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  They spent a good hour testing each other’s skills, with Alex trying out some of the spells he had picked up from the students in the arena, though inverted to his own anti-magical purposes. Some were more successful than others—the burning figure of an eagle was one he would have to work on, as a paltry conjuration of loose, glittering mist was all he could manage, making Ellabell chuckle. It was strange; some spells seemed to invert easily, whereas others seemed to be solely for the use of mages. There was no anti-magical translation, or not one Alex could figure out, anyway. The conjuration of creatures and birds was proving particularly difficult. Ellabell could almost manage a sleek, golden bird of prey, but he just couldn’t get one to stick.

  They stopped when Jari and Aamir appeared in the doorway.

  “You mind if we cut in?” Jari asked with a cheerful grin.

  It was an expression that had been on the blond-haired boy’s face a lot since Aamir’s apparent return to normality. And it was so close to the memory of how his friend had been, that Alex could just about pretend to believe Aamir was entirely Aamir again, despite their encounter the other night.

  Aamir definitely seemed more buoyed up; that was undeniable, with some energy and color restored to his demeanor—enough for him to want to indulge in a bit of playful sparring with his old friend, anyway. Jari looked thrilled that he was about to spar with Aamir again, like old times.

  Alex and Ellabell sat to the side, sipping from brightly colored bottles of fizzy juice that Helena had brought, as they watched the two old friends. They went at an easy pace, the exertion of more than the basics making Aamir tire quickly, but it was a pleasant match to watch. It seemed to be more of an excuse for Jari to talk about Helena, who had gone back to the school, rather than a chance to actually improve his magic skills.

  “Don’t you think she’s the most beautiful woman in the entire world?” he asked, as he sent a twisting spiral of golden energy in Aamir’s direction.

  “I think she is very beautiful,” the older boy admitted, “but I have not seen every woman in the entire world, so it would be unfair of me to give her that title.” He grinned playfully.

  “Very funny. I know she is the most beautiful. She is more beautiful than any supermodel—you can keep your Kate Mosses and your Naomi Campbells, I’d rather have Helena,” he replied wistfully. “And, she’s super smart and really powerful. You should see her; she’d put the Head to shame, she’s that strong,” he gushed.

  “So, what is it you would bring to the relationship?” teased Aamir.

  Jari pouted. “Humor, good looks, charm, adoration… The list goes on.”

  “I think you’ve definitely got ‘adoration’ down—you might have to work on the others,” laughed Aamir, the sound rippling pleasantly across the room.

  They sparred a while longer, sharing their lighthearted ribbing of one another, until Aamir visibly began to tire. Stopping, the group decided to head up to the room above, to eat some lunch and see what Natalie was up to.

  As they climbed the stairs and entered the next room, Alex saw that Natalie was tucked away quite happily in the corner with her blanket wrapped around herself, engrossed in a red, canvas-covered book that Helena had brought for her, entitled The Juggling Act of Multi-Magic by Salome Rothschild. He presumed it was an education in how to operate a number of consistently strong spells all at once, just as Helena had done, most impressively, when she had removed Aamir’s curse.

  It seemed a safe enough avenue of learning, and it made Alex happy to see his friend back to her usual self, her nose buried in a book, studying intently. In fact, everybody seemed to be happy, and it was a nice feeling to know they were safer now than they would have been back at Spellshadow. Here, they were doing things on their own terms, with good food, clean water, warmth, and company, giving them the chance to learn and grow and mend, without death looming over them in an unspoken whisper of dread. Companionship and camaraderie had returned to the group, however fragile they might be.

  Sitting down beneath the sill of one of the windows, Alex pulled out his pilfered book on The Royal Households and began to read. Ellabell sat down beside him, peering over his shoulder, her eyes flickering over the sentences.

  “Why are you reading that?” she asked quietly, her eyes still following the words on the page.

  He shrugged. “I picked it up the other night—figured it might tell me a bit more about who the magical royals are and what they do within the magical world,” he explained, letting on a little more than he usually would have.

  “Who they are?” questioned Ellabell curiously.

  Alex nodded. “The Princess Alypia—that beautiful, terrifying woman from the arena—is the Headmistress here at Stillwater, and I was just wondering whether all royals were at the helms of these magical schools,” he ventured, keeping Alypia’s utterance of the words “little brother” to himself, until he could be more certain of the relation between Alypia and the Head.

  A look of contemplation passed across Ellabell’s face. “There were some books back at Spellshadow,” she mused. “They had information about the royals in them.”

  “What kind of information?” asked Alex.

  “Well, you remember that battle I was telling you about, when you came to see me in my dorm?”

  Alex flushed slightly. “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s interesting—the royals, after the battle came to an end, had to make a decision. So many mages had died during that final war between…” She trailed off, looking him guiltily in the eye.

  “It’s okay, you can talk about it. It was a long time ago,” he said. To him, it was still a fresh wound, but she didn’t need to know that.

  She sighed softly, pushing her spectacles nervously back up the bridge of her nose. “Well—many mages had died during that war between the mages and the Spellbreakers, and they had this ‘Great Evil’ to contend with too—the one released on that last day. So, naturally, somebody had to take charge and try to protect those who were left. That job, as you would imagine, fell to the royals—the rulers of the magical world,” she began, her eyes glittering with intellect as she spoke. “Now, it has never been confirmed in any of the books I managed to get my hands on—I mean, there weren’t all that many to steal at Spellshadow—but there was a rumor that, in order to protect the rest of the magical community, the royals took charge of magical institutions after the battle, as a means of… Well, I don’t know why they did it, and I’ve never found any other information on it. It was just one page in one book, saying that is what they did, but it didn’t really go into much more detail. Curious though, right?”

  Aware of other eyes watching them, Alex turned to see Aamir staring at them intently. The older boy shifted his gaze away with awkward swiftness as soon as he realized he’d been seen, but Alex had caught the expression.

  Alex turned back to Ellabell, nodding slowly. It certainly was curious.

  Chapter 19

  Four days passed, and Alex’s newfound optimism quickly turned to dread as Helena did not return to the lighthouse. Nor did she send a note, to placate his fear. The others did not seem to think much of it, but Alex was beginning to panic.

  “Something’s wrong,” he said, pushing away his uneaten breakfast. They still had food left from Helena’s last visit, since she had brought a particularly large box, but he knew that didn’t mean anything. “She should have been back by now.”

  “There is nothing to worry about, Alex—Helena is coming back,” Natalie replied calmly. “Maybe you should rest today. You seem a little tense, and perhaps it is making you react in a way you would not, if you were not already so on edge.”

  Alex shook his head. “I’m not on edge. I just feel there’s something wrong.”

  “You’ve taken on too much, and it’s messing with your head,” Jari chimed in, smiling warmly. “You’ve gone to such huge trouble to keep us safe, and so many terrible things have happened that it must be really hard to get out of that mindset—but we
are safe. Just relax.”

  “Helena is busy with duels and trials and studies. She said herself that things ramp up in their final year here, and she wants to be ready. That is all,” assured Natalie.

  Alex had trouble accepting that as a viable excuse for Helena’s no-show. He couldn’t help getting up every hour to check the windows, making sure there was nobody sinister rowing across the water toward them. Each time, he was relieved to see nobody was.

  As night drew in, Alex moved up to the smallest room, just beneath the lamp-room, and pulled up a chair so he could sit by the windowsill, peering out toward where he knew the school to be in the distance, though the torches had been extinguished as the hour grew late. He couldn’t help but wonder at the peacefulness of the place, despite its grim purpose. It was certainly the most beautiful slaughterhouse he’d ever seen.

  Alex looked up as he heard the sound of footsteps on the staircase. It was only Natalie, creeping up from the floor below, concern etched on her forehead.

  “I thought you’d still be up,” she said softly, as she sat down on the floor beside him.

  He nodded. “I can’t sleep.”

  “Mind racing?”

  “About a hundred miles a minute,” he admitted wryly.

  “I thought so.” She smiled. “I just wanted to come and check on you.”

  “I’m fine—just struggling to relax is all,” he explained. “After everything that’s happened, I’m just not sure I can quite accept the luxury of safety.”

  She nodded. “I do not blame you. We have all been through so much. But honestly, I believe us to be safe now. Helena will come back—you will see.”

  “Even so, I’m just going to stay up a while longer,” he murmured.

  She smiled sadly. “Very well… Just please get some rest, Alex. Promise me you will sleep?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You will break if you continue this way. We must all try and put what has happened behind us and look forward, to our path home,” she said, turning back to him with a sorrowful expression on her face. “Goodnight, Alex.”

  “Goodnight, Natalie,” he replied. He watched her wander back down to the room below.

  He heard her shuffling about for a while, before everything went quiet. The others had gone to bed some time ago, Ellabell in the same room as Natalie, with Jari and Aamir in the one below. Gazing back out toward the lake, Alex was drawn to the mesmerizing sight of the water rippling beneath the moonlight. His thoughts sank below the dark liquid, focusing in on something entirely less pleasant—the bodies trapped underneath. The ones he had seen on their exodus over the lake. Looking down, he swore he could see ghosts floating, just beneath the surface, though it was likely just the shift of the water being whipped up by the evening breeze. Still, he could not shake the image of their pale, haunted faces.

  He considered, not for the first time, that he didn’t belong. Mages had wiped out an entire race. His race. He only existed because of some loophole.

  Alex’s brow furrowed as he pondered the meaning behind his life more deeply, looking at it from an angle he hadn’t noticed before—did that mean he was a descendant of Leander Wyvern? The grandchild or great-grandchild to the progeny of the legendary Spellbreaker and some non-magical woman?

  Unless there were other Spellbreakers who indulged in non-magical affairs, he thought grimly. Just because it fit, didn’t mean it was true, and unless Alex could be certain that Leander Wyvern was the only Spellbreaker to create a child with a non-magical woman, he was no closer to being certain of his heritage.

  Dejectedly, Alex stared into the water and wondered if Leander was beneath the glittering surface of the lake too, forgotten by everyone except him and a few dusty history books.

  Chapter 20

  In the middle of a restless sleep, Alex became aware of a strange sound filtering up the narrow staircase from the floor below. His eyes snapped open; it was a familiar, eerie sound. Glancing around, he realized he must have fallen asleep beside the window—he could see the stars twinkling beyond the sill, but he couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. As he stood and walked quietly toward the top of the staircase, the whispering noise grew louder.

  For a moment, he thought it might be another of Elias’s shadowy beacons, intended to lead him to some new, enticing information, but the sound was decidedly more human than that. Peering into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs, he saw subtle movements, as if there were something shifting in the shadows below. Tentatively, he placed his hand on the banister, not knowing whether to step into the unknown or stay at the top of the stairs, until his eyes had at least grown accustomed to the dimness beneath.

  The sound of Ellabell’s scream made the decision for him. It pierced the air, and Alex flew instinctively down the stairs, knocking shoulders with something solid in the darkness as he raced toward the spot in the corner where she usually slept, his anti-magic jumping into defensive action as he tried to make out her figure in the blackness. Desperately, his eyes scoured the room, until they rested on two shapes tussling in the center. One of the figures had her, though Ellabell was fighting to get free.

  “There’s another one!” an alien voice cried.

  Alex wasted no time as he began to work silvery threads of anti-magic between his fingers, building a burning ball between his hands as the shadows swarmed, moving toward him as if drawn to the light. He fired the first barrage of anti-magical artillery at the would-be ambushers, the silver light illuminating their faces for the briefest of seconds as they tried to get closer to him, only to be thrown back by the crackling surge of his energy. They had the beautiful faces of Stillwater residents, all chiseled cheekbones and perfect symmetry, but right now, to Alex, they were as far from beautiful as it was possible to be.

  Another blast from his palms sent them flying backward, but it knocked down Ellabell too, who was caught up in the fray. Alex wanted to rush to her, but she was already scrambling to her feet, snatching her hand away from the guard who held her and darting quickly between the invaders, to stand by Alex’s side. She forged golden magic between her own palms as the guards closed in around them.

  From the next floor below, Alex heard the thud of magic against the thick stone walls and felt tremors shiver through his body as Natalie cried out. Panic rippled through him as he looked around the room, only just realizing that Natalie wasn’t in her usual place, close to where Ellabell slept. She was below, perhaps already being taken away by the guards.

  “What happened to Natalie?” asked Alex, glancing at Ellabell.

  “They dragged her down the stairs,” she replied, her voice strained with fear.

  It spurred Alex on, and, together, he and Ellabell managed to hold the guards back. Flakes and flurries of snow and ice filled the air as Alex sent barrage after barrage toward the approaching strangers, knocking them back time and time again, but it quickly became apparent that their opponents were extremely strong—just as Alex had known the Stillwater folk to be. Each time he knocked them back, they got up and kept coming, shrugging off the deep chill of his anti-magic. The barrages were one of the only spells he knew that he could use against multiple people, and it did not seem to be strong enough to keep them away indefinitely. He knew his anti-magic weapons might have been stronger, or the underground spirals, but throwing individual weapons would have left them vulnerable to the other attackers, and he was still coming to grips with the latter spell. All he could do was keep sending out the icy barrages, in hopes that the aggressors would eventually stay down.

  It was an optimistic hope.

  There was something else, too, that alarmed Alex. Squinting into the dark, he was surprised to see something strange happening each time the silvery light of his anti-magic lit up their attackers’ faces, just prior to impact. It was like a mirage, distorting the faces of the guards, making them seem twisted and odd for a moment. He wasn’t sure if it was a figment of his imagination, but he couldn’t stop looking at those fa
ces as each icy wave hit them with full force.

  Finally, Alex saw an opportunity—a gap opening up between several guards, who seemed to be flagging slightly as he sent yet another pulse of fierce anti-magic. Taking Ellabell’s hand, though the burning gold of her palm sent a shiver up his arm, he ran with her toward the stairs and sprinted down to the lower floor, where Jari was putting up the best fight he could alongside Natalie, who had apparently battled herself free of the guards.

  It was easy to forget how skillful Jari was, but his talent was undeniable as the spells twisted and turned from the delicate movements of his hands, his body turned sideways to reduce the target as his eyes tried to read the actions of his attackers. Regardless of their strength, they were not evenly matched with the beautiful aggressors, and there seemed to be more of them pouring in from all angles.

  Aamir, in his weakened state, was being hauled away at the edge of the room, unable to put up much resistance, though Jari was trying to make a path toward him through the guards. Seeing his friends’ struggle, Alex sent a flurry of gleaming silver attacks at the guards, stopping them in their tracks as they tried to retaliate, only to find themselves face to face with another wave of pulsing anti-magic.

  Using the brief intermission in return attacks, Jari and Natalie ducked forward and grasped Aamir away from the arms of the two guards who had been holding him captive. From below, the staircase was filling with more guards, and the ones from the floors above were streaming into the room. It was clear to Alex that they were cornered. Any and all exits were hidden behind an army of Stillwater mages.

  A last-ditch battle ensued as magical shrapnel filled the room in a glittering miasma, exploding from the close-quarter combat and rising up from the blizzards of snowflakes created by Alex’s defenses. Natalie sent shivering snakes of liquid gold toward the attackers, putting to use some of the most recent additions to her magical arsenal, as each of the five friends struggled in vain to hold off their opponents. They were strong, but the Stillwater residents were stronger. The ambushers pressed inward, concentrating their superior power on the small group until their five victims were too drained to fight anymore. Alex was still managing to cause a bit of trouble, though, as the attackers labored to fend him off; they were not practiced with his particular brand of power.