“In a war between races, nobody wins,” Vincent sighed, “and Agatha lost dearly. As we all did, on all sides. You were guilty only of bringing bad memories back to the forefront of her mind, after countless years of pushing them farther and farther back.”
“What happened to her?” Alex asked.
“A particularly grisly battle was fought, and Agatha lost everything. She was not unique in that respect, but her pain is particularly pronounced. As the dust settled, she picked her way through the battlefield, following the crows. Trailing those winged harbingers led her to the bodies of her entire family, the flames of their lives snuffed out by Spellbreakers,” he explained. “Agatha never quite recovered. I doubt any of us did—any of those unfortunate souls who lived through it.”
Alex watched Vincent cautiously, wondering if the strange man harbored any of the same feelings that Agatha had toward him and his long-dead kind. There was certainly a note of bitterness in the eerie man’s voice, but Alex could not be sure where such bitterness was directed.
As if sensing Alex’s concern, Vincent smiled reassuringly.
“Fear not, Spellbreaker. I sympathize with your plight. I always have, much like your friend Demeter. Genocide is the foulest plague known to the world, and I offer you my apologies, that you have found yourself alone among us. My words can never make up for the suffering of your people, but I hope they may ease a fraction of your own.”
Strangely, they did. Vincent was right—one apology could never make up for what had happened to his people, but it served to remind him that there had been losses and suffering on both sides, not just his own. True, his people had been wiped out in their entirety, save him, but there had been mages and Spellbreakers, no doubt, who had been caught up in a fray they wanted no part of. The peaceful had paid dearly for the arrogance and bigotry of the aggressive. Innocents had fallen on both sides, and, to Alex, there was nothing more tragic.
As his heartrate lowered, and he stopped fearing that Agatha was going to come running up the corridor after him, Alex found himself at something of a loss. Agatha had left his concentration in tatters.
Vincent smiled at him. “The mind needs rest in times of great stress, dear boy, and I feel you are suffering under the worst of it.”
“Something like that.” If the thought of a vengeful warrior princess forcibly finding a way to make him suffer wasn’t stressful, he didn’t know what was. He knew it stemmed from the feeling of being endlessly pursued, never being able to fully let his guard down and relax his mind; he wasn’t sure he could even remember what it felt like to be at ease.
“Perhaps your mind is in need of a welcome distraction?” Vincent suggested.
Alex nodded. “I’d give anything to divert it, even just for a few minutes. It would really help with… all this.”
“In such a case as this, with such a mind as yours teetering on the brink, I would be willing to breach a lifelong pledge never to impart my knowledge to another,” the necromancer said. “I will endeavor to distract your mind with a talent of great import, although the task will require a bottle of essence. Demeter has told me you have some in your possession?”
“Why do you need it?” Alex asked tersely, suddenly suspicious of the necromancer’s motivations.
“Nothing sinister, I promise—I merely require it as a teaching implement. Think of it as you would a ruler or a piece of chalk,” Vincent reassured. “Only if it can be spared, mind you. I’ll return it to you immediately after the lesson is over.”
“Will you?”
“Will I what?” Vincent raised a silvery gray eyebrow.
“Give it straight back?” Alex asked, seeking confirmation. It felt somehow wrong to trust a necromancer.
“I swear I’ll send you back with it, just as it was,” he replied with mock solemnity.
No matter how hard he tried, Alex couldn’t exactly picture the bottles of essence in the same way he did school chalk and stationery. He was undeniably intrigued by the strange man with the transparent skin, black eyes, and shock of gray hair, and the powers he possessed. Vincent may have been a necromancer who dabbled in a dark and dangerous art, but Demeter seemed to trust him in a way he didn’t trust the other imprisoned necromancers. Alex wondered if that meant Vincent was stronger or weaker than the others, or whether he was simply a different sort of individual altogether—a good necromancer, if such a thing existed?
For a moment, Alex’s mind dwelled upon the image of Demeter, rendering Agatha immobilized with just his palms. He could see that Demeter and Vincent were two fiercely strong mages whom he could certainly learn a lot from. He knew for sure he had underestimated Demeter, who was not only capable of endless Spellbreaker history lectures and the world’s worst dad jokes, but also of a magic far more useful than simple spells and shields. At last, Alex understood what Demeter had meant when he said he had a way of making Caius give them the essence—he could manipulate minds. It was a skill Alex knew could come in very handy when dealing with royals in the near future, including Caius, though he wasn’t sure he’d be able to convince Demeter to teach him how.
If only I could do mind control, Alex thought sardonically, I’d be able to make him teach me. For now, he’d settle for whatever Vincent had in store to help him.
Alex raced to the tower room where he had left his satchel of bottled essence. Eager to start the lesson—and get it over with quickly, so he could focus again on the modules—he hurried through the labyrinth of hallways, ignoring the beady eyes that watched him through the grates and the steady drip-drip of the moldy water falling from the ceiling and hitting the floor in a steady rhythm.
Passing through an intersection of hallways, Alex paused. Down the corridor to the left, which happened to be one of the corridors Vincent had pointed out as one to be avoided at all costs, he spied Natalie. She was pressed close to the wall, talking to someone through a grate in one of the wooden cell doors. Ducking behind the corner, he watched her for a while, unseen, trying to listen to what she was discussing with the person on the other side of the grate. A shiver ran up his spine as he picked up the sound of a low, raspy voice coming from within the cell, but what worried him more was the gleam of excitement he saw in Natalie’s dark eyes as she listened intently to what the man was saying.
Creeping closer to get a better look, Alex saw a repulsive, deathly pale face peering through at Natalie, with impossibly black eyes that flashed with malice. Alex guessed this must be one of the necromancers Vincent had been talking about when he had mentioned vile, despicable creatures who could not be trusted. There was a resemblance in the two men’s appearances, undoubtedly, but this individual radiated darkness in a way Vincent did not. This man’s evil was tangible in the way he sneered, his veins running vividly in a network of sickly black beneath his translucent skin. Alex couldn’t understand why Natalie wasn’t the least bit alarmed by the necromancer’s disdainful smile, and could hardly believe what he was seeing. He knew Natalie enjoyed the powerful side of magic, but this was beyond reckless.
Natalie caught sight of him as he edged closer, and her eyes narrowed in something akin to annoyance. She muttered a swift farewell to her black-eyed acquaintance before turning and walking straight past Alex, practically pushing him out of her way.
“Natalie, stop!” he called.
“I am not in the mood for a lecture, Alex,” she said over her shoulder.
“We need to talk about this—” Alex began, grasping for her, but she tore her hand away.
“I am free to do as I please,” she snapped. “What is your problem?”
“When you start fraternizing with necromancers, you are my problem!” he hissed. He realized they hadn’t completely made up since the last argument they’d had, over Ellabell. “Need I remind you what happened last time you got involved with dark magic?”
Her eyes flashed with a look of sudden hurt, and Alex wondered if his words had hit too close to home. For a moment, she was silent, before the hurt transfo
rmed into an expression of defensiveness.
“That is rich, coming from you, Alex. How is your chest feeling, by the way?”
Natalie kept walking, and Alex struggled to keep up with her brisk pace.
“I don’t want to get into another argument with you, Natalie. We don’t have time to argue. I just want you to stay away from those mages—from people like that!” he said. “You have no idea what they’re capable of. And we’ve already been warned away from them. It’s like you go looking for trouble.” He shook his head in disbelief, but his words only seemed to aggravate Natalie’s defensiveness further.
“That is a little bit hypocritical, is it not?” she remarked tersely, just as they reached the wide, circular common room that led to their quarters in the tower above.
“I was only visiting with Vincent to talk about the barrier modules. You know that! I only spoke with him to help us.” He knew it was the barrier again, heightening his emotions, making them spike impulsively. Regardless, he didn’t think she’d buy it if he tried to explain. He had already overstepped the line.
“We should have never left Stillwater,” Natalie said softly. “We had so many opportunities to strengthen ourselves there—the books, the professors, Helena. Now, we have so little. You cannot blame me for trying to learn whatever I can, to improve our chances of survival.”
“We had no choice but to leave!” Alex insisted. “Stillwater House was a fantasy, Natalie. It didn’t exist—Alypia’s offer didn’t exist. Surely the fact that she keeps coming for us is proof enough of that?”
Natalie looked at him with quiet disappointment. “As much as you hated Alypia, her offer was genuine—it granted us a security we will never get again. Here, there is only running and hiding and fearing the smallest sound in case it is someone coming for us in the night, to kill us.” Natalie shook her head, biting her lip as if holding back tears. “I want to see my family again, Alex. I want to let them know I am okay, and continue protecting myself and others, and if that means learning a few things from a few unsavory characters, then so be it. I will do whatever it takes.”
“There’s a difference between doing something to survive and doing it because you enjoy it,” Alex replied, trying to push down the anger rising through his body.
This time, the look she gave him was one of pure determination. “You think you are a hero, yet you run from true power—you fear it. Heroes fear nothing.”
Alex opened his mouth to respond, but he wasn’t sure how. In the heat of the moment, he almost wanted to snap that he didn’t fear anything, but it would be a lie. Neither did he consider himself a hero. He was just a young person like her, trying to survive, trying to make sense of this crazy world, trying to get home.
His expression must have been simmering though, from the way Natalie was staring at him with a fearful glint in her widened eyes, though perhaps it was just the atmosphere playing tricks on him, making him see and feel things that didn’t exist.
Her expression made more sense as he glanced down at himself, seeing the crackle of his anti-magical aura beginning to edge through his skin, trying to defend against the onslaught of Natalie’s words.
He had to get away. Her words had intensified the crawl of rage beneath his skin, and it was overwhelming him. He turned and ran.
“Alex, come back! Don’t leave me like this!” she called.
Her voice faded away until he could no longer hear it. He couldn’t trust himself around any of them, with the barrier manipulating him the way it was. He wondered if it might also have something to do with Elias’s attempt at healing him, the shadow-man’s touch simply making things worse in the long-run, after a momentary relief. Alex felt he needed Vincent’s lesson more than ever to escape the pressure of it all, if only for a short while. He needed the claustrophobia and the anger and the skin-crawling sensation of the keep to pause. If he didn’t catch a break, he sensed he might lose his grip on reality for good. It was already slipping away from him.
He continued on his way to the tower room and reached it quickly. After retrieving two of the black bottles, Alex strode back through the corridors of Kingstone Keep, trying to take the edge off his anger, and soon found himself once again at Vincent’s cell.
Inside, it was unexpectedly spacious, with a large window cut into the far wall that made the room seem airy and bright. Vincent sat in a chair in the corner, a book open on his lap.
“Are you all right?” Vincent asked as Alex entered. “You look like you have a thousand demons whispering away in that head of yours, young Spellbreaker.”
“There’s been a lot to think about, that’s all.” Alex sighed, trying to push all thoughts of Natalie aside—for the time being, at least. “I’m ready to get on with this.”
“Come, sit,” Vincent said, gesturing toward the chair opposite. A small fire burned in the grate between the two seats, making Alex anxious. Vincent smiled, gazing down into the warming blaze. “If you begin to feel faint, I shall extinguish its flames. We don’t want a repeat of what happened earlier…”
“Thanks,” Alex said, taking the offered seat. It seemed as if the necromancer was settling down for a long discussion, and the idea made Alex instantly antsy. He didn’t know how Vincent could be so calm when they still had so much to do.
“I feel it’s important we get to know one another a fraction better, before I begin to teach you about a side of necromancy I feel comfortable with—spirit lines and how to walk along them.”
“You said it’s a talent of…great import, right?” Alex asked, the formal phrasing feeling strange coming from his own mouth.
“Most certainly. Spirit lines can reveal deep-seated fears and secrets. If you know a person’s past, you know their vulnerabilities. Such a skill may be of use in your fight against the royals,” Vincent said with a wave of his long fingers. “Now, trust is the key to success, and if you do not trust, doors will not open. I hope you feel able to trust me, by the end of this session. I realize you must have your concerns; I wouldn’t think you sound of mind if you didn’t.”
“I’m still not sure what to make of you,” Alex replied bluntly.
“Good, we are off to an excellent start. Honesty from the outset—wonderful.” Vincent clasped his hands together in apparent delight. “Now, allow me to paint you a picture. As I mentioned before, I am a sympathizer with your kind. I have always been so. You see, I was there on the last day of the Spellbreakers, when the earth was drenched in a ravenous silver that turned many mages into dust… I saw and I understood the painful price, and Leander Wyvern’s revenge. There are many within these walls who were there, though they do not all share my sentiments. I sought equality where they sought bloodshed. I do not think either side won.”
Alex wasn’t sure Vincent looked old enough to have been alive in 1908, but that was the mystery of the necromancer—he could have told Alex he was any age, and Alex would have believed it. The man’s eerie skin and blacker-than-black eyes made him seem infinite, as if he might go on forever, never changing. Alex wondered if it was a trait of necromancers, to look this way, prompting him to wonder why the veins beneath Vincent’s translucent flesh were the same color as the veins beneath his own flesh, only clearer—whereas the man behind the grate, the one Natalie had been speaking with, had been covered in tangled webs of deep, poisonous black.
“Does necromancy turn your blood black?” he asked, intrigued.
Vincent tilted his head, gazing curiously at Alex. “What makes you ask such a question?”
“I think I saw another necromancer, in one of the cells, but the veins beneath his skin were dark, not at all like yours,” he replied, hoping it wasn’t a rude question. How was he to know whether or not it was polite to ask a necromancer about his strange appearance?
Vincent nodded. “While I am indeed a necromancer, I do not share in the wicked delights others find in it. I do not perform the ungodly—I seek only to help, following the light, trying not to stray too far into the darknes
s. It is the darkness that blackens the blood,” he explained. “My joy is in tracing spirit lines and focusing upon them, utilizing but not seeking to control the phantoms within. Keeping to the light, I do not poison my body with dark magic, though I have had to compromise on the eyes.” He smiled wryly, gesturing languidly in the direction of the onyx pools that stared, unblinking, in Alex’s direction.
It intrigued Alex, as he listened to the explanation, wondering what Vincent was going to teach him and how on earth he was going to invert such powerful magic. Natalie’s voice played on a loop in his head, taunting him, reminding him not to fear power, but to embrace it. It was easier said than done.
“Did you bring the bottle I requested?” Vincent asked.
Alex nodded, retrieving the two bottles from his pockets and placing them on the small, square table that sat between them, the surface devoid of anything homey—no trinkets, no saucers, not even a book or two.
“Very good,” said Vincent. “I thought it best we had these for you to practice on. I would not like to let you loose on some poor soul, not having tried it out first. I know my magic doesn’t work as your magic does, but I’m sure we’ll find a solution—you seem a bright sort.”
Alex felt calmer, knowing the bottles were only to practice on, though he hoped he wouldn’t make a mess of it and accidentally destroy something. Especially with the barrier’s influence, he wasn’t sure how his anti-magic might play out under new pressures.
“Do you think I’ll be able to do it?” he asked.
Vincent shrugged, the bones of his shoulders poking through his shirt at sharp angles. “I am ever the optimist. Now, pick up one of the bottles,” he instructed.
Alex did as he was told, the solemn face of a young man rushing into his mind as his fingers closed around a bottle marked “S. Epstein.” Slowly, he forced his mind away from the image, returning to the room, focusing as hard as he could on Vincent.