The Chain (The Secret of Spellshadow Manor #3)

Smiling kindly, she held out her hands for his manacled wrists. He obliged, allowing her to take them off with a small key she wore around her neck. The cold, sapping energy of the ivy drained from his body, giving it life again as he rubbed the chafed skin of his wrists.

Looking up, he became speechless for a moment. He had known Alypia to be a truly beautiful woman, but in close quarters she was utterly mesmerizing, stealing the very breath from his lungs. There was an intelligence and grace about her that Alex found hypnotic, and, as much as he wanted to despise her, he found that he couldn’t. One look into her strange eyes and he was rendered awestruck again.

“I am the Crown Princess Alypia, but you may refer to me as Headmistress,” she stated, her voice clear and regal.

“What have you done with my friends?” he asked, regaining his voice. “Are they okay? Tell me where they are!”

She smiled. “May I offer you something to drink, before we get into the nitty-gritty of negotiations?” she suggested, her voice showing light amusement.

Alex frowned, wondering what she meant by “negotiations”, but his thirst got the better of him. “A drink would be great,” he replied evenly, feeling the dryness of his tongue and the rasp of his parched throat.

Nodding primly, Alypia turned to the table beside her and lifted two crystal glasses onto the desk. Slowly, she poured a pale, sparkling liquid from an ornate glass jug, the handle shaped like an ancient Roman goddess, into the two crystal chalices, and pushed one across the marble surface toward him.

Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure he wanted a drink anymore. Watching the bubbles rise, he couldn’t help but feel wary; he knew Alypia was not to be trusted. She could have slipped poison into it or something, without him knowing.

As if sensing his mistrust, Alypia picked up the glass she had poured for herself, from the same jug, and sipped the contents, assuring him of its purity. Tentatively, he lifted his own glass to his lips and drank deep of the sweet liquid. It tasted a bit like the sparkling juice he and his mom always had on New Year’s Eve. Whatever it was, it quenched his thirst in an instant, leaving him free to ask his questions again.

“What have you done with my friends?” he pressed, draining the glass dry.

Her strange eyes glittered. “They are all well. They have all been treated as you have,” she explained, apparently unwilling to elaborate.

“How is Ellabell? What have you done with her? And Natalie? Are they okay?”

Alypia grinned, flashing Alex a knowing look as he spoke of Ellabell. The expression made Alex worry, hoping he had not given her a weapon she might use against him—an exploitation of something she might see as a weakness. He waited for an axe to fall, but it did not; if she had plans to utilize his affections for Ellabell, she wasn’t ready to put them into action just yet.

“The two girls are well,” assured Alypia.

“And the two boys—Aamir and Jari?”

Alypia smirked. “Jari has been… something of a handful, shall we say. But dear Aamir has been more than compliant. He is recuperating well in the infirmary after his… recent illness,” she said softly, offering glimmers of awareness as she spoke. There was a knowledge in her words that made Alex suspicious, and he wondered why she was referring to the older boy as ‘dear’ Aamir. There was familiarity in the way she spoke his name.

For a moment, Alex thought about mentioning Helena, but a desire to protect her held his tongue—he wasn’t convinced she had been involved in their capture at all. No matter which way he looked at it, it didn’t make sense that Helena had dragged them all the way out to the lighthouse to be captured, when she could just as easily have sounded the alarm when they were in the bell tower, or even when they were just outside the villa walls. If she hadn’t been responsible in any way, Alex didn’t want to get her into trouble. Besides, if she had been the cause of their capture, he was fairly certain it wouldn’t have been on purpose. Perhaps somebody had seen her rowing to the island, or caught wind of what she was up to. Until he saw Helena again, he couldn’t be sure of what had actually led the guards to the lighthouse.

“You intrigue me, Alex. You and your friends,” Alypia purred. “You are all very talented individuals. Even the weakest among you is still stronger than most, especially the caliber one expects among that motley crew at Spellshadow. I can see the frustration in some of your friends, Alex—the desire to be taught properly, which is something I know you weren’t experiencing at Spellshadow Manor. It isn’t seen as all that important to teach well over there, and goodness knows the place has been run into the ground. Always the bare minimum, copying lines out of textbooks and learning rudimentary magic. It’s not exactly thrilling stuff, that’s for sure, and it leads to sedentary, bored minds. Not the kind of minds required of superior mages. For you and your friends, that kind of teaching and learning is simply not good enough.” She smiled, flashing pearly white teeth, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. There was a twist of displeasure in her voice, leaving Alex to guess whether it was the reminder of her brother that had brought on such annoyance.

“My friends should never have been brought to Spellshadow in the first place—it’s sick and it’s wrong,” Alex remarked.

She nodded thoughtfully. “A barbaric necessity, truly, but a necessity nonetheless. We can debate the morality of such things another day, but for now, we must make the most of where we are. See it as an opportunity and not a curse. I know certain friends of yours see it that way. They understand that there are things to be learned here—interesting, wonderful things, that nowhere else can offer,” she murmured, her voice like honey. “But Alex, you are a different notion entirely. I can see a talent in you that was not fully nurtured at a place like Spellshadow Manor. And it could not have been fully nurtured; they simply don’t have the skills or resources necessary to teach somebody like you. Someone with such rare promise,” she whispered, her eyes gleaming with excitement.