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

“Ellabell!” Alex cried, trying to crawl toward her.

She turned, pain twisting her face up. “Alex…” she whispered, before going still.

“No, no, no, no,” he muttered, trying to reach her before his body gave out. The trees loomed just ahead, taunting him.

They had been so close to the forest, but Alex realized it didn’t matter. They could have been in the trees, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Julius would have found them eventually. It was true, what Helena had said: Julius would find them, no matter where they went. There was no escape from him. Running was a waste of time and energy—it made sense now. No matter how far or how fast they ran, Julius would always catch up.

Straining to turn around, Alex saw that another sea of yellow fog had been let loose across the remainder of the Starcross warriors, turning them against one another, while Julius and his band of merry men walked calmly away from it, moving at a leisurely pace in the direction of Alex. The king hadn’t even bothered with the rest of Starcross. Alex and his friends were the target… The rest were just collateral.

Julius grinned as he neared, kneeling beside Alex’s frozen figure. “Goodnight, sweet prince,” he whispered, leaning close to Alex’s ear. Alex tried to speak, wanting to scream in the king’s face, when a blow to the head turned everything to darkness.

Chapter 20

Alex stirred, feeling the pulse of a headache pushing like daggers at the backs of his eyes. Blinking slowly awake, the sunlight streaming in much too bright, it took him a while to fully come around. Everything felt strange. The ground beneath him was no longer the hard-packed solidity of earth, but something softer, like he was enveloped in a marshmallow. Tucked under his chin was a warm, thick duvet cover, and beneath his head was the soft give of a luxurious pillow.

Am I still dreaming? he wondered, though much of the sleep he’d endured, when it hadn’t simply been the dark stretching landscape of oblivion, had been plagued by nightmares: giant Kelpies with snapping teeth thundering toward him, Julius’s laughing face looming close to his own, just a floating head in the darkness, his friends’ features twisted in agony.

As the headache subsided, and his vision stopped dancing with black spots, he struggled to sit up. The motion set off a stabbing sensation at the sides of his head, like someone had rammed a red-hot poker behind his eyeballs, but that soon faded too. Gradually, he began to take in the room around him, though it was a million miles from what he’d expected to wake up to, given the events of the previous day.

Had it been a day? he thought to himself, not knowing how long he’d been out. However long he’d slept, the sun was now high in the sky, streaming through wafting cream curtains in a warm haze of golden light. Behind the curtains, he could make out a panel of French doors that stretched across the whole far right side of the room, and beyond that, the carved marble perimeter of a balcony, with rising hills undulating on the horizon.

“Where am I?” he said aloud, not really expecting anyone to answer.

A flood of panic swept through his veins as the events of Starcross came hurtling back to the forefront of his mind; there had been so much devastation, the victory snatched from their hands long before they’d even set foot on the battlefield. That almost seemed like a bad dream—one there was no waking up from. People had died, people had been injured, all so Julius could get his hands on Alex and his friends. How they’d found the fifth haven, Alex didn’t know, though he had his suspicions.

With Agatha loitering around the cave so often, coming and going as she pleased, it only stood to reason that others might do the same. If scouts were watching the strange old hippie, wondering who she was and why she was hidden in the bushes, it wouldn’t have taken long for them to realize the significance of the cave. Following her, they would have found the entrance, and closer inspection would have told them exactly what it was. Alex didn’t blame her in the slightest; she probably had no idea she was being followed, or that the secret had even been discovered.

It was all a chain of events, perfectly linked. Alex could see it now. Julius had been watching the havens, just as Venus had said, but by then he probably already knew about Starcross. Alex had to give him that—the king could certainly bide his time, in pursuit of revenge. He had held back until the right moment to strike. Alex imagined that Julius had waited until he received word that Alex had arrived at a haven to perform the spell, knowing he would go ahead with the second attempt, regardless. With the blood in his clutches, why wouldn’t he? As soon as word came that Alex had gone to Kingstone, that was when Julius knew to land his first blow on the realm of Starcross, leaving it in enough chaos that Alex would be disoriented on his return. It all made perfect sense, in hindsight. Alex gritted his teeth in anger; he had walked right into Julius’s scheme, playing it out just as the king had, no doubt, envisioned. Perhaps, Alex thought, Julius truly did have The Art of War memorized.

His mind turned back to his friends. Ellabell’s face haunted him—the way she had whispered his name before lying still. Glancing around, he knew he was definitely alone in the room, but the walls were so thick he could hear nothing but the rush of wind beyond the French doors. If his friends were in the rooms on either side of him, he had no way of knowing. All he had was a fragile hope that they had been brought here too,