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

he was on the back of Storm instead, the great beast didn’t seem so frightening.

“You okay back there?” Ceres asked, laughing to herself.

“Just about!” Alex yelled back, his voice only just audible above the roar of the wind rushing in their faces.

Eventually, they reached the remnants of an ancient wall, the stone crumbling apart. Above it, on what might have been parapets, stood grisly gargoyles, staring them down as they approached. They looked like demons, their faces twisted, ghoulish wings covered in moss sprouting from their backs.

The castle beyond it, however, wasn’t nearly as Gothic.

The Kelpie jumped easily over a gap in the wall, leading them into stretching gardens that must have once been beautiful, making Alex think of landscaped lawns containing quaint benches and stunning patches of exotic flowers. Now, the plants had overgrown, taking back their land, no longer keeping to the neat squares they’d once been grown in. Roses and violets writhed all over the stones and former fountains, blooming brightly. Wisteria hung low like willow trees, casting a purple sheen over everything it shaded from the sunlight. Giant oaks and silver birches towered above the gardens too, growing to monstrous heights, having been left to their own devices.

Everywhere he looked, Alex saw something else that pleased the eye. There were exquisite statues in a Grecian style, carved from marble, still holding their shape. Tiny figurines shaped like fairies and brute-faced gnomes hid among the foliage too, giving the castle an otherworldly air, like something out of a bedtime story. Alex half expected a princess to wander through singing a sweet song that would stay in his head for weeks, but the place was empty, its last inhabitants long gone.

As for the mist, there was none of that here. It seemed not to have touched the plants and animals, taking only the lives of those with magical blood inside their veins. A twinge of sadness prickled inside Alex as he wondered what this place might have been like before the plague of the Great Evil rose to terrorize the people here.

Up ahead, the castle came into view. It had evidently once been a glorious, regal place, surrounded by a glittering moat. A few of its golden-tiled spires were still intact, and the pure white walls still showed through the years of dirt, though the rest of it had fallen into disrepair. Great, gaping chunks had been torn out of the sides, the stained-glass windows mostly smashed in, several towers having crumbled in on themselves. Alex was about to ask Ceres why she and her people hadn’t tried to make it habitable again, but it was clear this place was beyond repair, even with a hundred hands helping out.

Ceres halted her Kelpie at the edge of a drawbridge, its rickety planks leading across the moat, which still sparkled despite the wreckage it protected. They jumped down, and Ceres removed the bridle from the Kelpie’s snout, hooking it back onto her belt. With a snort of its nostrils, the hulking beast arced gracefully down into the water of the moat, sinking below the surface.

“Needs a paintjob,” Alex joked, looking up at the enormous building.

“Needs tearing down,” Ceres replied grimly.

Sharing a glance, they walked across the rotting beams of the drawbridge, careful of their footing, and reached the other side. A heavy door of pure gold met them, with two knockers shaped like stag’s heads, though one side was already wide open. They ducked inside, only to find more decay within. In the grand reception room, the marble tiles were covered in piles of debris, several statues smashed to pieces on the ground. A chandelier lay in the very center, the diamond embellishments holding their shape, unbroken by the impact of the fall from the ceiling above, though the expensive fixture lay on its side, resting where it had fallen.

More debris fell as they walked, a large chunk of rock narrowly missing Alex’s head. Their very presence seemed to be upsetting the fragile balance of deterioration the castle had set in motion, and Alex knew they were going to have to find the pit quickly. Of course, where they were going to start was another matter entirely—the castle was huge.

“Any idea where the pit could be?” Alex asked.

Ceres nodded. “I’ve scouted out this place before. I think I remember the way,” she replied, alleviating Alex’s anxiety. At least someone knew where they were going.

They wandered through vacant hallways littered with fallen masonry the size of Alex’s body. Smashed windows lay to either side of them, some looking out over the beautiful gardens, others showing overgrown courtyards. There was a pond in the center of one such courtyard, and Alex could see fish the size of small dogs swimming peacefully beneath the murky surface. It always amazed him how nature could thrive in adversity and emerge from destruction.

Ceres paused beside a door at the end of a corridor filled with torn paintings of the people who had once lived here. She pushed tentatively. It gave, creaking open with a rusty groan. Beyond it was a throne room, the two thrones still standing in the middle, though they were covered in a thick layer of gray dust. A stag’s head rose above the back of one, its sapphire eyes still glinting, while a doe’s head rose up above the back of the other, one ruby eye missing. Alex almost made a joke about it, but held his tongue, realizing how deeply inappropriate it would be.

“Remind you of anyone?” Ceres asked, pointing at the doe, a wicked smile upon her face. Alex laughed, the tension breaking.

She moved around the backs of the thrones, searching for something underneath the throne with the stag’s head on it. She gave a cry, presumably finding what she’d been looking for. Alex hurried around to see a trapdoor had swung loose in the floor, a musty, earthy scent rising from a steep set of stone-hewn steps visible beneath. They were very familiar-looking steps.

“I think this might be the