The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 5 by Bella Forrest (best biographies to read TXT) 📗

Hadrian gave a wan smile. “It’s a long story, but I’ll tell the short version,” he promised, his stutter fading to nothing as he relaxed. “My grandfather, Titus, the king at the time, was a strong believer in equality between the races. The leader of the Spellbreaker Houses was also a strong believer in peace. You see, there were whole towns and cities that were split by race, and though Spellbreakers and mages lived almost side by side, they rarely fraternized. It was frowned upon, but my father and the leaders of the Spellbreaker Houses were keen to see an integration.

“My uncle, Julius, was not. He was the face of those who wanted the integration efforts to fail. There were peace talks going on, and, during one of them, my grandfather was assassinated—at the hand of a Spellbreaker, they said, but I have my own theories on that one. I believe it was made to look like it was a Spellbreaker, when really it was done by the hand of a mage.

“Naturally, Julius took control of the throne, and had the leaders of the Houses executed. Both sides were enraged, and it led to war. Spellbreakers fled the supposedly integrated towns and cities, and many mages too—all those who wanted to be as far from the conflict as possible. I helped smuggle many mages out into the non-magical world, which is where you must have come from.” Hadrian gestured toward Ellabell and Aamir. “You are their descendants. Their identities were kept secret, to avoid any kind of retribution, but I suppose nobody is able to outrun my uncle forever.”

“Is that why Finder was sent for us?” Ellabell asked.

Hadrian nodded. “Julius knew refugees had escaped, and he put it to my cousin, Virgil, to find a way to seek them out, even if it took a generation or two.”

“So much death,” Alex whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

“That is war,” Hadrian replied solemnly. “We saved as many as we could, but the death toll was overwhelming.”

“You didn’t think the Spellbreakers might have needed refuge?” Alex muttered.

Hadrian winced. “A fair p-point. We did not do enough, and for that, I am sorry. I can’t even b-begin to imagine the loss you must feel,” he said, his stutter returning with Alex’s confrontation. It seemed that whenever the royal was frightened or felt cornered, the stammer in his voice came back, a tic brought on by his ever-present nervousness.

“It hurts more, the more I find out,” Alex admitted. It was a lot to process, thinking how the mages had staged an assassination, leading to a war that wiped out his people. He felt overwhelmed, needing solitude. “I’m sorry, I’m really not hungry. Please, excuse me.”

Nobody stopped him as he got up and left the table, heading for the room on the far side that had been designated as his. Sitting down in a chair by the fireplace, he rested the book on his lap, his mind too full of other things to really get into the pages. All he could think about were the executed leaders of his people and the suffering that had ensued. So many people running for their lives, only to be snuffed out at the end of it all.

He sat there, mulling it over, trying to make sense of it, feeling the weight of the book on his knees. Before he opened it, he thought once more of Lintz, and the sacrifice the professor had made for the book Alex held in his hands. Alex would miss the comforting boom of the professor’s voice, and knew the world would feel too quiet without it. Lintz had always been warmhearted despite enduring his own share of heartbreak and disappointment. Alex felt sorry that the professor would never get to see the sister he had waited so many years for, in the hope she’d appear at the gates of Spellshadow. He knew that Lintz would continue to wait, at a very different set of gates, until the day they were finally reunited.

Taking a deep breath, he turned the first page.

Chapter 14

Flicking through the pages, Alex ran his finger across the glyphs, eager to find out what secrets they would reveal. Remembering the way he had conjured the thin veil of anti-magic to read Leander’s notebook, he did the same now, creating a square of gauzy energy that would unravel the glyphs. The symbols spread out before his eyes, tumbling into sentences and paragraphs. There were diagrams, too, though some of them depicted things Alex didn’t even want to look at. Flaying a person, removing a voice, disintegrating a body from the inside out. That last one reminded Alex of Julius, and what he’d done to the laughing prisoner. He shuddered at the memory.

The whole book was packed to the brim with spells, some intriguing, some awful, some downright baffling. Alex wondered if any of these horrible things had been used during wartime, and had a strong feeling they probably had.

It took him until the very end of the book to find the spells he actually wanted to see, not that he didn’t enjoy the detour. Anything to do with the Spellbreakers had him hooked. Running the square over the glyphs, he saw that they were twin spells, coming one after the other—the one Leander had used to release the Great Evil, and the one Alex was expected to perform. Reading through it, he wondered if it had been Leander himself, or some other Spellbreaker, who had built the contraption that held the book within, as a means of keeping out prying eyes. Perhaps the writer of the book had created the vault, though there was no name on the cover or inside the tome, as far as Alex could see.

It made him think about who might have sacrificed themselves for Virgil’s run of the gauntlet. Does that mean Virgil is worthy? Alex mused, trying and failing to see Virgil in another light. It didn’t seem possible. Maybe the Head