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  Hadrian nodded reluctantly. “Whatever you wish, Uncle.”

  “Well, don’t sound too pleased about it.” Julius scoffed. “At least I offered you a small sliver of the credit. I am a generous man, let’s not forget.”

  “Of course not, Uncle.” Hadrian forced a tight smile onto his face. “You do me a g-great honor, and I will not let you down.”

  Julius flicked away an invisible dust mote. “Very well, see that you don’t. I shall return in a few months’ time to check on your progress; I expect to see an entirely new intake among your ranks. The essence here is so puny anyway that you shall have to bolster your numbers, more so than any other havens, though they too will be receiving word from me about what I want from them.”

  “I shall endeavor to m-make things more pleasant for your next visit, Uncle,” said Hadrian, teetering on the edge of what Julius found acceptable, from the flash of warning in the king’s eyes. Seeing the expression, Hadrian visibly retreated into himself, clamming up like a startled tortoise.

  “See that you do.” Julius turned around and left the room with a dramatic swish of his long, cream-colored coat.

  Venus followed, though she cast a strange look back at Alex, Aamir, and Hadrian. There was an apology in her expression, and she mouthed a word at them which looked a lot like “sorry.”

  “Venus!” Julius barked, from the hallway beyond.

  With a captivating smile, she swished the rich fabric of her kimono, and was gone in a haze of sweet-smelling perfume, hurrying after her cantankerous husband. Alex stood, frozen to the spot, as he watched his last hope disappear.

  Well, not quite his last hope. A second later, Alex dived for the glass, hoping for some trace of something that he might use. Although he hadn’t managed to vibrate the glass properly, he had run some energy through it, though whether it had been enough to break anything, he didn’t yet know.

  To his delight, he saw a hint of red at the very bottom. There was a chip in the base, and it looked as though Julius had caught his finger on the jagged indent. Gleefully, Alex raised the glass to the light, to get a better look, but his optimism soon died. There couldn’t have been more than two drops present on the jagged edge, and extracting what was there was a near impossibility; most of it had already dried up.

  “Anything?” Aamir asked, standing over Alex’s shoulder.

  He shook his head. “Not nearly enough.”

  “You didn’t get what you n-needed?” said Hadrian mournfully, his whole body trembling.

  “I got distracted. I missed our chance,” Alex confessed.

  “But you must hurry on with your p-plan, Alex, before we are all left in r-ruin,” Hadrian warned. “You heard what Julius said—he wants more. If you don’t succeed, I will have to get him m-more. It’s in his head now. He won’t let it g-go.”

  Alex frowned, wanting to tell Hadrian how unhelpful his words were, but the royal looked deflated enough as it was. “I know what’s at stake, Hadrian, but I can’t do it without the blood,” Alex said.

  “There has to be someone else who can help us,” said Aamir.

  A smile pulled at the corner of Alex’s lips, as it came to him. “I know just the person.”

  Chapter 22

  “Helena might be able to help us,” said Alex, not knowing why he hadn’t thought of it before. She was, after all, part of the royal circle herself, so if there was anyone who could get in touch with the other royals, the ones Alex needed, it was her.

  “Alypia’s daughter?” asked Hadrian dubiously.

  Alex nodded. “She has been helpful to us so far. I imagine she’d be one of the only people who could pull it off, if we were to persuade her to go and get some right from the horse’s mouth, as it were.”

  “You’ve m-met her?” Hadrian frowned.

  “We befriended her at Stillwater House. Without her, we would not be here,” Aamir explained. “She is very much for our cause, rather than that of her mother,” he added with a wry smile.

  Hadrian made a strange sound. “Well, I never. You lot are full of s-surprises.” He chuckled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. Alex couldn’t blame him; they had been through a lot today.

  Without Julius’s presence to worry about, Alex’s mind turned back to the events that had occurred just before he’d returned to Falleaf. Ellabell was still at Kingstone Keep, hopefully safe, though he was beginning to have serious doubts where that was concerned. Each time he pictured Vincent’s anxious face, his own anxiety increased. There had been something terribly amiss back there, and he was eager to return as soon as possible, to figure out what it was.

  “I need to go back to Kingstone anyway to get Ellabell, so we might as well go and see Helena at the same time, kill two birds with one stone,” Alex suggested.

  “I was wondering where she had gone,” Hadrian remarked, his stutter easing.

  “She’s still there, keeping an eye on things. There was something a little strange going on, so she stayed behind to scope it out,” Alex said, trying to push the fear out of his voice.

  Aamir frowned. “What kind of strange?”

  “Hard to explain, just Vincent acting cagey and not very Vincent-like,” Alex replied, knowing it sounded like he was making a mountain out of a molehill. Still, his gut was insistent that something was up.

  “Would you mind if I tagged along this time?” Aamir asked.

  Alex smiled. “I thought you’d never ask,” he joked.

  “Do you require my assistance as well?” Hadrian asked.

  “No, thank you. I imagine you have bigger things to attend to here,” Alex replied. In all honesty, he would have loved to have Hadrian there, but he wasn’t yet sure how many people Storm could carry on her back, and he didn’t fancy overloading the Thunderbird in case she balked.

  Hadrian nodded solemnly. “I should say you’re right.”

  With that, they parted ways, Alex picking up one of the two unused bags of essence still at their disposal, and strapping it across his shoulders like a backpack, as Aamir ran more magic through the beacons and handed one to Hadrian, in case of emergency. The royal seemed thrilled by the tiny clockwork creation, marveling at the craftsmanship. It made Alex think sadly of Lintz, the loss still raw. They left the second bag of essence with Hadrian too, promising to return for it when the time came for the link from Falleaf to Spellshadow to be restored.

  Trying not to let the sadness overwhelm him, he and Aamir made their way out of the pagoda, still dressed in their scarlet uniforms. They passed a long exodus of weary-looking staff on the stairs, making their way out of the building and back to the classrooms and dormitories of the school within the forest, but Alex didn’t see the bespectacled boy again, the one who had thrown the uniform at him. There were other students, but they didn’t pay Alex and Aamir much mind as the two boys darted past in their hurry to return to Kingstone. It didn’t even seem to occur to them that Alex and Aamir didn’t belong to the student body from which they had been dragged.

  You’ll be free soon enough, Alex promised them as he and Aamir hurried down the hallway, past the kitchens, down the stone steps to the unused cellar, and out into the crisp forest air.

  They darted through the trees, old hands at figuring out traps and barriers now, with Alex taking the lead as they ran toward the spot where he had left Storm. As they neared, Alex had an inexplicable sinking feeling that the bird had been taken. She didn’t come out, as she had done before, and Alex couldn’t see her anywhere about.

  “Storm!” he called.

  “Who’s Storm?” Aamir whispered.

  “You’ll see… hopefully,” Alex replied, frowning.

  A chirp erupted close by Alex’s ear, startling him, and the Thunderbird burst upward from an enormous pile of twigs and mown grass. She had camouflaged herself beneath it, smothering her highly suspect shape with whatever was handy. Aamir staggered backwards, away from her, a terrified expression on his face. She ran after him, tapping at his shoulder with her beak. />
  Alex chuckled. “Stay still, she’s friendly!”

  “She doesn’t seem very friendly!” Aamir remarked, trying to shield his face with his hands.

  “She’s our mode of transport. This is the Thunderbird I was telling you about.”

  Aamir looked at Alex in disbelief. “You can ride this thing?”

  Storm chirped loudly, the tone showing how affronted she was.

  “She’s not a thing, Aamir, she’s a Thunderbird,” Alex said. “And she understands more than you’d think, so you’d best be polite.”

  Aamir turned toward Storm. “There, there, good bird.”

  “Hold your palm out flat,” Alex suggested.

  Aamir did so, and Storm placed her beak gently into the center.

  “What does that mean?”

  Alex grinned. “That means we’re good to go—she’s given her permission,” he said, performing the same gesture. With a ruffle of feathers, Storm rested on her haunches, making it easier for the two boys to climb aboard.

  Aamir went first, under the supervision of Alex, who hopped on after. Once they were safely on board, with the essence stowed away securely, they set off. Knowing what it would feel like this time, rising up from a ground-level take off, Alex could enjoy the experience a little more, though it was clear that Aamir wasn’t exactly thrilled by the prospect as the Thunderbird sped along the ground and took sudden, alarming flight.

  “What the—!” Aamir yelped.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Alex shouted as Storm sped up to her full capacity, the world bending and stretching all around them.

  Aamir still hadn’t recovered by the time they reached the turret of the keep, which seemed to be Storm’s preferred roosting spot. Clambering down, he swayed unsteadily for a moment, as if he had just stepped off a particularly turbulent boat. Alex struggled not to laugh.

  “Don’t you dare say a word,” Aamir grumbled.

  Alex lifted his hands. “Hey—flying isn’t for everyone.”

  Making their way down the turret steps, into the body of the keep, Alex could tell instantly that his gut feeling had been right. Where before there had been silence and creepy eyes staring from between the bars of the central peepholes, now there was chaos. The prison was in utter disarray, with voices clamoring along the hallways, and the sound of people running amok bouncing from the rafters. At the bottom of the stairs, Alex grabbed Aamir and pressed him back against the wall, just as a group of particularly nasty-looking individuals sprinted past, whooping loudly, clutching homemade shivs in their hands.

  Once the coast was clear of weapon-wielding criminals, the two young men broke into a run, weaving their respective energies as they did so, in order to knock aside the various miscreants who charged toward them, with menace on their minds. They encountered several on the route toward the courtyard, where Alex hoped the portal still stood. One woman, dressed in tattered rags, came howling toward the duo, spinning her arms wildly, like windmills. Alex dispensed with her, sending a blockade of ice and snow down the corridor, to knock out anyone who might try to run up.

  As Alex turned around a corner, a pair of hands grabbed him, dragging him into one of the cells. He felt the cold bite of something sharp and metallic against his neck, and prayed it didn’t get the chance to slice his flesh open. It took everything he had to remain calm as he lifted his hands to the sides of his attacker’s head and pressed the strands of his anti-magic through, into the villain’s skull. Whoever the man was, he wasn’t expecting Alex’s sneak attack, and Alex made quick work of his assailant’s mind, sifting through a series of vile memories in search of just one he could put into the forefront of the man’s mind to ease the dark, violent thoughts that were prevalent there. Eventually, he did, and the attacker calmed instantly, dropping his hands to his sides before creeping away to the corner of the room to play with invisible toys on the dank floor.

  Alex burst out of the cell to find Aamir also being dragged away. He hurried to catch up, and dispatched Aamir’s assailant easily, with a stealthy attack from behind. None of the criminals he had met so far had particularly nice memories to search through, and the horrifying thoughts kept returning to him, like flashbacks in a horror movie, as he made his way toward the courtyard.

  Running down one of the hallways, not far from the corridor that connected the courtyard to the rest of the keep, Alex saw Vincent slumped in front of a cell door at the far end of the passageway. The necromancer looked to be in a bad state, though his hands were raised, and there were twisting whorls of black magic weaving between his fingers. Agatha was there too, though she was on her feet, fending off any intruders that sought to reach them. She was ferocious, her eyes wild, a banshee-like scream erupting from the back of her throat. It was a sound Alex had heard once before, and it chilled him to the bone. He approached with caution.

  “Alex?” Ellabell’s voice distracted him. She was standing in the cell behind Vincent, peering out through the small, barred opening in the middle of the door.

  Vincent smiled wearily. “Just protecting your dear love, Alex,” he said, firing off a bolt of jet-black energy that hit a sprinting attacker square in the chest, freezing him instantly. “Things have taken something of a turn.”

  Alex jogged toward them, one eye cautiously assessing Agatha in case she decided to suddenly launch an attack at him instead. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to remember any former animosity toward Alex. “What happened here?” he asked.

  In between shots that kept dropping assailing criminals to their knees, Vincent began to shed some light on what had been going on in Alex’s absence.

  “Alypia, I’m sad to say, has managed to escape,” the necromancer said. “I went to attend to her one day, and before I could stop her, she had woven her mind control into my brain, and I was helpless to do anything but obey. I was already under her grasp when you were last here, but there was a little spark in these old bones. I had a second wind when she threatened Ellabell—I fought like a demon. Of course, by then, it was much too late—she was gone.”

  Alex frowned, trying to let it all sink in. It had been his greatest fear, and it had come true. Alypia was free again, and there was no telling what devastation she could cause if they didn’t catch up with her soon and put her away again, for good.

  “Do you know where she is?” Alex asked.

  Vincent shook his head. “I’m afraid not, dear boy. She ran from me, and she has continued to evade me in my search. I have scoured high and low for a sign of her, but she has not been very forthcoming. Once she saw I had returned to my ordinary self, she took off. I didn’t see where.”

  “Do you think she’s still in the keep?” Aamir chimed in, casting a sharp spear of golden light toward a knife-wielding individual who had been making a beeline for Alex.

  Vincent shrugged. “I cannot be sure. She let all of these prisoners out as she went, and we have been dealing with them ever since. She weakened the barrier as well, so that the red fog was not released. It seems she knew exactly where the worst of the prisoners were being held.”

  It wasn’t what Alex wanted to hear.

  “So she could be anywhere,” he muttered. Everything seemed to be falling apart in front of his eyes, crashing down like dominoes.

  Worse than that, if Alypia was on the loose, that meant they were all in very real trouble. Not from the onslaught of marauding criminals, but from the potential of what Alypia could do. If she was out and free, all she had to do was sound the alarm, and Julius would be hurtling down upon them before they could make a move to escape.

  He could only hope that the continuation of the assailants, and the ongoing haze of the keep’s barrier, meant that Julius wasn’t imminently on his way. Alex had seen how quickly the king could be summoned, and it appeared that no such message had reached him—not yet, anyway.

  With a sudden jolt of realization, Alex understood how he might better pinpoint Alypia’s position. There was only one place the Headmistress would go
in order to restore the power that had been taken away from her.

  “We have to get to the portal,” Alex said, taking off down the hallway.

  “Wait for us!” Ellabell yelled, as Vincent let her loose from the cell, but he had already gone. He didn’t have time to wait for them; he just hoped that the sound of footsteps he could hear on the flagstones behind him were those of his friends.

  With a look of abject horror, Alex skidded to a halt at the end of the corridor that connected the courtyard to the rest of the keep. The others jogged up behind him—Ellabell, Aamir, Vincent, and Agatha. The shock registered on their faces, too, as they all looked ahead. Where there should have been a bright portal of glowing light leading to Stillwater House, there was nothing but a solid, impenetrable wall.

  Alypia had gone home, and she had closed the route behind her.

  Chapter 23

  “She’s gone back to Stillwater,” Alex muttered.

  “She might be trying to get a message to Julius,” Vincent suggested. The necromancer was being held up by Agatha’s surprisingly strong arms.

  Ellabell frowned. “Couldn’t she do that here?”

  “Not if she wanted to send something specific. The royals have a means of communicating with one another, but it seems to be personal to each haven curator—I have never witnessed Caius do it, but I am aware that there is a way,” Vincent explained.

  Whatever it was Alypia needed in order to summon her father to Stillwater, Alex knew that was precisely what she would be headed for.

  “We need to get there as quickly as possible,” Alex stated.

  “We could fly?” Ellabell gestured in the direction of the turret, where the Thunderbird roosted.

  “Storm can only handle three people at most,” Alex replied. He was determined to drag Alypia back here and see her locked away for good, but that meant the gateway would have to be rebuilt. He unfastened the sack of essence from his shoulders, and opened the drawstrings, taking a look inside.