The Breaker (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #2)

When he picked up the third book and riffled through it, his anger almost overwhelmed him. He could feel the heat of it in his cheeks, the mist of it in his eyes, as he traced the words from page to page. It was a fiction book—a great, heroic novel marking the myths and tales of the Mages of old and their archnemeses, the Spellbreakers. His people were always the bad guys, and the writer of the fictional story had relished in descriptions of their demise. Bodies ripped apart by golden explosions of good magic; warriors bursting into shards of pure light from the pierce of a Mage’s spell; Spellbreaker children and women crying to see their fathers and brothers and husbands turned to glittering dust—the fear, knowing they would be next. The writer delighted in the Spellbreakers’ misery, and it was almost more than Alex could take. He slammed the book shut, startling a nearby student.

Alex felt a pang of sadness twist at his heart. Six houses, with such a rich and wonderful history in each one. And yet where were they now? The last of them were buried in a watery grave, with nobody to remember their names. Nobody to remember they even existed, except in victorious, vile tales of magical battles, from the very folk who had put them under the lake. Whole families, whole lineages wiped out by Mages, without so much as an apology for their genocide. The bitterness welled up in Alex as he looked around at the clueless students—the very kind of people who had delighted in the deaths of his ancestors, and they didn’t even know. They had no idea a different kind of Mage had existed once. His kind. Alex wasn’t sure they’d even care.

A chill ran through him. Looking down, he quietly gasped in horror as he saw that wisps of black and silver ice coiled around his hands and across his arms—his anti-magic aura, brimming through his skin. He closed his eyes and focused, trying to rein in the tendrils of anti-magic that threatened to break free. He breathed slowly and deliberately. Though the images of his murdered ancestors broke through in vivid fragments, he managed to regain control of his senses, pushing the imaginings to the back of his mind.

When he opened his eyes again, the coils of anti-magic had disappeared. He breathed a low sigh of relief, hoping nobody had seen his outburst.

He shoved the book of fiction out of the way with the heel of his shoe, and set his copy of Historica Magica on the table to join the rest. Seeing those six names had made him curious about his own bloodline. Alex figured he must be in there somewhere. He was a Spellbreaker, after all. He had to belong to one of the bloodlines—a smaller one, or a weaker one, maybe. One that was less important. The two books beside his, one in a red cover, the other in dark blue, only really mentioned the six main houses, but he knew the Historica Magica contained every name in Spellbreaker history. Boring, unending lists of names and houses and bloodlines and people long dead. His people, his heritage, had to be in there somewhere.

He flicked to the index at the back of the Historica and searched for ‘Webber,’ but could find no mention of his surname. Dismayed, he glanced out the window, catching sight of a glittering spire and buildings beyond the horizon. Familiar buildings. The ever-shifting scenery beyond the grounds had chosen to show his hometown that day. He couldn’t remember the last time it had done that. To think that his house was just through the gate and up a dozen or so streets—so close, and yet…

Unbidden, the memory of a blurry photograph returned to Alex’s mind. He had found it in a crumpled old shoebox, years ago, when he was helping his mother with spring cleaning. It had been stuffed at the back of the wardrobe in her room, gathering a blizzard of dust, when he had happened upon it. Lifting the lid, he had rummaged through the small number of belongings within, not expecting to find much. He had come across a faded sonogram from his first scan, his first baby blanket, a bright green pacifier, and a small, cream-colored teddy bear with multi-colored buttons down the front.

Alex remembered reaching in to remove the blanket—baby blue and still soft to the touch—when something fell from within the fleecy layers. A rectangle of card, face down, a small notation on the bottom right corner, written in blue ink that had turned green over time. It read, ‘Marianne & Alexei 1995.’ He had bent to pick it up from the carpet. At that moment, the photograph was torn away from him, his mother snatching it from his grasp. He had looked up to see her standing in front of him with her eyes wide, cradling it to her chest as if it were a precious jewel he had unearthed.

The unexpected image of his mother, crystal clear in his mind—healthy and so much younger—made his heart clench.

He recalled asking who it was in the photo, and tears had sprung into his mother’s beautiful blue eyes.

“Your father and I,” she had said.

“My father?” Alex remembered saying, and seeing his mother nod. He had asked to see the picture, and she had shown it to him with a pull of reluctance. A faded, blurry thing, the photo made it nearly impossible to make out a clear image of the man or the woman. He had only known it to be his mother because she had said it was her. The man, however, was a stranger. Alex could not have pointed him out in a lineup.

But, remembering that moment so vividly, and seeing his history laid out on the library table before him, Alex couldn’t help but dwell upon his father. That faded man in the blurry photograph, kept in a shoebox the whole of Alex’s life. He knew nothing of the strange man who had created half of him—had never seen him, met him, or heard him mentioned much. His mother hadn’t liked to talk about him, so Alex had stopped pushing.

Where else would this power have come from but him? Alex pondered, his eyes on the clouds beginning to trail across the overcast sky. He tried hard to sharpen the detail around the man in the photo, but he couldn’t envision his face. Alex looked back at the list of names in the index, a thought niggling at the back of his mind: Is my father’s name among these bloodlines?

‘Webber’ came from his mother’s family, not his father’s. His father’s name could well be there, in front of his very eyes, and he wouldn’t know it. He had never dared to ask his mother more about his father than she was willing to tell, and she had never been very willing to say much on the subject. Alex knew his father’s name was Alexei, but that was all. The mere mention of him always brought sudden tears to his mother’s eyes, leaving her silent and mournful for hours after.

Either that, or I’m a mutant, Alex thought dryly as he checked over the names again, seeing if any jumped out at him. None of them did.

Alex’s eyes were drawn once more to the glittering lights in the distance. An enchanting, tormenting spectacle. He couldn’t help but gaze at it. The pain in his heart increased, his chest tightening, as he thought about his mother, waiting out there for him to come home, sitting by the phone and hoping the next call would be from her son. Watching the door, praying the next knock would be his knuckles on the wood, heralding his return.