“Sit!” she barked.
He did as he was told, trying to wipe the smirk from his face. “You called?” There was a sing-song note to his voice that seemed to irk Alypia even more.
Her expression was icy. “I thought we had a deal, Alex Webber.”
“I think we both knew that was never going to pan out,” he grinned, challenging her.
“Be that as it may, a deal is a deal, and you broke your end of it,” she replied, a threatening smile curving at the corner of her lips.
“Is it just me, or is it cold in here?” he mocked, knowing he was pushing his luck and finding he didn’t care.
“You’re trying my patience, Alex.”
“Sorry—you were saying?” he encouraged, sprawling across his chair in much the same manner Alypia was.
“It’s unfortunate, Alex, but thanks to your misconduct we are going to have to speed up proceedings. A broken contract cannot be tolerated, and you must be punished for your insolence,” she began, her face devoid of humor. “You know, Alex, you might not believe me but I truly wanted to keep you and your friends safe here, away from those who might seek to use your powers for their own ends. I merely wanted to help you control and utilize them, in the hopes that one day you could use them for good.”
He sniggered, gaining a sharp glare. “You were just the benevolent spirit-guide, helping me on my way?” He raised an eyebrow in disbelief, willing her to challenge him so he could rip her to shreds for it.
“It’s not a joke, Alex. This is not a silly game you and your friends can play at your leisure,” she hissed. “This is serious. This is life or death. I wanted to build you up, to be a formidable Spellbreaker, but you have squandered what goodwill I had toward you. I may not be entirely altruistic, but I am fair. With me, you would all have had a better chance at returning home. Now, you have zero chance—do you hear me?” She snapped her teeth at him. “Zero.”
For the first time since entering the room, he felt fear. Not for himself, but for the others. Alypia was not a woman to be messed with, and they had caused her a world of trouble. The offers had been just, and they had flouted them. He began to wonder if, perhaps, they hadn’t just made a huge, irrevocable mistake. The others might have been happy here, even.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, clearing his throat.
“I wanted you trained and coached, but I’m going to have to make do with the strength I’ve got,” she muttered under her breath. “You understand I cannot permit you to remain within the school walls, after the way you have influenced my daughter? I could perhaps have forgiven an escape attempt, had you not tried to rope my girl into it, leading her astray the way you have. She’s a fantasist, you know?”
Alex thought that was unlikely, musing that perhaps a lifetime under the same roof as Alypia was what had driven Helena to want to leave. He didn’t dare say as much, though the words danced on the tip of his tongue for a moment, begging to be spoken. For the sake of keeping Alypia’s temper as bottled-up as possible, he held the accusation back.
“She seems perfectly sane to me—saner than a lot of the people here, I’d say,” he replied, skirting as close to his cutting comment as he could.
“You don’t see what I see, Alex. Her mind is easily swayed. She is an idealist, with dreams of leading a life beyond the magical world, beyond her royal duties, out in the ‘real world.’” Alypia laughed coldly.
“That sounds perfect to me,” Alex retorted.
“Your mind is so small, you cannot see the gift right in front of your eyes,” she snapped. “You might have had your dream too, had you stuck it out like a good little boy. Not now—now I have but one option for you. You have forced my hand. Just remember, you brought this upon yourself.”
His blood ran cold. “So you’re just going to waste me?” he ventured, wondering if he could garner any information about his fate.
She smirked cruelly. “Hardly. Your curly-haired friend was right. I would never have simply killed you… You are much too valuable,” she said wistfully. “You are the key to stopping this godforsaken plague hacking away at our numbers—it only seems right, seeing as you are responsible for wasting so much essence. You created an imbalance in the chain, Alex. Thanks to your paltry little uprising and that foul, gray little man, we have been cheated out of far greater numbers. You have sent us back more steps than I care to count, so perhaps it is fitting that your life is forfeit.”
She scraped her chair back, getting to her feet. Running her long fingers absently along the spines of the books upon the bookshelf, clearly more anxious than she wished to let on, she prowled around the room, twisting a strand of white hair between her fingers as she muttered to herself. Alex watched her lips moving, trying desperately to figure out what she was saying. All he could make out was the word “unprepared” before she rounded on the wall, slamming her fist against it with a flare of anger in her pale eyes.
“But what choice have you given me?” she snarled at the air around her.
All the while, with Alypia visibly distracted, Alex had been forging anti-magic beneath his hands, hiding them beneath the desk as he felt the familiar twist and coil of the silvery strands bending to his will. Glancing at the perplexed Alypia, he knew he only had a slim window in which to do what he planned. Taking a deep breath, he let the cold energy sink back beneath his skin, feeling it snake through his veins and into the deepest, most enigmatic part of his being. Shivering, he touched upon the very edge of his own essence, feeling the searing pain of it as it burned rapidly through his body, bringing every cell and fiber to life as he utilized the smallest piece of his soul.
His whole body began to tremble and smolder with white-hot heat. He looked up toward Alypia, feeling the blaze of his eyes glowing at her, suddenly vibrantly silver and blinding with bright white light, flecked with sparks of black.
For the very first time, he saw terror on Alypia’s face. Having only witnessed what he could do in the setting of the arena, Alex understood why. Poor, misguided Alypia had believed he needed anger to use those powerful anti-magical skills, the kind that made his eyes burn silver. What she didn’t know was that his hatred for mages like her was always bubbling away, just beneath the surface, ready to be used when he needed it most—a veritable well of fuel for his silver fire.
Holding his palms steady, he fired the liquid silver directly at her, feeling the force of it tear through his skin as it surged forward, twisting around her beautiful face, clawing at her perfect form, trying to sink beneath her smooth, porcelain skin to get at the pulsing red glow within. She howled like a wounded, scared animal as it raked at her flesh, making her muscles spasm as it tried to feed upon her magic. In the mist of fine, glittering light, Alex could see Alypia’s face had turned sour and demonic, the façade of perfection falling away against the grasping fingers of his anti-magic, which seemed to temporarily stall the effects of the strange magic all around them—the crackling air that appeared to have brainwashed all those within Stillwater, as well as made those within its influence more beautiful.
Alex knew this was his opportunity. He threw back the chair and ran for the antechamber, hoping his silver mist would keep Alypia at bay for long enough. Seeing the rows upon rows of smoky black bottles, he knew he didn’t have the time or the space to take them all, and so he ran the length of the room, scooping as many as he could into the satchel still around his body, filling the bag until it was full to bursting.
Satisfied with his bounty, he reached for the first rack at the side of the antechamber door and wrenched it down as hard as he could, watching as it smashed into the next one, and the next, and the next, collapsing like dominoes, the countless bottles exploding into shards, releasing the long-trapped wisps of red-tinged life essence. He did the same with the other side, until the antechamber was a writhing mass of pulsing red light that had begun a mass exodus back into the earth, sinking into the ground where it belonged, never to be used for any unnatural purpose as it ebbed
away.
Alypia was still screaming when he ran back into the study, slamming the antechamber door shut behind him. Her arms flailed wildly as she tried to fight the silver mist that clawed at her with hungry desperation, but Alex knew the anti-magic wouldn’t hold her for much longer.
What would, however, was life magic.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about using it, but there wasn’t time to balance the morality as he picked up two of the bottles from his satchel, apologizing softly to the unknown people they had belonged to. Plucking out the stoppers, he poured the shivering vines of pulsing red light into his hands. The essences burned his palms as they met with the coiling silver twist of his anti-magic. He wasn’t certain how to manipulate life magic that belonged to someone else, but he figured he had come this far by making it up as he went along. Trusting his instincts, he fed his own anti-magic into the glowing bands of red, watching in wide-eyed awe as they crackled into life, pooling liquidly from his hands toward the flagstones below.
Before they could reach the floor, Alex exploded the blazing pools into two gargantuan beasts of golden and scarlet-tinged magic. They charged in a surge of raw energy toward Alypia’s trembling figure, their monstrous eyes glowing black like the clockwork mice he had so adored. As they crashed into the white-haired mage’s body, a red miasma snaked from within the jaws of one and wrapped around her, squeezing tighter with every breath she took. The life magic retaliated against her, trying to claw and scrape at her inner essence, drawn in a frenzy toward it.
Golden jaws snapped and red-tipped talons tore within the confined room. There was nowhere for Alypia to run. Tentatively, Alex withdrew his anti-magic from the roaring, snarling beasts, pleased to see that the monsters remained as he took his influence away. It was almost as if they had a mind of their own now, urged on by whomever they had once belonged to. They attacked Alypia with ferocious vehemence, and the shiver of the spilt, nearby life essence seemed to join with the monsters, fueling them, making them more powerful and more autonomous than Alex could ever have imagined.
Almost fearful for his own life, Alex scampered from the room, worried they might turn on him if he stayed too long. As he ran, the horrifying screams of Alypia followed him, echoing through the hallways. Had it been anyone else, he might have felt worse about how he had left her, but he was in no doubt that she would fend off the glowing golden creatures eventually.
Just not until we’re long gone, he hoped.
The bottles clinked in his satchel as he sprinted toward the prison cells, his lungs burning with the exertion. On his way toward his friends, he almost took out Helena, who was running in the opposite direction, careening into her at full force.
“Whoa!” he yelled, grabbing her shoulders to stop her from going flying.
“Alex?” She seemed stunned.
“No time,” he gasped.
“Who’s screaming?” she asked, pointing the way Alex had come.
“Your mother.” He shrugged apologetically, his chest heaving from the sprint. “I’m… keeping her… busy. We’re leaving.”
Understanding flashed in Helena’s eyes. “The others?”
“Cells.”
Drawing on his last stores of strength, he tore off down the hallways with Helena running beside him, not stopping until they reached the prison cells. Leaving Alex to regain his breath, Helena hurried along the passageway, removing the key from around her neck and unlocking the doors that contained Jari, Aamir, Natalie, and Ellabell. Alex saw that her hands were shaking, but whether from fear or excitement, he wasn’t sure.
Alex ushered everyone out, yanking the doors open and helping them to their feet, assisted by Helena. It was a rushed affair with no time for explanations, and there was panic in the atmosphere as Helena led them all back through the labyrinthine school toward the door with the portal. With a gut-wrenching smack of dread, Alex realized, as they neared the room midway down the dingy corridor, that the portal itself could well have been removed, just as Natalie had removed the one that brought them to this place.
“Please still be there,” he muttered, pushing open the door.
To his overwhelming joy, it was still there. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been more thrilled about anything in his life. Whooping loudly, he scooped Ellabell into his arms, spinning her wildly around, and though her expression was one of total bemusement, she laughed as he set her down.
His delight was short lived as he heard the piercing sound of Alypia’s screams, echoing into the room. The howling, animalistic sound could be heard from where they were, making Alex worry about the rapidly closing window of time they still had.
“What’s going on?” Jari asked.
“I used magic to keep Alypia at bay, but it’s going to wear off soon, so we need to get going!” explained Alex as quickly as he could. He would fill them all in on the minutiae later.
His ears pricked up as he heard the percussive beat of footsteps on flagstones, pounding beneath the shrill pitch of Alypia’s pained cries, signaling that others were coming to her aid, drawn by the haunting sound. They didn’t have long at all.
Kicking the door shut behind them, Alex grasped Ellabell’s hand and dragged her toward the portal, squeezing it tightly as he pushed her through to the castle courtyard on the other side. It was as easy as stepping through a doorway, with no troubling drop to worry about. He urged the others through, watching anxiously as they all made the short leap, but Helena was hanging back.
“Come on,” he insisted, trying to maneuver her toward the portal. “It’s easy.”
She pushed him away firmly, shaking her head. “I can’t go with you,” she whispered sadly, her eyes filling with bitter, frustrated tears.
Jari, hearing this, moved to the edge of the portal on the other side, sticking his head back through. “Please, Helena—come on. You have to come with us!” he begged. “I’ll take you dancing! You can paint with my mom and listen to all my dad’s terrible jokes!”
Helena smiled miserably. “I can’t come with you,” she repeated.
“Of course you can,” encouraged Alex, wondering what had caused this sudden change of mind. He wanted her to be free, and the sight of her holding back was a sad one to behold.
“I can’t—don’t you see?” She brushed away a hot, angry tear. “Now that she knows about the plan, Alypia will move heaven and earth if I go missing. If I come with you now, I am dooming you all. You’ve got more chance without me.”
Jari was beside himself, trying to get through the portal as the others dragged him back. “Alypia will kill you if you don’t come with us—you have to come with us! You have to!” he pleaded. “Please, Helena… please come with us.”
Helena smiled, with the look of a bittersweet farewell upon her pretty face. Of all the perfect creatures within Stillwater, Alex imagined that if the magic were completely removed, she would be the only one who still looked beautiful. He watched as she moved slowly toward the edge of the portal, leaning in for the briefest of moments to kiss Jari swiftly on the lips.
“My mother will punish me, but she won’t kill her only daughter,” she assured him, holding her hand against his cheek before stepping back into the room.
“You have to come, Helena,” insisted Alex, trying hard not to look at Jari’s dazed, heartbroken face peering through the portal.
Leaning close to his ear, she whispered her last words to Alex. “I know you will do what is right, no matter the consequences. Today, you’ll save the few. One day, you’ll save the many.”
Alex wasn’t sure what she meant, but he leveled his gaze with her strange gold eyes. He didn’t know if he could bring himself to leave her to face the punishment surely waiting for her, once her mother disentangled herself from the glowing beasts.
“No,” Alex said, shaking his head. “I can’t just leave you to that woman. I don’t care if she’s your mother or not—we’re not leaving you.”
“Helena, come on!” shouted Jari.
“Pl
ease, Helena,” Natalie added hopefully.
Helena sighed, sparking Alex’s hope that she was relenting and they could get the hell out of there. She seemed deep in thought, and Jari’s eyes went wide with adoring optimism.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a sad smile.
And then Alex found himself staggering backward as Helena pushed a barrier of fierce, unexpected magic at his chest, the blast knocking him squarely through the portal and out the other side. Sprawling backward on the hard ground of the castle courtyard, he looked back up in time to see that Helena was lifting her hand in a tearful farewell. Giving one last sad wave, her hands crackled to life, thrumming with a pink-tinged coil of golden magic, before a shimmer of light blinded them all for a moment, forcing them to turn their faces away.
When they looked back, the portal and Helena were gone.
Chapter 40
Sitting up properly, Alex checked the precious cargo in his bag, worried some of the bottles might have broken on impact with the ground. Thankfully, they were all in one piece, no life essence spilling out onto the courtyard.
Looking around, he could see they were, indeed, in a castle courtyard, staring at the now-empty wall where the portal had been.
Jari was in pieces. “She was the love of my life!” he wailed, rocking inconsolably on the flagstones.
The others seemed equally sorry to see Helena go. Alex knew they must have arrived at the same conclusion as him, realizing they had misjudged Helena at times, when she hadn’t deserved anything but their trust.
“I can’t believe she stayed,” said Ellabell quietly, her voice croaky. “I hope she’ll be okay.”