The Secret of Spellshadow Manor 6 by Bella Forrest (books for men to read .TXT) 📕

homes creaked, but it still looked as beautiful as the first time Alex had seen it. There was something peaceful about the place that Alex couldn’t put his finger on—perhaps it was the absence of royal influence, Ceres being the exception.

Pausing beside the river, the riders dismounted, keeping hold of the leather bridles that they unbuckled from the Kelpies’ faces. They kept these in their hands, while the gigantic beasts trotted down the sloping banks and back into the water, disappearing beneath the surface with a froth of bubbles.

So the tale has some truth, Alex thought to himself, watching Ceres strap the Kelpie bridle to her belt. He imagined the creatures’ watery abode was why he hadn’t seen them before; Ceres hadn’t had time to summon them when Alex had descended upon Starcross last time.

“You may follow Beulah and Conleth,” Ceres instructed, gesturing toward two of her fellow Kelpie riders, a dark-haired woman and man. “Except for you, Alex, and your friends. You will follow me—and you can bring that thing along too,” she added, nodding to the limp figure of Virgil, her tone carrying a warning.

The rest of the congregation hurried away after the riders, who seemed more affable now that they were down from their savage steeds. Alex stifled a gulp as he and the other five followed Ceres toward the large tent at the far edge of the shantytown, where he had been reprimanded by her before. The heavy scarlet material still flapped in the breeze, and the yellow flag perched at the top still rippled wildly.

Once they were all inside, Ceres turned on them immediately. “You realize he will come after you, don’t you?” she remarked curtly. “I’ve spoken to you about this before—I warned you about this before, but you wouldn’t listen, would you? Now, he’s definitely going to find us. We have his wife, and we have the people who took her. He’ll sniff us out like the wolf that he is. You understand that, right? You knew that the minute you stepped through that portal.”

Everyone shuffled uncomfortably, not daring to look up at the fierce glare of the short-haired woman. It was true, Alex thought, they had known what they were doing by coming here, and yet they had done it anyway.

“There was no other—” Alex began, but she cut him off sharply.

“Don’t you give me that crap, Alex,” she snarled. “You could have integrated them into the Falleaf students. They would have been safe there, while you tried the spell again. It would have been a temporary measure, but no, you just had to be the hero.”

“He was trying to do what he thought was best,” Ellabell interrupted.

Ceres shot her a dirty look. “This wasn’t it, sunshine,” she barked, turning back to Alex. “You didn’t want them to suffer anymore, and I get that, but you have put more lives in jeopardy than you know. They wouldn’t have had to suffer for long, but now you’ve added untold horror for everyone here—them included.”

Alex leveled his gaze at Ceres, the tension so thick it would break any blade that tried to cut it. He knew that, in hindsight, there might have been easier options, but they were here now, and there was no changing that. Julius was coming—it was just a matter of when. If they were all going to survive his arrival, they were going to need each other.

“Then I guess we’ll have to put up a fight,” he whispered, his gaze unwavering.

Ceres gave a bitter smile. “What choice have you given us?” she muttered, echoing words he had heard her brother speak, barely a few hours before. “Who knows, maybe we’ve been hiding too long… Maybe it’s time something brought us out of our rabbit holes, to fight the wolf that put us here.” She crossed her arms with a sigh, her expression grim.

Alex shuddered, feeling the presence of that very wolf sniffing them out as they spoke.

Chapter 6

They needed an army.

Ceres informed Alex that she would be arranging a public meeting shortly, to ask the opinion of the survivors. Any who wanted to fight would be permitted to, and any who wanted to hide would be taken far from the camp to set up another somewhere safer, where Julius might not seek them out.

With that decided, and Ceres in a decidedly less volatile mood, she showed the six friends to two spare tents, where they could rest and recuperate, though she insisted she take Virgil and lock him away where she could keep an eye on him.

“The last thing we want is for him to sneak off and tell Julius everything,” she remarked, snapping her fingers to capture the attention of two Kelpie riders from earlier. They picked up Virgil, their muscled arms making the Head look lighter than a loaf of bread, and hauled him away.

“When he wakes up, I might need to talk to him about the spell—” Alex began.

“If you want to see him, come and find me first,” Ceres said with a glare, letting Alex know, once again, who was in charge.

“Of course,” Alex murmured, before heading into the tent that had been designated for the boys.

The tent was sparsely decorated, with a few roll-mats on the floor, a pile of motheaten blankets, and a couple of benches set up in a square around a central fire. It was here that Alex headed, lying flat on his back on one of the benches, staring up at the billowing yellow fabric of the roof. It had been a long day by anyone’s standards, and it still wasn’t over. Above all, he wanted to talk to Elias, but the shadow-man wasn’t offering his company.

“I think your beastie has arrived!” exclaimed Jari, who was peering out of the tent flap.

Alex sat up. “Huh?”

“Your bird, dude. I think she’s arrived.” Jari grinned.

Wearily, Alex wandered over to the spot where Jari stood, and looked out. There was a commotion up ahead, where a large crowd had gathered. Looking closer,