The Keep (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #4)(99)

“You won’t change my mind, Alex, though I admire your spirit,” Caius said, an eerie calm in his voice as he strode over Vincent’s limp body.

Alex tried to take a step back, but there was only a brick wall behind him. “You don’t have to kill me.”

Caius grinned with odd warmth. “I tried to do this the fair way once before, with your father, but that didn’t work out so well. The only option now is death.”

Alex froze. “My father?”

“That vision you had, using this unnatural abomination’s skillset,” Caius said, nodding toward Vincent’s body. “It was my man running after your father—I would have brought him here, where I could lock him up and keep him safe from those selfish savages. I even had a chamber decorated specifically for him… I believe you know the one, near the entrance to the pit.” Caius smiled briefly, but all Alex could do was stare in shock. “It wouldn’t have been a hard life for him. He would never have wanted for anything, and I would have come up with a tale to tell his wife, to soften the blow, but then that shadowy idiot went and killed him.” He sighed woefully. “It wasn’t ideal for anyone, but I suppose it did the job just as well, in the end.”

Alex recalled the hooded figure in the trees, and realized it hadn’t been the Head after all, but Caius, hiding in the tree-line, ensuring the task was done, waiting to have his prize brought back to him.

“My father would never have run if you hadn’t had him chased. He would be alive if it weren’t for you,” Alex growled, not quite knowing how to process this new information.

Caius shrugged. “There are undoubtedly a number of things you could blame for what happened to your father. You could blame the ice cream man for distracting your mother’s attention. You could blame the weather for encouraging your parents to go outside. You could blame your mother again, for insisting they stay in that deadwood town. You could even blame your father for not going with your mother on that day. Anyway, it makes little difference—I’m still going to have to kill you.”

“You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do any of this!” Alex said, feeling how fruitless his plea was. Finally, the warden’s true nature was rising to the surface, and, at least to Alex, the man was at last living up to his reputation.

He realized with a sinking feeling that there had indeed been a warning sign, but he had missed it, brushing it off as pure power instead. It made sense now, the strange scarlet fog he had touched upon when he had delved into Caius’s mind—it was Caius’s madness, overwhelming his brain, smothering it in a red sea of accumulated rage he simply couldn’t see past, always at the back of his thoughts, influencing everything he did.

“You have put it all in place for me, my boy—you have spurred me on to my purpose, and I have risen to the occasion,” Caius said brightly. “Though it pained me to do it, I smashed my ill-gotten gains, letting the Kingstone essence run free, into the ground, where nobody can get their hands on it. I returned the souls of the departed to Mother Nature’s loving embrace, and never have I felt so exhilarated. I imagine you felt the same when you rid Stillwater of theirs?”

“I felt sorrow and guilt,” Alex whispered.

Caius sighed. “I see you take no pride in your work, my boy, but you really should. There is no essence left at Stillwater House thanks to you, and now there is none here either. I just have to destroy whatever is left at Spellshadow Manor and Falleaf House. Once it is all gone, they will have to kill more from their own ranks to replenish the supply, and when their arrogance prevents them, the Great Evil shall arise,” he cackled, the cruel, mad glee glinting in his eyes.

It was clear the warden wasn’t in the mood for negotiating anymore, and any plea Alex made would be useless. There was murder on the old man’s mind. Right now, Alex needed to get out of Kingstone Keep. His hopes would come to nothing if he died now, in this lonely place.

It serves me right, Alex thought, for ever trusting a royal.





Chapter 33





“If you have any final remarks, I will not deny you them,” Caius said, holding out his free hand as if in benediction. The old man, Alex realized, really believed he was showing mercy. On the floor at his feet, Vincent’s hand twitched almost imperceptibly.

“I do have one last question,” Alex said, conjuring threads of silvery black beneath his fingertips, fine at first, as he let the black-speckled anti-magic swell and surge all around him. The strands thickened, rippling with wave after wave of bright silver energy. His eyes burned as a spiral of glittering silver sparks began to fall all around him in a bright snowstorm of glinting light.

“Did you actually think I would die without a fight?” Alex shouted, focusing on the rage running through his every vein, brimming over the edge of his every cell. He roared as he forced it all out of his body in a vast, explosive surge that rushed forward, knocking Caius backward with a ferocious blast.

It took the warden by surprise for just long enough to give Vincent, who had come back around, the opportunity to lunge upward and force his veined hands onto the sides of Caius’s head. He clamped his thin fingers around Caius’s skull like two vised claws, the necromancer’s mouth moving silently as he spoke incantations, while his palms conjured ghostly white lines that shimmered into Caius’s temples.