The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 2 by Bella Forrest (top ten ebook reader .TXT) 📗

he took what she’d given the class and thought about how he might use it for anti-magical purposes. He and Natalie kept up the charade, but, always, Gaze would stop beside him and whisper the same words, touching his hand lightly, before offering up another cup of tea to combat his chill. It gave him more hope than any teacher or textbook in the school had done so far.

Every pupil seemed to adore her, and she had time for each and every one. No problem was too small, and she did not shy away from teaching them powerful magic that could very well have been used against her. At her age, Alex mused, perhaps she no longer cared if anyone challenged her. He watched as other students learned to deflect and snatch magic, but the thing that truly intrigued him was the creation of great, powerful shields. None were as powerful as Gaze’s, which seemed forged from pure, solid metal, but others had successes of their own, some conjuring screens of light that thrummed powerfully in curved arches around them. Alex made a mental note to try to inverse the method to create his own extra-strong anti-magical shield that night, in the peace of his dormitory; it was too cool not to.

With a conspiratorial glance around the room, Gaze rapped on the edge of the blackboard with her bony fist and waited for the students to fall silent.

“I’ve got a treat for you,” she whispered gleefully. “I’m going to show you something very secret and very rare—something none of you will ever have seen, I guarantee it! It’s so very exciting, so very, very special… but before I show you, you must promise not to breathe a word of it. That’s the deal, my little chickens.”

The room bristled with anticipation, wondering what it could be.

“Do you promise?” she asked as she flashed them an irreverent grin.

The room chorused a “yes,” their eyes focused on her as they waited to see what she would do next.

She stood perfectly still. The room nearly crackled with tension.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, from nowhere, a ripple of golden light surged into existence, manifesting rapidly into one of Gaze’s impeccable shields without so much as a flicked wrist or a twirled finger. It fizzed in the air for several minutes, then disappeared with a snap. As it faded, Gaze grinned, and the room erupted into rapturous applause. Magic like that did not come along every day, and Alex felt honored to be in the same room as it, wondering if he’d ever be able to conjure without using his hands. He could only guess how long it had taken her to conquer the skill within the walls of the manor, though he imagined she had had nothing but time.

She performed another. This time, a shivering ball of amber light crackled into life, exploding into the air as she threw it left and right, never moving from her spot at the front of the class. Her arms remained by her sides, and the ball spun, faster and faster, shards of glittering magic spinning off in fiery sparks. Smiling, she launched the ball into the audience. It stopped inches from the face of the closest student before being whisked back toward her again.

Professor Gaze swirled the ball in a figure eight, the energy leaving a glowing echo in its wake, like waving sparklers on the Fourth of July. The whole classroom was enraptured as she compressed the magic with a loud hiss, sputtering it out without so much as a wink or a gesture or a twitch.

As Gaze gave a kooky little bow, Natalie flashed Alex a look of excitement that screamed envy. Alex chuckled, though he felt the familiar creep of worry beneath his skin. Whenever Natalie witnessed intense power, Alex saw a concerning hunger in her eyes that he did not like one bit. Natalie was already proving herself to be a formidable Mage, but it did not seem to be enough; her hunger was unyielding.

It was all she could talk about as they left the classroom and headed to dinner. Alex listened as she whispered of Gaze’s abilities, her dark brown eyes glittering almost manically as she spoke of what they had witnessed, wondering how it was done and how she might gain the same skills. He had to bite his tongue, wanting to remark that it had most likely been the years of incarceration that had brought Gaze those skills. It was uncomfortable to watch his friend get so hyped up over powerful magic.

In the end, he could listen to no more. He got up and made his excuses to head to the dormitories. Jari asked if Alex wanted him to come too, but Alex shook his head, telling Jari to enjoy the extra bit of free time. Their evening class with Lintz had been cancelled, giving them an extra hour to themselves. Alex decided he would use the time proactively, instead of having the early night he had previously planned to indulge in.

In the quiet stillness of the dormitory, Alex pushed Aamir’s old bed back against one wall, opening up the space a bit. Encouraged by Gaze’s daily words to him, he stood in the center of the wider space and attempted to recall Gaze’s shielding spell. As it came flooding back, he began to invert the instructions.

First, he created a ball of silver and black between the palms of his hands and slowly let the anti-magic slip back into his body, a tendril at a time, instead of flowing outward in spirals. Next, instead of sucking the energy in to form the concave shield around him, he exploded the anti-magic out through his skin.

He felt a rush of cold around him as the shield surged forward, creating more of a barrage than a dome, which slammed hard against the far wall in an eruption of silver and white flakes. Useful, Alex thought, but not quite a shield.

Undeterred, he tried again