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  Alex’s ears pricked up. So his ancestor had ridden a mythical creature, like the ones in all the friezes and frescos he’d seen, depicting the battles fought long ago. He tried to visualize it, Leander sitting astride a great winged beast, but he knew no imagining could do it justice. The legendary warrior must have been a fearsome sight, swooping into battle on the back of Tempest.

  “He was well-loved, you know—not just among his own kind. By all accounts, it was hard not to admire the man, even if you were on the opposing side,” Demeter added wistfully. “Anyway, enough of my tales. We should get back to your lesson. Time waits for no teaching. Now that I know what to expect, we can really see what you’re made of,” he said, much to Alex’s disappointment. He could have listened to stories of Leander Wyvern all day, and he wondered why Demeter had not told these stories instead, when they’d had the chance back at Stillwater House. “If I had known about your past before, I would have made that the focus of our lessons,” said the ex-teacher, apparently reading Alex’s mind.

  “Why did you get sent back here?” he asked, recalling that they had never quite gotten to the core of why Demeter had been dismissed from Stillwater the second time. “It can’t be because you were telling me Spellbreaker stories—that’s why she rehired you in the first place, right? To do just that?”

  Demeter smiled bitterly. “Alypia sent me back because I wasn’t telling her the stories she wanted to hear.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked, though he could have guessed.

  “She enlisted me to report to her regarding your skills and anything secret or useful you might have accidentally said during our lessons. Needless to say, I didn’t cooperate—I refused to say a word about what we discussed in our sessions, though I don’t think you ever said anything incriminating. I figured it was none of her business.” He winked, clearly delighted he’d managed to get the upper hand, even though it had resulted in his return to Kingstone Keep.

  “Sorry if I got you into any trouble,” Alex said.

  “Nonsense! Loose mouths sink ships, and I wasn’t willing to give her a smidgen of insight into you, or anything you were capable of—though I knew you were strong, even then,” he said, grinning.

  Alex smiled. “Will you tell me some more stories after, if we have time?”

  “It would be my absolute pleasure,” Demeter promised, though his expression grew concerned. “What is it you plan to do after this? How are you planning to seek out Caius?”

  “There’s a gatehouse, just on the edge of the forest. I saw it after the barrier went down. I’m going to wait for him there, and if he doesn’t come, I’m going to leave him a note he can’t ignore, to lure him to us,” Alex explained.

  Demeter nodded, a grim look on his face. “Very well. I don’t like it, but I understand why you must do it. It just doesn’t seem right that so much should rest on the shoulders of one so young.”

  “I feel older than I am,” Alex admitted.

  “Still… it doesn’t seem fair,” murmured Demeter.

  No, thought Alex, it isn’t. He thought again of the plight of all those students in the other havens, and the fate that lay ahead of them. Alex hadn’t lost sight of their doom, and he hoped that, with the Kingstone essence in his hands, he might be able to help them too. If he could build one portal with the powerful essence, then why not two, three, four? Why not get everyone out? He knew it would likely be an improbable task that needed some refining, but the raw thought was in his mind, and he refused to simply forget about it. He wouldn’t allow Julius to win—not now, not ever.

  Moving back into position, they went over additional ways of manipulating thought and emotion. Alex picked up the skills quickly. It was easy to feel his way around someone else’s mind with the tendrils of his anti-magic; they moved fluidly, flitting from emotion to emotion until he was competently handling a number of glowing ribbons at once, manipulating each of them with a focused concentration that, while tricky, was nowhere near as draining as the spirit-line magic Vincent had taught him. It was easier to influence emotions than to watch another’s memories, unable to do anything to change them. Here, he had the control. Here, he could change things as he pleased. Even when Demeter tried to push back against him, he managed to force his way through, keeping hold of the ribbons, manipulating Demeter’s mind until the ex-teacher no longer wished to fight back. It was only then that he decided to remove himself from Demeter’s head, realizing he may have gone a fraction too far, stepping into decidedly shady territory. Putting everything back carefully, he recoiled from Demeter’s brain and hoped the auburn-haired mage wouldn’t feel too violated by what he had done. It was progress, after all.

  Alex could see on Demeter’s face, as he shook off another bout of brain freeze, that the ex-teacher wished he had never taught Alex how to do it. Alex was clearly a natural, with great instincts and an ever-increasing aptitude for the darker side of anti-magic.

  Mages’ minds are simple things, Alex thought to himself a little smugly. With this string to his bow, there would be no more waiting for answers. Now, his enemies would bend to his will.

  Chapter 17

  Returning to the tower room after a successful mind control session, Alex was surprised to see Natalie sitting alone at the table, fixing a leg back onto one of Lintz’s battered beetles. In his hand, Alex held the note that he intended to leave at Caius’s gatehouse if the evasive warden chose once more to elude him. The missive was freshly inked by his own hand, dripping with enough intrigue to, hopefully, bring the warden in search of them. He had been wanting to ask Ellabell to come up to the turret with him before he left, to make sure his re-entry didn’t send him hurtling over the edge of the battlement, but it appeared she was elsewhere.

  “Ellabell not with you?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  Natalie shook her head. “No. She went down to the courtyard with Aamir this morning, to see if they could help Lintz out. They haven’t come back yet.”

  Just then, as if summoned by the mention of his name, Aamir entered with Jari in tow. Ellabell wasn’t with them. Alex kept expecting her to follow, peering through the doorway behind them. But she didn’t. Worry shivered up his spine.

  I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure she’s just taking care of a portal or something, he told himself, trying not to show his immediate concern.

  “Have you seen Ellabell?” Alex asked Aamir.

  The older boy shook his head. “No, haven’t seen her since this morning.”

  “You missing her already?” Jari grinned, the smile fading as it became clear this wasn’t a laughing matter.

  “When did you last see her?” Alex pressed.

  Aamir frowned. “I saw her maybe three hours ago—we went down to the courtyard to see Lintz, just after you left to meet with Demeter. He didn’t need our help, but then Jari showed up, so the two of us stayed down there a while longer, keeping the portals away,” he recounted. “Ellabell didn’t want to wait around. She said she was coming here, to help Natalie fix beetles. Did she not come back?” Aamir asked Natalie. Alex greatly appreciated Aamir’s seriousness; he was sincerely beginning to freak out.

  “No, it has just been me all morning. She did not return,” Natalie replied solemnly. Genuine alarm glinted in her dark brown eyes.

  “So, let me get this straight in my head. When did she leave you?” Alex asked, turning to Aamir.

  “Perhaps nine o’clock, maybe a bit earlier,” Aamir replied, running an anxious hand through his hair.

  Glancing at the clock on the wall, Alex saw that it was just past midday. By Natalie and Aamir’s account, they had all left the tower room around eight-thirty, nine o’clock that morning, meaning she had been AWOL for a good three hours. It didn’t seem like a long time, but, within the walls of the keep, Alex knew it was long enough for something bad to happen.

  Fraught with anxiety, Alex paced the room, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation. It wasn’t like her to go off on her own,
and seeing his own worries reflected in the eyes of his friends, he knew his fear was justified. They already had enough to worry about, and now Ellabell had gone missing in a labyrinthine prison full of psychopaths, necromancers, murderers, and who knew what else. Granted, they weren’t all criminals, but there were enough nut jobs to scare him.

  In the pit of his stomach, he felt with sinking certainty that she had been taken, though for what reason and by whom, he didn’t know. He wondered if Caius was punishing them for trying to break his precious barrier and bringing his brother’s wrath down upon him.

  It didn’t bear thinking about.

  “We need to find her,” said Alex, his voice raw with emotion.

  “We will search every nook and cranny of this place until she’s safe,” Aamir promised, resting a reassuring hand on Alex’s shoulder.

  “We should get going.” Alex said, and they moved toward the door.

  The four of them set off at a sprint, running through the dripping hallways of the keep, calling out Ellabell’s name as they ran. As they made their way through, combing every crevice for a sign of her, the prisoners shouted vile things from their cells.

  “The demons have sucked out her soul—you’ll never find her now,” a raspy voice whispered from behind a grate where black eyes twinkled menacingly.

  “Poor little girlie, lost in the labyrinth,” another cackled.

  “Such beautiful curls. I wonder if she can see without her glasses,” a third voice taunted. That one incited Alex’s wrath. He moved to the door, a ball of liquid anti-magic swirling in his palm, ready to exact justice upon the voice within. Furtive eyes watched him from the darkness of the cell beyond as he raised his arm, prepared to hurl the ball of bristling energy at the unseen creature.

  Suddenly, he felt a hand close around his wrist, holding him back. Turning his head sharply to shout at the person who would prevent him from silencing the vile specimen in the shadows, his rage died on his lips. Vincent stood beside him, a troubled expression on his usually serene face. Beneath the necromancer’s translucent skin, the blue veins shifted like ink in water.

  “I heard shouting. Is something wrong?” he asked, letting go of Alex’s wrist as the ball of anti-magic evaporated.

  Alex exhaled. “It’s Ellabell—she’s gone missing. Nobody has seen her since this morning, and I know it sounds presumptuous, but I think someone may have taken her. I can feel it.”

  Vincent looked worried for a moment. “Not presumptuous at all, young Spellbreaker—very shrewd, in fact. This place is not for wandering, and nor should we ever ignore an odd feeling. Let us not forget, our bodies are more in tune with the world than we think; we simply choose to drown out the connection. If it is telling you she isn’t safe, then I trust your instinct. In fact, I believe I may have seen two figures disappearing beyond the barrier not too long ago. Their forms were shifting in the distance… I did think it a little strange,” he said grimly.

  “Who was it?”

  “That, I can’t say. I couldn’t make them out clearly through the fog, I’m afraid. If I’d had the gift of foresight I might have looked closer,” Vincent said, his long fingers tapping together with apprehension. “Alas, I did not, though I recall thinking it might be Caius and a prisoner he fancied torturing in person—it has been known to happen on very, very rare occasions, and Caius does so love the forest.”

  “Caius,” Alex hissed, the word burning like poison in his mouth.

  It was the confirmation he needed. Hearing what Vincent had seen, Alex was convinced Ellabell wasn’t in Kingstone Keep anymore, and that the one who had spirited her away was none other than the elusive Caius.

  It has to be punishment for what we tried to do, he told himself bitterly.

  Fury pulsated within him. He would track the warden down, retrieve Ellabell in one piece, and find the information he needed about the essence—and once he had those things safely in his grasp, he would kill Caius. The thought of murdering someone made his gut twist, but he refused to make the same mistake he had made with Alypia and leave another royal to pursue him.

  “Don’t be reckless, Alex,” warned Vincent.

  “I have to go,” he replied.

  By the time Vincent opened his mouth to say more, Alex was already gone. Running to the turret where he had held Ellabell beneath foggy moonlight, he knew what he had to do. There wasn’t time to turn around and tell the others. If he lingered any longer, seeking approval, it left more time for Ellabell to be hurt by the vicious man who had taken her. After all, Caius was known for his love of torturous spells and his joy in others’ suffering, and if the warden shared even a sliver of his brother’s cruelty, Alex didn’t want her anywhere near him. Alex was the only one who could get past the barrier and out into the forest, where she had gone, and it didn’t make sense for him to waste more time they didn’t have.

  Alex coiled the strands of his anti-magic into his body, folding his solid form in on itself, and disappeared with a snap. As the world fell away and the sky rushed around him, he forced his mind to focus on the edge of the forest, pushing back the racket of a million racing thoughts. With a thud, he landed in front of the gatehouse.

  I really need to get better at landing, he thought absently, brushing the dirt from his trousers.

  Sprinting toward the windows of the gatehouse, he pressed his face up to the glass, checking for any sign of Ellabell in the room beyond. To his frustration, it was empty, but his keen eyes noticed that the map was missing from the desk. Inspired, he reached for his roughly sketched copy of the map, still crumpled at the bottom of his trouser pocket, and scanned it.

  There was an indistinct track that led through the dense forest, toward a settlement just below the mountains. Alex figured it was as good a place to start as any.

  He ran, following the overgrown path through the woods, snagging his feet on the coiled roots, shivering at the soft caress of creeping vines against his neck. It was a dry day, but the sky above was overcast, not a single patch of blue to be seen in the endless gray. To his left and right, he heard the crack of twigs and the rustle of unseen creatures in the undergrowth, startling him every time. He pushed away his fear, focusing only on what lay ahead, hoping he would find Ellabell before something horrible happened to her. With each step, his rage at Caius burned more fiercely.

  The forest came to an abrupt halt. Ahead, the crumbling skeleton of an ancient settlement stood beneath the shadow of the great mountain that rose up behind, a towering tombstone to a ghost town. Black clouds swirled around the summit as the air shuddered with thunder, followed by spidery bolts of lightning that dashed the mountainside, flaring for a moment before fading to nothing. It was too far up for Alex to see the damage it had done, but the storm didn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, lingering gloomily upon the peaks.

  Nature had begun to reclaim the derelict buildings and broken sidewalks, flowers pushing up through the cracks in the cement and crawling across the decaying masonry. Walking through the deserted town, scattering rubble with every step, Alex glanced over the peeling names of storefronts and street signs leading to neighborhoods that no longer existed. He saw the name “Thunder Road” painted on a signpost that pointed toward the mountain. It reminded him of an old song his mother used to listen to while she danced around the kitchen, and he smiled with bittersweet remembrance, the memory urging him forward.

  Passing what looked like an old tavern, Alex could make out lettering that spelled “The Feather and the Sword.”

  Good name for an English pub, he thought as he approached it. Stepping carefully over the rotten floorboards at the entrance, he found himself in a damp, moldering room with a bar at one end that had all but fallen away, and a few festering chairs and tables that he imagined would disintegrate if sat on. A great tear in the ceiling revealed the floor above, but the stairs up there looked as if they had given in to dereliction a long time ago.

  Where are you, Ellabell?

  He returned to t
he street. As he scoured the tumbledown houses in the wreckage of a town, he came to wonder what this place used to be, and how it had found its way into the magical realm that held Kingstone Keep in its palm. There was something decidedly ordinary about it. It did not look or feel like it belonged to the magical world, yet here it was.

  Who lived here? Normal people? Spellbreakers, perhaps? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t get a sense of what this place had once been from the ruins, and yet his mind flitted toward his own kind, picturing them walking among a living version of this place.

  A movement up ahead snatched his attention, his eyes snapping toward it. At the very end of the street was a building, marginally less derelict than the rest. It looked like it had once been a town hall, and it was still mostly in one piece. The cracked white walls gleamed as a sliver of sunlight pierced the dense cloud for a moment, making Alex wonder if that was all he’d seen—the flash of the sun’s glare against the few remaining windowpanes.

  Not wanting to chance it, he made a beeline for the grand building. Walking with purpose, he strode toward it, realizing that if someone was watching from within, there was no point in hiding. The windows on the upper floor remained vacant, staring out at him as he approached. Reaching the steps leading up to the battered front door, he paused a moment to glance in at the broken windows of the lower floor, checking for any evidence that Ellabell had been there. The interior was dim, a musty smell wafting toward him from the holes in the shattered pane, but he couldn’t make out much. A desk. Some chairs. Empty bookshelves. A rug, furry with decades of mold.

  No Ellabell.

  He’d have to go in, but something about the old building creeped him out. It looked like the kind of house adults warned children to stay away from, though he could see how it might once have been beautiful. A lick of paint, some new windows, a sash or something hanging from the balcony above, and it’d be good as new.