The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(98)

Just then, he became aware of the shuffle of feet behind him, and turned sharply to see Caius emerge from the darkness, his cane clicking on the stone. He was holding a half-dead Vincent by the neck with the hand not clutching the cane, dragging him along like a ragdoll. The necromancer was limp, his black eyes rolling back into his head, and there were cuts on his pale arms and bruises to his face, as if he had tried to fight the warden off.

It was more than Alex could take.

“She was right,” he gasped.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Caius said softly, with a kindness in his voice that almost fooled him.

“What is this?” Alex asked, gesturing between the empty wall and the limp necromancer.

“I am so sorry for this, my boy… I thought I could let you go. I honestly believed I could, but then you spoke about the book, and the risk became too great. I realized I couldn’t let you go after all, as much as I wanted to.” The old man sighed heavily, dropping Vincent to the floor with a sickening thud. “I know you won’t believe me, but I didn’t intend it to be this way.”

Alex glared. “And how was it supposed to be?” he spat.

“They have to pay, Alex. Hearing your plans to save them all… I’m sorry, but I can’t allow you to walk free,” said Caius, his expression infuriatingly sad.

“Why should I have to suffer for what they all did?” Alex asked, balling his hands into fists. Anger pulsed inside him, making the edges of his aura bristle with silver light. It was like being a caged animal, with nowhere left to run.

“You should blame them, not me,” Caius urged, to Alex’s increasing annoyance. “Your anger is misplaced.”

“No, I blame you! You’re the only one standing here—standing between me and what little hope I have left,” Alex hissed. “Why, Caius? Make me understand, because right now I don’t have a clue what you’re doing this for! I trusted you… For God’s sake, I trusted you!”

Caius had the decency to look ashamed as he spoke. “I will tell you all the answers you desire, only because you have a right to know why I have chosen this path. The simple truth is, Alex, I don’t want the mages to survive—they do not deserve it. You are young, but I have had a couple hundred years to mull over my thoughts on them, to come to this conclusion. I have witnessed the horror they have inflicted upon innocents, and I have continually stood by and done nothing, because I was younger then too, and I thought as you do now. I didn’t understand what had to be done.” Caius closed his eyes for a moment. “Can you imagine what it is like, tearing the very essence from a person, for personal gain? It is not a means to an end—it is inhuman, and I am certain now that the Great Evil would be kinder than any of this. Who knows, when it has eaten its fill of our kind, perhaps it will leave the innocents too. We were too proud to test the theory, valuing our own lengthy lives above others we cut short,” he muttered bitterly. “You heard the things Alypia said to me, and you have heard the things Julius, and all the rest of them, have done—those are their true colors.”

Alex tried to calm himself with steady breaths. Surely, he could talk Caius into seeing sense. Surely, he could reason with the man who had once been an ally.

“Alypia and her father are two rotten apples in a bunch that aren’t, Caius. What if your theory is wrong? What if it never stops, until there are no mages left?”

“If my theory is wrong, it is still the kinder course. The royals have learned nothing. They don’t care even a little for what they did—give them the choice again, and they would repeat history,” Caius insisted, his golden eyes glinting with angry tears. “Even nature itself wants magic gone—fewer and fewer mages are being born, even within noble magical families. Mother Nature wants to wash her hands of it, for good, as punishment for the genocide they wrought upon your kind. I am simply speeding up the inevitable.”

“What would Guinevere say, if she could see you now?” Alex said desperately. “She wouldn’t want innocents to burn too, would she?”

“Perhaps not, but she isn’t here to stop me, because they killed her,” the old man reasoned. “I have the chance to make amends for everyone who died. An eye for an eye.”

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, Caius.”

Caius smiled. “A blind world is better than one filled with mages.”

“You can’t honestly believe that,” said Alex, horrified. It was unimaginably awful, what Caius had been through, and he couldn’t help but wonder how he might feel if it was Ellabell in a situation like that. But no matter how he dwelled upon it, he knew nothing could justify yet more death, on such an enormous scale.

Glancing around, Alex looked for any sign of a feasible exit, knowing he would need one when this talk inevitably came to blows. He understood that his chances of overcoming Caius completely were slim, but he felt he might be able to stun Caius for long enough to make a break for it. For now, he just needed to keep the warden talking, keep him distracted until he could see a viable route to take, when the time came.

There was the door to the tower room, but he knew he might not be able to get it open before Caius got up again. Then, there was the broken door leading toward the common room, but that would involve stepping over Caius. He could try magical travel too, but the thought of taking the brickwork with him and having it crush him or rip him apart prevented him from doing so. He was, for all intents and purposes, trapped.