, and I doubt any of us want to stand by and leave innocent victims to their fate, right?”

The others nodded solemnly. He could see it had been playing on their minds too.

“If we do this, with Alypia out of the way, we can go back through to Stillwater House, rally Helena to our cause, and ensure that more people don’t have to die. We can’t just leave the havens in the hands of cruel royals, Caius being the exception. Even if the situation weren’t so dire with the other students, we’d still need to move ourselves to a place with better resources—there’s no essence here we can use to get home,” he explained.

Demeter frowned. “No essence? That’s a lie.”

“I didn’t say there isn’t any essence, I said there’s no essence we can use. Caius told me that the stuff here is too strong, and I believe him. He wants us to succeed—I would still be out there looking for it if I thought we stood a chance of using it,” Alex replied firmly.

“So we’d all go back to Stillwater?” Ellabell asked, anxiously pushing her spectacles back up to the bridge of her freckled nose.

Alex nodded. “We’ll have a better chance of survival if we seize that power back and ensure that good people are in charge of the havens, instead of the current figureheads. With time and numbers and knowledge at our disposal, it would give us a chance to cook up something that might give everyone else their freedom too. We can do more, save more, deal the upper echelons a real blow. Who knows if we’ll have that chance again?” he said, adrenaline coursing through him.

“Wait, so you don’t want us to go home?” Aamir questioned, bemusement flashing in his eyes.

“No, no, I do—but we can postpone it a short while, to help the other havens,” Alex said.

The older boy nodded. “I guess we should… It only seems fair. Why should we get the chance, if they don’t?”

“Right. And once we’re in Stillwater, we can make our way around to Spellshadow Manor and infiltrate that haven too, with greater numbers than we have now,” Alex ventured, looking around. “From Spellshadow, we can figure out a way of breaking down the barrier, so that every single Spellshadow student can simply walk out of that place, or we could try to build another portal home with the extra essence we’ll have access to, if we have to. Point is, it gives us more options, and, right now, that’s what we need.”

“And Helena? You mean, I might get to see her again?” Jari gushed.

“If we did this, we’d definitely need her,” Alex said.

“Don’t you dare put my darling in harm’s way,” Jari warned, a stern expression on his face.

“Of course not.” Alex smirked. “I just mean that, if we manage to get her to help, it’ll be easier to trap our hooded friend and lock him up, out of the way, so we can take control of Spellshadow too.”

“But surely the Head knows she’s in cahoots with us?” Ellabell remarked.

Alex shrugged. “We can get Helena to pretend she’s been brainwashed by her mother or something—some kind of nonsense that’s crazy enough to sound believable. Then we’ll have her masquerade as Virgil’s ally, or we can use her intel to find a way to capture him. She does have a whole school at her disposal, after all, and if Alypia isn’t there to stop anyone going into areas they’re not supposed to, then we’ll have an even wider scope of knowledge. Like I say, that part will come after we’re through the portal.” He paused, noting a few bemused expressions. “What?”

“Who is Virgil?” Natalie asked.

Alex smiled. “It’s the Head’s real name.”

“No way!” Jari guffawed. “Virgil, huh? Virgil, Virgil, Virgil… I don’t see it. I always thought of him as more of a Norman.”

“It takes some getting used to,” Alex muttered, realizing it was the first time he had used the name without flinching.

“So, how do you propose we do this, seeing as this is the best plan we have right now?” Aamir asked.