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

“Very good. I would like you and Virgil to go over the spell until you know it back to front,” he insisted. “I will not have another slip-up. Is that clear? Although, you know the consequences for your friends if you fail.” He smiled cruelly, drawing a line across his neck with his index finger.

Alex wanted to roll his eyes, or at least tell the king how clichéd he was, but he held his tongue. Such comments would get him nowhere.

“Of course, Your Royal Highness,” Alex replied.

“As you know, you only have one chance left to get it right, so make it count,” Julius added, the remark falling somewhat short of a pep talk.

“Of course, Your Royal Highness,” Alex repeated.

With that, Alex and Virgil set to work. The skeletal man came around to Alex’s side of the table so they could work at closer proximity to the book. The atmosphere was tense, with Alex constantly aware of Julius’s eyes upon them, perhaps wondering what they were discussing. When Alex conjured up a thin veil of anti-magic, by which they could read the words on the pages, Julius’s face twisted into a mask of utter disgust—it seemed the very sight of something Spellbreaker caused a kneejerk reaction of displeasure. Alex tried not to smile.

“I’m still not sure where it went wrong the last time, though I know it had something to do with it not being ‘witnessed properly,’ whatever that means,” Alex began, pointing at the section in the spell where the line was mentioned. The words were very hard to make out, but he could discern the phrase he was looking for. “Yeah, here: ‘Two sides of a coin must witness and see, for the grip on the realm to be finally free.’ I was thinking about this part yesterday, and thought it might have something to do with it.”

Virgil nodded. “I had been thinking about that too.”

“Do you know what it means?” Alex asked innocently, testing Virgil’s dedication to secrecy.

Virgil glanced at him oddly. “I have an idea, but it’s not something I can share,” he whispered.

“Why can’t you share it, if I’m the one doing the spell?” Alex pressed, feeling a strong sense of déjà vu.

“I can’t explain now, but be sure it is all in hand,” Virgil breathed, making sure Julius couldn’t hear.

Alex shook his head. “No, this is stupid. If you know—” His words were cut off by the hasty arrival of the young woman he’d seen upstairs sitting at the desk, the whites of her eyes showing her fear. She rushed over to where Julius was prowling, handing him a letter on a silver tray. Julius plucked it up, turning it over and opening the seal. The young woman didn’t stick around to see his reaction, but scurried away through the door, practically slamming it behind her in her rush to be out of there.

As the king read the letter, everything froze. His eyes flickered across the slender sheet of vellum, the color draining from his face, his lips curling more with every sentence he read. Reaching the end, Julius balled the card up and hurled it toward the table. Without Venus to help, there was nobody to quell the king’s temper.

“You!” he roared, picking up a butter knife from the table and rushing at Alex. “You did this!”

Alex tried to get up and back away as quickly as he could, but his foot caught on the chair leg, stalling his retreat. Julius ran at him, the knife raised.

“What did I do, Your Royal Highness?” Alex asked, lifting his hands to protect himself from the blade. In Julius’s hands, even a butter knife seemed like a deadly weapon.

The King tapped the blade against Alex’s arm. “You and your band of do-gooders have caused me another calamity!” he snarled, the spittle flying into Alex’s face. “I have just been informed that Stillwater House has been engulfed by the silver mist because there was no essence left in the pit. Nobody bothered to pour any down, and nobody bothered to tell me! It could have been avoided, Alex Webber, if one of you had simply spat it out!” He yanked Alex’s arms out of the way. “But this was your plan, wasn’t it? You thought you could keep it secret, just to aggravate me. Isn’t that right? Well, your little scheme worked—we found out too late, and several of my men have died because of it!” he bellowed, bringing the knife to Alex’s throat.

“Your Royal Highness, I apologize for causing you more trouble,” Alex began calmly, trying not to feel the cold bite of the blade every time he spoke. “We didn’t know that would happen. We had friends there too,” he said, half lying.

Julius paused, removing the blade slightly. “You had friends there?”

Alex nodded. “Not everyone from Stillwater managed to escape. We had allies trapped there. If the mist engulfed Stillwater, then we have lost people too, Your Royal Highness,” he explained, hoping to appeal to some twisted sense of justice in the king’s moral code.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Julius mused, taking the knife away.

“I know it is an inconvenience to you to have lost your men, but I am going to pay for the hassle I have caused you soon enough,” Alex added, pleased to see Julius’s face relaxing.

The king took a step back, moving toward the head of the table again. “Indeed you are. I suppose a handful of men is a small price to pay, in the grand scheme of things,” he murmured, a smug expression on his face. Alex felt disgusted that the king could dismiss lives so easily—not that he was surprised in the slightest. “Go ahead then, get back to whatever it was you were doing. Quick as you can,” Julius instructed, pulling a small book out of one of his pockets and settling down to read it.

As the minutes wore on into hours, however, the king grew