The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)

A thousand thoughts raced through Alex’s mind as he tried to figure out what to ask first. This was his opportunity, and he did not want to blow it. Elias was rarely so openly amenable, but Alex found he could not quite focus once the spotlight was on him. It was hard to find the question he wanted answered the most when he wanted them all answered.

“Who are you?” asked Alex, finally settling on a line of inquiry. There was a niggle in the back of Alex’s mind that had been there almost since the first moment they met—a curiosity to know more about the peculiar, impossible being that made up Elias. He had always wondered what Elias might have been before he was the shadowy homunculus. There was undeniable humanity in the way he spoke, and in the fluid mannerisms of his apparent limbs, until he turned into a cat and Alex’s whole understanding of him went out the window.

“Elias made me, and I am Elias,” came the rehearsed sentence from between Elias’s lips; Alex had heard it before, in the early days at the manor.

“But who was Elias before this?” Alex pressed, gesturing at the shadowy form. “Did somebody do this to you?”

“In a way,” replied Elias cryptically, his voice colored with something Alex couldn’t put his finger on. A tightening of what would have been Elias’s throat, lacing the words with emotion.

“Did somebody hurt you? How long ago was this done to you? Where do you keep finding all these books?” Alex fired questions at Elias, watching as the shadow-guide’s face turned even darker than it already was, discomfort looming over his shifting form. Alex didn’t want to push Elias too far, but the opportunity to ask everything was overwhelmingly tempting.

“You misunderstand,” was all Elias was willing to say. “And these books, I find them where they are left,” he replied.

“How did you end up like this?” Alex ventured, waggling his arms to try to emphasize what he meant.

“Elias made me, and I am Elias,” hissed the shadowy figure, the tone in his voice a warning to Alex. Elias smirked, flashing inky teeth. “Though you should not be so fixated on my state, considering your own position. You have read the book on the great battles; you have been told almost all there is to know about the Fields of Sorrow. Surely, you are beginning to understand?” he breathed, the whisper of it pricking the hairs on the back of Alex’s neck.

Alex shook his head uncertainly.

“They hate your kind. Mages—they hate you. If they knew… Perhaps you should be a little less trusting with whom you share your information,” growled Elias. “You think you are safe so long as your secret is unspoken, but you will never be safe, Spellbreaker. You will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder,” he warned, a tense trace of pity in his words.

“Is that the great evil?” asked Alex, remembering the line from the essay Ellabell had spoken of. “Their hatred of my kind? Is that it?” he added, thinking he had hit upon something.

Elias released a low, bitter laugh that chilled Alex’s blood. “A great evil was indeed set free that day, but it is nothing as insignificant as their hatred of your kind. It is far worse.” His starry eyes took on a distant look that unnerved Alex. “Their hatred was the cause, but not the result. They left a void behind that day, and voids must be filled,” he said vaguely, a sudden sadness appearing in the black, glittering depths of his piercing eyes. “Just remember, Spellbreaker: a desperate Mage will do anything to win a battle.”

“What do you mean?” asked Alex.

“The specifics do not matter, Spellbreaker. They are all the same. Desperate wizards do desperate things. Just look at what desperation made your friend Aamir do, pummeling the face of poor Professor Derhin.” Elias lowered his voice, a strangely joyful note to his words. “Some will even resort to life magic. You saw for yourself.” The cheerful glint continued, Elias’s words reminding Alex of Derhin’s panicked, last-ditch attempt to survive by using life magic.

“So, what is this ‘great evil,’ then, if it is not the hatred between Mages and Spellbreakers?” pressed Alex, returning to his previous train of thought.

“There you go again, always wanting things on a silver platter! Such a shame… I thought we’d made progress,” snapped Elias suddenly, his mood shifting in an instant. “I have spoiled you with my gifts. Well, no more. I have already done and said more than I should have, to help you. How can you learn if I lay it all out for you so easily? If you are so desperate, perhaps you should seek out the Head—he has plenty of the answers you seek.”

Elias’s figure twisted in the air, shifting smoothly into the form of a cat. Alex only caught the glint of sorrow for the briefest moment, but it was long enough for it to trouble him.

“What happened to you?” Alex called, but the shadow-cat was already gone, lost once more to the depths of the manor, leaving Alex with the worrying feeling that his secret guide was never coming back.





Chapter 18





Elias’s words stuck with Alex as the day wore on, leaving him distracted and unfocused in classes and snappy during breaks. The shadow-man had made him feel inferior, and Alex didn’t like it. Also, despite the questions he had been able to ask, Alex had come away from the encounter feeling as if he had even more that needed answering.

In the evening hours, Jari and Natalie were once more absent from his company. Natalie had brushed him off, saying she had an extra session to get to, and Jari had made an excuse about wanting to look over some ideas he’d had. Alex hated to admit it, but he was feeling a little put out by their continued absence. Besides, there were things he wanted to ask them, in the wake of Elias’s revelations. He was worried, and he couldn’t even tell them. Natalie concerned him the most, as he wondered what dark and dangerous arts she was getting into, exactly. He hoped she had been telling him the truth when she’d said she wouldn’t be stupid enough to dabble with life magic, but there was a gnawing doubt in his stomach.

Jari, too, so fixated on his scheme that he seemed not to notice anything else going on around him—not seeing that Alex also needed his help. Even if it was just the willingness to spare an hour to listen to the insanity of what had been going on lately in the ever-developing strangeness of Alex’s world.

He wasn’t ashamed to admit he missed them. The manor could be a lonely place.

Equally pressing was the idea that he was falling behind in some intangible way. With an hour on his hands and Jari absent from the dorm, Alex pulled the notebook back out from its hiding place and scanned the pages. It was a code—he knew that. He just had to figure it out. Surely, that would be easy?