The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(8)

“Are you okay, Alex?” she asked, but Alex was looking at the other two now, who were also eyeing him strangely.

He didn’t know if he was just being paranoid, his fears fed by the barrier, but suddenly everyone’s eyes seemed to be on him and he didn’t like the feel of them burning intensely into his flesh, judging him, scrutinizing him, assessing him. He’d had enough.

“No, I’m not,” he panted. “I-I have to go. Don’t follow me.” With that, he rushed from the tower room and headed toward the door of a guard room that lay adjacent to it.

Reaching the guards’ quarters, he lay down on one of the makeshift beds and hoped sleep would come quickly, only to sit bolt upright a moment later as he heard the door open. Natalie walked in. She looked concerned, and Alex was paradoxically both annoyed and relieved that she had followed him. At least she had come alone. He wasn’t sure he could handle more than one person at a time right now.

She sat on the chair next to him. “What’s wrong, Alex? You’re acting really strangely.”

“I just… haven’t been feeling very well,” he said.

“It is more than that, I can tell,” she pressed, narrowing her dark eyes. “We’ve been through so much—you can tell me anything, and I will not judge you for it, as you have tried not to judge me when I have strayed off the path a bit.”

He exhaled, closing his eyes. “Fine,” he grated out. “There’s a reason I’m not feeling well. I feel all… twisted up inside, and being in this place isn’t helping.”

“Why do think you feel this way?” she asked, sounding like a psychiatrist. It irked Alex, despite himself.

“Something happened at Stillwater, and it’s making everything worse. It has something to do with the golden beasts I set on Alypia… I used some of my essence, I think,” he said, wincing. He hated to say the words aloud. He didn’t know why, but he felt a sort of shame about it, as if he had damaged a gift or broken something very precious, and he didn’t like the way that felt. Every negative emotion felt heightened by the barrier’s persistent presence.

“I thought that may have been the case,” Natalie replied in a hushed tone. “I know it made me feel like that… Always on edge, everything feeling terrible, every nerve irritated.”

Even if she had known of his sacrifice, she couldn’t have warned him of the repercussions. He had acted on impulse, seizing the moment, and now he was dealing with the consequences. Hadn’t he said that once, brimming with bravado in the halls of Spellshadow? Hadn’t he said that he would deal with the consequences of a missing piece of himself when the time came? Well, the time had come and gone, and it felt agonizing and impossible to deal with. He looked to Natalie with a renewed sense of respect, understanding that after her portal act she had likely gone through much the same as he was.

“How did you get through it?” he asked her quietly, feeling his frayed nerves begin to calm slightly.

She gave him a warm smile. “Friends looking out for me, and plenty of rest.”

He managed to return her smile. “Well, that’s what friends do, right? They look out for each other when they do idiotic things.”

“I doubt it will be our last time,” she chuckled, though it was somewhat strained. It felt to Alex as if there was something else she wanted to say, but whatever it was, she didn’t say it.

“Are you all better now?” he asked.

She shrugged. “As strange as it may sound, I think the focus of learning again at Stillwater has had something to do with it. I do not know how I felt before it happened, but I feel closer to the normal I remember than I have in a long while.” There it was, a hint of the unspoken thing.

Alex skirted the allusion to missing Stillwater, taking comfort from her latter words instead.

“And it took rest?”

“Rest and not rushing into anything major, or you will only make it worse… though I believe you have already defied that a few times recently.” She smirked, picking up a blanket from the pile on the table beside her and handing it to him. “Thanks, by the way, for saving us from those hallucinations—I have not had the chance to say it yet.”

“Don’t mention it,” he muttered. “It’s what we do.”

She nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “It is what we do.”

As he pulled the blanket around himself, Alex realized he must have been running on the fumes of residual adrenaline and sheer determination all this time, because the exhaustion hit him like a tidal wave.

On the far side of the room, he could hear Natalie clattering around, and she soon returned, clutching a mug in her hands. She crouched on the floor beside him and passed him the steaming beverage. Lifting it to his lips, the familiar prickle of peppermint wafted into his nostrils, and he felt a small smile curve at the corners of his mouth, remembering Gaze and her endless teas. Sipping cautiously, he swallowed the hot liquid, feeling it warm him as it slipped down his throat. There had been an undeniable method to Gaze’s tea madness—it worked, and whether it was a peculiar placebo effect or not, it made him feel better.

He was still awake and sipping tea when Ellabell entered the guards’ quarters and hovered in the doorway. Alex watched Natalie walk over to where Ellabell stood. For what seemed like a lifetime, they whispered between themselves, glancing in his direction every so often, as if just to add to his gathering anxiety.